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RHS Program And Exhibit Feature Historic Weaving
The Rockbridge Historical Society’s last program of the year will be held on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. at Manly Memorial Baptist Church. In the church’s historic sanctuary, exhibit curator and weaver Frances Richardson will tunnel into local history with a slideshow presentation titled “Sisters at the Loom: 19th-century Rockbridge Families and Fabrics.”
Drawing on original research and her long-honed craftsmanship, this talk discusses the origins and growth of a unique project that’s interwoven both artisanal and community histories. It also threads out from the complementary exhibit, still on display at the RHS Museum through Dec. 29.
At 4 p.m. following the program, attendees can head two blocks down to the museum (101 E. Washington St.) to see many of these related materials in person. While there, Richardson will demonstrate period techniques on her own 6-foot, antique, wooden loom. Meaningfully, she has named it “Violet,” a tribute to Violet Cunningham, one of the specifically- researched women from our area whose everyday efforts and creativity are newly showcased there.
Richardson’s slides are richly illustrated by the sturdy products of historic loomcraft, alongside several modern reproductions that she and others have crafted from those original patterns. Her images also zoom in to detail the inscriptions of local store ledgers, personal letters, and maps of small rural communities and Rockbridge hamlets that were once shaped by such daily exchanges, but no longer functionally exist.
In more fully crediting these relationships and cultural histories, Richardson’s presentation brings to light a distinct group of local women weavers, producing for domestic use, plus extra sales for the market. Their handiwork and communication survive in the paper patterns they charted, and personally inscribed, as well as the variously utilitarian or more artful clothwork that they and their contemporaries produced. More broadly, those texts and textiles illuminate a representative range of family ties, financial exchanges, and social networks linking the early 19th-century farmsteads and stores clustered around Panther Gap, just west of Goshen.
As RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson noted, “From both public programs and school projects, we’ve found that Rockbridge audiences are interested in broad cultural themes and commemorative anniversaries. But we’re also drawn to the unknown or halffamiliar ‘micro-communities’ – whether still active or now long past – that local history organizations can uniquely unearth, and can share with today’s descendants and neighbors.”
He continued, “Frances’ program, and the exhibit at our museum, have allowed us to combine those approaches. With and beyond these specific fabrics, this has become another opportunity to spotlight overlooked places like Panther Gap. Marked by its own evident rhythms and structure in the second quarter of the 1800s, it once again becomes more than a passing road marker, or a marginal flourish on a now-bygone map.”
Along with the centrally featured loom, RHS Museum’s interpretive displays, its period coverlets, roughand- ready “jeans,” and colorful swatches-for-order at the once-lively Whipple General Store in Brownsburg in the 1860s are all free to visitors through the end of the year (Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment at RHS@RockbridgeHistory. org).
Area residents can also learn about these histories virtually, in an online exhibit developed with staff from W&L’s Special Collections Library and Digital Humanities Division at tinyurl.com/SistersLoomOnlineExhibit.
Richardson herself notes the impact of the exhibit, having guided visitors each weekend this fall, answering questions during live demonstrations, while weaving corresponding reproductions from those authentic, older codes: “I love watching visitors to the exhibit become more and more intrigued by the story it tells. Even visitors who don’t think they are interested in weaving come to understand the enormous amount of work, time and expertise that went into their production, and realize how central textiles remain in our lives.”
She also emphasizes some of the continuities between past and present that emerge in these comparisons across time. “These modern fabric samples are tangible successors to materials produced here in Rockbridge County in the 19th century,” she said. “The exhibit’s massive, stillsturdy loom continues to churn out fabric today. We have our own daily bills and letters and letters that reveal shopping habits and family and neighborly relationships, just like those recorded by the Baer family and their neighbors, two centuries ago.”
During her program, Richardson will also relate how a handful of small, wispy traces of paper – scripted and pinned by local hands two centuries ago – have recently led a group of fellow “Sisters at the Loom” to use these historic patterns today, to create contemporary, often colorful reproductions of their own. Several of these samples will be on display at the church, after the program, as well as at the museum.
Wilson added, “From my first look at these little weaving drafts, I’ve been struck by the carefully engineered cross-hatchings in their grids, artfully figured with names like ‘Vining Strawberry,’ ‘Guinea Hen,’ ‘The Bunch of Snow Grape,’ or, for more historic cues, ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat,’ ‘Confederate Deserter,’ and ‘Lee’s Surrender.’ There’s an extra immediacy in the still-visible pinholes that show where these guides were secured onto the wood, right next to the run of the shuttle.
“But these personally designed ‘matrices’ also look like punch-cards from the earliest mainframe computers in the mid-20th century. In that light, they stand as a comparative reminder of an ever-evolving workforce and opportune commercial initiative. In more intimate ways, they point to some of the means and media that individuals and communities use to connect to and communicate with our close circles. Further afield, they gesture to the social networks that stitch us together, though further from home, in both the 19th- and 21st-centuries.”
Similarly bridging the past and present, Richardson said, “There’s an immediacy to these historic and contemporary materials that jointly creates a glimpse of everyday life. And at their center, stands a community of ‘ordinary women’ with what are now thought of as ‘extraordinary skills.’” More personally, she concluded, “It is a joy to be able to share my enthusiasm for this story, combining my love of textiles and Rockbridge County history. But more importantly for me, the exhibit has sparked lasting friendships, with and beyond fellow weavers, as well as new interest in weaving. Two young people who saw the exhibit are now learning the craft.” -Before the featured 2 p.m. presentation at the church, RHS President Larry Spurgeon and trustee Tom Camden will introduce the RHS board’s nominees for its next slate of officers, along with an overview of proposed revisions to the RHS constitution and bylaws. Recently approved by the board, they are available for review in the program link at Rockbridge-History.org.
Contributing members are invited to vote for adoption of those recommendations, as well as the proposed officer slate for 2025-2026: president, Tom Roberts; vice president, Julie Goyette; secretary, Cathy DeSilvey; and treasurer, Stephanie Hardy.
For more information, contact [email protected].
