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Colonial Revival Furnishings & Hooked Rugs
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When someone takes a tour of a historic house that has many hooked rugs on display, chances are good that they represent the Colonial Revival style which was at its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. Louise du Pont Crowninshield, who was the last du Pont to occupy Eleutherian Mills Residence, was one of the leaders in the historic preservation movement at that time and specialized in decorating the historic houses she supported as well as her home – Eleutherian Mills Residence in this style.
Louise used a lot of hooked rugs in her public spaces. These rugs added color, striking designs, and warmth to each room. They were prominently featured in the first-floor rooms (Morning Room, Parlor, Dining Room and Smoking Room) [Link](https://digital.hagley.org/HF_E27_062?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=f53c0b62a5541cf79714&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=1) and the second-floor bedrooms. Even with the Colonial Revival style in the public spaces and bedrooms of the house, Louise went modern with the fixtures of the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry at that time.
Originally, hooked rugs were made for hearth use to catch sparks that might leap out from the fire in the fireplace. By the 1840s, women were hooking rugs throughout the New England States for use in their homes. Earliest designs were made from hand-drawings or free form. Printed designs became available in the 1850s. But it was the use of burlap becoming available after the Civil War that made these rugs much easier to make. The most popular designs were florals as seen below.
Louise’s collection totals more than ninety hooked rugs which date from 1840 to 1925. They were purchased at antiques shops. She was well known throughout the eastern seaboard states for her passion for antiquing. Note that the dates of hooked rugs were made after the Colonial period. The Colonial Revival style was a romanticized view of the past, so this is one of the exceptions to using earlier colonial pieces.
Most of Louise’s hooked rug designs are entirely floral but she did have other favorites including dogs as seen above. Other designs include geometrics, horses, cats, eagles and other types of birds, houses and one sailing ship. There are always around twenty of her hooked rug collection on display at Eleutherian Mills Residence.
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du Pont Women and their Hand Fans
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A lady’s hand fan was one of the most important clothing accessories during the nineteenth-century. Not only decorative, they also had a practical purpose of moving air for cooling. Color, design and style indicated not only moods and events but also the highest in modern styles. There were all types of fans. One example is a mourning fan which became popular following the death of Queen Victoria’s husband Albert in 1861. After his death she wore only black for the rest of her life. This mourning style was translated into the fashion of using solid black fans for mourning the death of public figures but also for friends and family.
An interesting aspect of hand fans is the special language which developed whereby moving the fan in certain ways conveyed information or wishes according to Parisian fan maker Pierre Duvelleroy in early in nineteenth century. These include:
Letting the fan rest on the right cheek: *Yes*
Letting the fan fest on the left cheek: *No*
Fanning slowly: *I am married*
Fanning rapidly: *I am engaged*
The museum collection has more than fifty hand fans with most of them formerly owned by du Pont women throughout the nineteenth-century and into the twentieth. One of the earliest fans is French fan in an elaborate presentation case which dates between 1808-1811. This light and delicate design was typical of French Empire Style. Presentation cases were made not only to preserve the fan but also to acknowledge who had owned it. In this case it was owned by Anna Van Dyke, Mary V. du Pont and Greta du Pont Barksdale. Treasures like these were frequently handed down throughout the generations. Louise du Pont Crowninshield owned eighteen fans. She lived through the transitional period of hand fans where the more decorative ones gradually began to fall out of favor. Her collection consists of mostly of Oriental made fans with decorative paper scenes, ostrich feathers fans, and souvenir fans acquired when she travelled overseas. One colorful paper fan from Paris, France and made by Goossens Frere et Soeur (brother and sister), and dates to around 1900 and represents the “Restaurant Ambassadeurs, Champs-Elysees”.
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The du Pont Story on a Hooked Rug
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Many times, people have asked me what my favorite artifact in the collection is. But I have too many to just give one. Here is one of my favorites. This artifact is an incredible work of art. Not only is this magnificent, hooked rug visually interesting, it combines both of our collecting areas admirably. It represents important icons from the history of the du Pont family in America and was made from DuPont Company’s nylon.
