Quilts, coverlets & counterpanes

by Paula W. Locklair

This sampling of bedcoverings from the Old Salem and Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) collections offers a look at thirty-nine American quilts, coverlets, and counterpanes, most made and used in the South. The introduction by Paula W. Locklair, director of collections and curator for Old Salem and MESDA, explores early documentation for bedcoverings and the women who made them, using evidence from newspapers, wills and inventories, and family histories. The richness and variety of these bedcoverings offer new insight into the lives, talents, and imaginations of American women in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.