wishing for something to exist in the historical record: an exercise in frustration, if you let it...

After seeing Nick Spadone's shag bed rug that he had woven for use at Ticonderoga earlier this year, and then seeing them weaving one at Colonial Williamsburg in March, I admit, I had serious bedrug lust. I have the technology, the wool, I wanted one!

Then in a conversation with Shaun Pekar, he got me thinking about how prevalent they were in the historical record. Shaun mentioned that the ones that he was noticing most often were not shag, but looped, pulled with a hook through an already finished sheet of coarse woven cloth. The shag ones were woven as shag, with throws of twill weave between the rows of knotted shag all worked on the loom.

So I started looking, and thinking seriously about what I would have had for a bed rug. Maybe these shag rugs were an anomaly, or maybe they were only in a few collections in the Virginia area. I also wanted to know what sort of bed coverings were in the Nova Scotia record.

Looking on Novamuse, the search engine for artifacts in the Nova Scotia Museum collection, the only mentions of blankets or coverlets are woven, but without shag. They are bird's eye twills, overshot, but nothing like the style of bedrug that either Spadone's or Pekar's would be like. The coverlet artifacts aren't labelled well on the Novamuse site, so I'm not even sure of firm artifact dating.

I am bummed...so I will keep looking, and will put off the bedrug project until I know more about the Nova Scotia situation. Yes, I know they had the technology in the period, but is it historically accurate for me to own one? These are important questions you need to ask yourself if you are wanting to do quality living history. I'm not saying the gent's bedrug styles didn't exist, more that they don't exist for "me". Wishing a historical record into being just doesn't happen. When we look for documentation, we need to look for commonalities, not anomalies, or we run the risk of starting a fashion trend within the profession.

I won't put forward the notion "if they had it, they would have used it", or any other similar argument for documentation...I won't be starting a fashion trend.

Image of unknown origin, but common weave pattern and colourway for early overshot patterns. But when did this form of weaving come into existence in Nova Scotia?