The artist who designed and made this rug was a du Pont who was a direct descendent of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of the DuPont Company. Born Nancy du Pont Reynolds (later Mrs. Edward W. Cooch, Jr.), she began making this rug in her late 20s. It was intended for use in a house but ended up in storage where it remained until it came to Hagley.
The process began by her drawing the pattern you see below and determining what kind of material to make the rug out of. Typically, hooked rugs were made from wool, but she decided to use nylon instead. Introduced to the public in the late 1930s, by the late 1940s DuPont chemists were exploring new uses for nylon including for carpets and rugs and this had great appeal to her. It was so new that all colors in the rug had to be customed-dyed using experimental dyes to her color specifications. This is probably the only hooked rug made from nylon. Ultimately nylon turned out to be a poor choice even though the colors are as brilliant as they were when new. But in limited active use, the rug began to fray and pill on the surface when it was walked on and there is evidence of that on the rug.
The rug depicts the history of the du Pont family and the DuPont Company in America. Each image shows a time, event, invention or symbol in the du Pont story. The design centers around the “American Eagle which was the ship that brought E. I. du Pont and his family to America. He later founded the DuPont Company. The date 1800 indicates the year they arrived in America and 1950 represents their 150th anniversary. Images include buildings on the Hagley property such as the barn and first office towards the top and a gunpowder roll mill on the Brandywine River on the lower right side.
Mrs. Cooch was an artist and I believe this is her masterpiece! One of the most amazing things she told me was that she started it in the middle and worked her way out to the edges. After she finished almost half the rug, she discovered a mistake and pulled everything out and started over again! Remarkable!
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George May Phelps and the Magic of Smartphones
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Are smartphones magic? As you hunch over your smart phone and scroll through your social media feed, do you ever stop for a moment and think just how in blue blazes does this thing work? Probably not. That is, until it *doesn’t* work.
Thanks to this job, I actually think about it a lot. As I continue opening boxes and cataloging the Rothschild patent model collection, each day I look at these steampunk-like contraptions and try to figure out how they work. I am constantly amazed by the genius of some of these men and women and the lasting impact of those old jumbles of wood and metal.
One of these “magicians” was George May Phelps. I recently discovered that Hagley owns the patent model for one of his most celebrated inventions, the Combination Printer. Not only is it the ancestor to that printer sitting there in your office, but many of the devices so critical to our Information Age owe a debt to its inventor—including that smartphone glued to your hand.
In the age of the telegraph, there were two ways to receive messages: write it down or connect the telegraph to a printer. Trouble was, both used Morse code. At least one trained operator was needed to send and another to translate the message. If the printer was used, another person called a “Grinder” turned a crank that powered the printer. The printers were complicated machines that often broke down, were difficult to repair, and slow and expensive to build.
Phelps fixed all that. An expert machinist that manufactured and assembled those ornery telegraph printers, Phelps was hired by The American Telegraph Company (later part of Western Union) in 1855. They recently bought the rights to a new type of printer and asked him to fix its problems. He took the best of the old machine, some of the new one, and added components of his own. In a rare moment of humility in the Age of Invention, he called it the “Combination” printer thereby recognizing how the other machines influenced his design.
Phelps’ improvements increased the speed, reliability, and durability of the machine. Best of all, no special operators were needed. Instead of Morse code, it used a lettered keyboard, printed in regular type, and its powerful electromagnets could be hooked up to any power source. It sent messages at about 60 words per minute on some of the highest traffic lines in the nation for decades. Even after printing over 5,000 miles of paper, the components showed little wear. One Phelps printer was still working into the 1920s! Do you expect *your* printer to work for 50-plus years?
Phelps is remembered as one of the leading inventors of early communications components. He worked closely with Thomas Edison—even going so far as to build some of his patent models. Besides the telegraph, Phelps’ designs ensured the success of the telephone and the stock ticker. Phelps even set New Yorker’s watches by creating a device that used a telegraph signal to drop a ball mounted on a pole high above the city skyline precisely at noon.
Ta-da!
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