Colonial Confusion: The Nuttings

Quilt attributed to Johanna Christiana Miller (1762-1826)

Savannah, Georgia,  88" x 92"

Hannah Miller's Tree of Life from the Georgia Quilts Book

We can imagine Hannah in her twenties perhaps, stitching

this chintz quilt in Savannah during the American Revolution.

In fact, I can almost see her stitching all those frugal pieces of

chintz together in the standard interpretation of early chintz quilts.

Working by candlelight, creating beauty from scraps.

With a a toile table cover and a colonial braided oval rug on the floor.

A Patchwork Siesta, Wallace Nutting Print

Images come from Wallace Nutting's staged photographs of an imagined colonial past, which were extremely influential in American mythmaking.

DON'T FALL FOR IT. IT'S A SCAM.

There were no braided rugs in Colonial or Revolutionary America. A search through museums with an early American focus like Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village brings up not one 18th-century braided rug. In The Braided Rug Book: Creating Your Own American Folk Art by Norma M. Sturges, & Elizabeth J. Sturges tell us "The earliest braided rugs date from the 1820s in New England."

Wallace Nutting and wife would not have wanted to read that.

Wallace Nutting: "After careful inquiry the author is unable to find any authority to inform

us when braided and drawn-in rugs were first made....We shall probably

never know how early braid was worked into rugs."

Translation: "I want braided rugs to date very early; that's my

story and I'm sticking to it."

Nutting Photo: The Quilting Party, 1920

The facts about braided rugs are surprising because they are such a staple of Early American decorating, considered the perfect floor covering for one's Colonial Revival decorating scheme a hundred years ago. 

1924 decorating suggestions show the trickle-down effect of 

Nutting prints

Making a Rag Rug, Nutting Photograph

She is holding a braided rug but Nutting rugs of this type were often called hooked rugs. Today (when we are fussier about accuracy in terms such as colonial and pilgrim) a "hooked rug" is not braided but looped on a canvas.

The New Cape Bonnet

The rug by the door looks like what we'd call a hooked rug.

Advertising card for Wallace Nutting Studio in Framingham, Massachusetts

where one could buy "Hooked rugs...original patterns," possibly the braided rugs in the photos.

The Rug Maker

But we are not here to nitpick about inaccurate histories

of braided rugs, as much fun as that may be.

Nostalgic photograph from Carlie Sexton  pattern catalog

The important point is how influential the Nutting images were on our historical idea of women's work. The Wallace Nutting Studios were not the only people to do set-up photographs but they were certainly the most successful.

The Joseph Webb House, Wethersfield, Connecticut

In the early 20th century Wallace Nutting began photographing staged scenes of models posing in Colonial houses. He bought several buildings including the Webb House, built in 1752 and used by George Washington as headquarters during the Revolution, which made it quite important to the antiquarians at the time. Preservation practice changes and this is what the house looks like today. Nutting opened the Webb House to the public in 1916 for a 25-cent fee but World War I put an end to tourism.

Huge semi-historic murals were painted on the walls under

Nutting supervision. This tea party is staged in what he called The 

Yorktown Room in the Webb House.

Sewing basket atop a complex braided rug.

Mariet Griswold Caswell Nutting  (1853-1944) in the 1930s

Nutting's wife Mariet was the art director for the interior photos, placing the models and props, possibly supervising the making or purchasing of  period clothing and period textiles. The rugs were not antiques, but pieces she designed, some quite elaborate.

Wallace Nutting also opened a furniture factory in an old woolen mill in Saugus, Massachusetts, producing reproduction designs....

with craftsmen who did such a good job that is easy to be fooled by the later period pieces.

Branded label after 1924

"Furniture of the Pilgrim Century"

Colonial/Pilgrim: a mish-mash of periods.

Mid-19th century quilt on a early 18th-century bed.

The Nutting combination of inexpensive photographic prints, expensive period furniture and the craze for braided rugs seems a brilliant business model, described by Thomas Andrew Denenberg as "an endlessly self-referential business empire that catered to the culturally conservative needs of middle-class America....a soothing idealized American history."

It's estimated that 200 people worked at the Framingham studios producing the lucrative photographs. Printers, framers, colorists, salesmen turned out hundreds of thousands of them, available in classy department stores and five & dimes across the country. Nutting enterprises also employed the furniture makers and somewhere the rug makers.

"more...than you ever dreamed could be seen in Omaha"

including "Wallace Nutting Colored Platinums"

Most of the hand-colored photographs printed on platinum paper

were landscapes but there were dozens of different interior set-up shots sold by the thousands.

Mother with Cradle detail

Models created idealized views of women's roles:

mothering, sewing, cooking, primping and visiting.

Wallace Nutting (1861-1941)

The dapper Nutting had been a Congregationalist minister in his youth

until he found the job too stressful. After a breakdown he took up photography.

Dedication of Furniture of the Pilgrim Century

Design = Character?

Mending the Quilt

In a 1989 article in Old House Journal Jeff Wilkinson summarized the problems:

"It is in his role as Pilgrim evangelist that he has attracted harshest criticism....He was responsible for much of America's perceptions of [colonial] times. Though the scenes appear authentic, they are very much Nutting's personal impressions. He was closer to the archaeologist who arranges things as he digs them up to fit in with his idea of how he wants the thing to  look."

Historic New England owns many of the original photos

Another important point is that Wallace gets all the credit (or blame) despite his wife's role in a partnership.

Mariet's role from Thomas Andrew Dennenberg's

Wallace Nutting and the Invention of America

 As we have seen in this blog over the past months, that was the convention of the times. Mariet Nutting wanted no publicity and no credit. The script: "an old fashioned minister's wife...in a time of social change."  

"Counterpane owned by Mrs. Wallace Nutting"

from Furniture of the Pilgrim Century

She took a more active role after Nutting's death during World War II when she was near 90. They never had children and when she died in 1944 she willed most of her estate to Berea College in Kentucky.  Berea had been producing furniture and may have also done her rugs over the years. The inheritance included the rights to the Wallace Nutting name.

1953 Drexel ad

Berea sold the name, furniture factory artifacts, patterns and tools to Drexel Furniture Company.

The Goose Chase 1915

Lone Star quilt on the bed

Props reappear, possibly in photos taken the same day.

Two versions of women quilting. This one "The Quilting Party"

You and I know there was no photography in Colonial or Revolutionary days.

yet somehow we retain an inaccurate image highly influenced by these pictures.

This one "The Quilting"

The Goose Chase

Indelible images.