A coverlet is not a small cover. The "let" is not a diminutive -- it's let as in copire lectum (L) or "cuivre lit" (Fr). A bedcover. Neither a blanket nor a bedspread, but both -- a decorative but warm item of bedclothes.
"Jacquard" refers to the Jacquard attachment, which was a series of punchcards (the ancestor of the IBM cards) that controlled the weaving and allowed a skilled workman to produce complicated patterns relatively inexpensively. Jacquard coverlets were produced in large quantities (about 700 craftsmen are known) in villages and small towns in the US between about 1820 and the coming of the Civil War. Weavers were mostly immigrants from the old country whose skills had already been rendered obsolete by factory-based manufacture. Weaving was a cottage industry -- many weavers wove in the winter, farmed in the summer.
This coverlet was woven by Benjamin Hausman of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1842 -- it says so in the "corner block." It's in amazingly good shape for a weaving that's 180 years old. The colors, especially the madder red and indigo blue wool, are still vivid. The coverlet is impressive and beautiful and keeps us mighty toasty at night.
Allentown is also famous for introducing the stink bug and I believe the lantern fly into the United States. It may also be responsible for importing an atrocity known as the mile-a-minute weed. And it has cheap gasoline pumps that I could not use because the damned things kept asking me for a password. Since when does a gasoline pump need something more than a credit card? That coverlet, however, is impressive, and Mr. Hausman may have been Allentown's most distinguished citizen.
Posted by: Don Z. Block | February 18, 2021 at 11:51 AM