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Nathan Hawley. and Family 



by William Wilkie. 1801 



(Courtesy of Albany Institute of History and Art.) 



Figure 13. — The floor of the first room illustrated in this watercolor is partly covered with a 

 painted-canvas carpet which has a cream background with blue and tan motifs, while 

 the floor of the other room, as seen through the doorway, is bare. 



Although the can\as carpet seen in the watercolor 

 portrait Xathan Hawln', and Family, dated \o\-eniber 3, 

 1801 (fig. 13), differs in scale and color from the floor- 

 cloths just mentioned, the total effect is, nevertheless, 

 still one of regularly arranged floral motifs. The 

 pattern is formed of large sc]uares with leaf sprays 

 at the crossing superimposed on flower-filled dia- 

 monds. It emphasizes rather than obscures the floral 

 theme, since each flower is tidily enclosed in a diamond 

 which in turn is neatly enclosed in a square. The 

 colors of this carefully worked out arrangement are 

 blue and brown on a cream ground. 



Designs also might be created by homeinakcrs 

 themselves and tlien be reproduced by professional 



floorcloth painters. In reference to their future house 

 and its furnishings, David Spear, Jr., wrote from 

 Boston early in 1 787 to his fiancee, Miss Marcy Higgins, 

 in Eastham: "My Father means to afford us a painted 

 Carpet for the Room and likes our plan in the Figure 

 we proposed having if the Painters can do it, and they 

 approve of it also."'^^ 

 The season as well as the design, howc\cr, was a 



'' Letter from D.ivid Spcnr. Jr.. Bo.ston. to Miss .\Iarcy 

 Higgins. Easth.im, .Mass.. 1787. In Robert Barti.ett Haas. 

 • the Forgotten Courtship of David and Marcy Spear. 1785- 

 1787," Old Time .Yfw England (January-.March 1962), vol. 

 52. p. 69. 



PAPER 59: FLOOR COVERINGS IN 18TH-CENTURY .AMERICA 



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