February, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



73 



Reeling Thread 



fabricate an old-fashioned quilt or counterpane in the indigo 

 blue and white or the herring-bone pattern. If they make it 

 according to the early fashion, its three strips will be as 

 heavy as a board and about as comfortable to sleep under. 

 One wonders what dreams would come to one having cour- 

 age to pass a night beneath the cumbersome bulk of one 

 that was woven two hundred years ago. Those made at 

 Alarblehead will be finished at each end with a knotted 

 fringe, and will be used as portieres or couch covers, or if 

 perchance for a bedspread, will be removed ere sleeping 

 time arrives. 



Some exquisite rugs have cream white backgrounds and 

 are sprinkled over with green fish, after a conventionalized 

 pattern, and table covers and scarfs of odd designs are a 

 part of the work. Nothing is common, for the simplest 

 piece has something unique, either in color, shape, weave or 

 design, yet probably our fore-mothers knew them all, as 

 they wrought them out patiently by candlelight, or in the 

 short winter days, for future use, and for generations yet 

 to come. 



All around them the modelers find patterns for their fasci- 

 nating work, for the deep, dark caverns of the sea bear 

 many a treasure which their cunning fingers can reproduce 

 and find health and pleasure in the doing. The various 

 seaweeds, which the stones tear from their rooting place and 

 the waves cast up on the shore, make exquisite designs for 

 ornaments. One worker fashions a rose bowl, whose decora- 

 tion is cuttlefish, and another is ornamented with the long 



arms of the octopus on the pale green surface. Vases, candle- 

 sticks, pitchers, bowls for lamps, bonbon dishes, etc., are 

 adorned with sea weeds, or with crabs, or sea spiders, or 

 star fish, and the potter's wheel goes whirring on turning 

 them out from the red clay, which comes from Beverly not 

 far away, and the fingers of the erstwhile nervous patients 

 grow wonderfully deft, and the wires that send messages all 

 over the body transmit one of calm and quiet to the brain, 

 which never tires with this fascinating labor. The pottery 

 is fired in a kiln built for the purpose in the basement. 



The Sloyd workers are a merry group and give emphatic 

 denial to the statement often so fatuously made, that women 

 can not handle tools. He who runs may read a different 

 story in the articles made by these enthusiastic girls, and 

 with it all they gain what is even better than their finished 

 work, good as that is, and this is an intelligent self-activity 

 that develops character as well as heals wounded nerves. 



The sitting-room of the building is on the second floor 

 and has four large windows with an outlook on Marblehead 

 harbor, famous the world over. Here the women weave the 



Making Warp 



Lace Making 



raffia baskets and are so full of fun over them that no one 

 would suspect they were nervous patients taking a cure. 



One of the most fascinating of the revived arts and crafts 

 is the lace making. There is lace galore in every shop in 

 every village in the country, but it is machine made, and no 

 matter how fine or intricate the pattern, it is never quite the 

 same as that made by hand, which, when the charm of an- 

 tiquity is added, is a precious thing indeed. There are price- 

 less pieces in the Vatican that took a lifetime in the making 

 and plutocrats to-day have a fad for collecting laces that is 

 worthier of imitation than many of their caprices. Pillow 

 lace making, it is said, was introduced into England in the 

 reign of Henry VI by some refugees from the Netherlands, 

 and was soon acquired by some of the English, whose de- 

 scendants migrated to the new world and settled in Ipswich. 

 Mass. Quite a lace industry flourished there in days gone 

 by, and the wealthy dwellers in Salem, then in the height of 

 its prosperity- — in Newburyport and in Boston — ordered 

 laces for wedding gowns and veils, many of which are still 

 preserved with the greatest care and sometimes figure at a 

 twentieth century function to adorn the costume of the 

 modern bride. 



For the lace making of to-day sometimes the old lace 



