Philadelphia Antiques Show 2022

79 THE PH I LADE L PH I A SHOW 1977 UNDERFOOT: FLOOR COVERINGS USED IN AMERICA Curators, conservators, and scholars contributed essays and expertise to make the 1977 loan exhibit, “Underfoot: Floor Coverings Used in America” a tremendous visual and scholarly success. Beverly Gordon wrote about the colorful braided and hook rugs made and sold by the Shaker communities, whose leader Mother Ann Lee had “admonished her followers to ‘put your hands to work and your hearts to God.’” PMA curator Beatrice B. Garvan co-curated the exhibit with Marion L. Fox, and wrote “Underfoot in America.” Mrs. Garvan opened her essay with a quote from the French revolutionary and abolitionist Brissot de Warville (1754-1793), who observed in Philadelphia that “They have carpets—elegant carpets. It is a favorite taste with the Americans…A carpet in summer is an absurdity; yet they spread them in this season, and from vanity. This vanity exercises itself by saying that the carpet is an ornament…” (Scharf and Westcott, 1884, 2:910). Americans’ tastes ran the gamut from painted floorcloths to imported handknotted rugs but documentation supports the fact that floor coverings were hugely desirable for their practical purposes. Those who could afford them owned them, and those who could be picky had fashionable ones. They nailed imported Brussels (looped pile) and Wilton (cut piles) carpets at the perimeters of their best rooms, placed woven carpets at the center of the best rooms, draped “turkey carpitts” over tables, and placed small hooked and woven (such as ingrain) rugs and woven mats at the side of a bed to ease the shock of a cold floor. Always possessed of good humor in her writing, Mrs. Garvan wrote, “Who knows when walking on flowers became fashionable? It was a literal fact in most buildings before woven carpets appeared. Herbs, rose petals, and sweet hay were strewn over floors and, before being swept out, were bruised with a broom to release their bouquet, which at least nullified odors of dampness and habitation…Flowers, even garden, were worked into the designs of great rugs…but extreme abstractions rendered the plant materials unrecognizable as natural forms.” A vase of arranged cut flowers surely inspired the 19th century Vermont artisans who designed and made this hooked rug. Lively swirls form a border that resembles the Grecian scroll (or wave scroll) o en found in neoclassical architecture of the same period. The type of dyes (either natural or chemical) used to color the yarns changed throughout the 19th century, and this rug’s colors are so and muted today but would surely have been more vibrant when it was first made. Underfoot: Floor Coverings Used in America, 1977 Wool, 40 x 60 inches Collection of Joan M. Johnson