Churchill Weavers was a handweaving company that operated from 1922 to 2007 in Berea, Kentucky, an area of Appalachia long associated with handcrafts.
Berea is a home rule-class city in Madison County, Kentucky, in the United States. The town is best known for its art festivals, historic restaurants and buildings, and as the home to Berea College, a private, liberal arts college. The population was 13,561 at the 2010 census. It is one of the fastest-growing towns in Kentucky, having increased by 27.4% since 2000.
Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia typically refers only to the central and southern portions of the range, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, southwesterly to the Great Smoky Mountains. As of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to approximately 25 million people.
Color postcard showing the Churchill Weavers building, ca. 1950
It was the first company to mass-produce handwoven products for a national market.[1]:9[2]:9[3]:unnumbered[4]:1
Background
David Carroll (D.C.) Churchill (1873 – 1969) and Eleanor Franzen Churchill (1888 – 1981) started Churchill Weavers in part to bring employment opportunity to Appalachian women and men.[4]:130 They previously were not entrepreneurs, but they had a thorough understanding of weaving from both an engineer's and a weaver's viewpoint. They brought to their work the combined skills of mechanical engineering, design, marketing and business management.[4]:132
Photograph of David Carroll Churchill and his wife, Eleanor Franzen Churchill, 1953
Work in India
D.C., a native of Oberlin, Ohio, studied engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated at the top of his class before going to India as a missionary. There, he worked as an industrial engineer with the Marathi Mission, which was affiliated with the Congregational Church.[2]:74, 79
Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, southwest of Cleveland. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. The institute is a land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant university with campus extends more than a mile along side the Charles river. The institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences, engineering and architecture, but more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, management, and social science and art as well. MIT is often ranked among the world's top five universities.
India, also known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
Eleanor, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, was a native of Connecticut and a Wellesley College graduate. She was teaching in India at the Clarke-Abbott School and Home for Indian Boys when she and D.C. met. In 1914, two years after D.C.'s first wife died, she and D.C. married.[5][6]:8 In the early part of the 20th century, handweaving was the second-largest industry in India but individual weavers found it difficult to compete with mechanized textile companies.[5] D.C. studied the home weaving industry and developed a new type of fly-shuttle loom that allowed weavers to produce twice as much cloth as they could produce using their old looms. By 1911, his subsequent modifications allowed 36 people to do the work that it previously had taken 200 to accomplish [2]:83 and allowed them to compete in the mechanized marketplace.[2]:81, 85 The British government in India twice gave D.C. a grant to study hand-weaving methods worldwide while en route to and from the United States. The first time was when he returned home for a one-year furlough in 1910; the second time was in 1917 when he and Eleanor decided that it was impractical to stay in India because of World War I. While the British government expected D.C. to return and use what he had learned in India,[2]:86, 90 circumstances prevented that and the family remained in the United States.
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges. Wellesley is home to 56 departmental and interdepartmental majors spanning the liberal arts, as well as over 150 student clubs and organizations. The college also allows its students to cross-register at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis University, Babson College and Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. Wellesley athletes compete in the NCAA Division III New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference.
Start of Churchill Weavers
When they returned to the United States in 1917, the Churchills settled in Oberlin, Ohio. D.C. worked at Garford Manufacturing Co. and aided the war effort by developing the first practical retractable airplane landing gear for the U.S. Army — one of several inventions he had that were not associated with weaving.[4]:131 The family moved to Berea, Kentucky, in 1920 when D.C.'s longtime friend William J. Hutchins, president of Berea College, invited him to teach physics there.[4]:131 At the same time, D.C. planned to develop his own business designing and selling looms for handweavers. The arrangement with Berea College lasted only two years. In 1922, D.C. left the college — in part because it would not fund an engineering department — and also because policy changes would not allow him to work part-time on his own business.[7]:1 The Churchills decided to stay in Berea and start their own company to produce handwoven goods.
D.C. brought to the company his engineering and business skills. He evaluated the production process for efficiency, made fly-shuttle looms and worked to perfect new devices to minimize the physical strain on workers while maximizing output throughout the business.[4]:130 Eleanor brought firsthand weaving experience, a designer's eye, marketing and business management skills.[6]:9
Innovation
Christine Akers weaving at a handloom at Churchill Weavers, 1977
From the beginning, "most aspects of Churchill Weavers … set them apart from the rest of the mountain weaving ventures…."[4]:134, 10 Unlike other mountain weaving enterprises Churchill Weavers employed both women and men and by the late 1940s provided jobs to as many as 150 people. Women tended to dominate other handweaving operations.[4]:132, 133 D.C.'s efficiency analysis led Churchill Weavers to organize its process so that workers came into a central location with departmentalized tasks; in other mountain areas, one weaver carried out all aspects of making the item and worked alone in her home.[4]:134
Churchill Weavers made an array of items, from baby blankets and couch throws — its signature pieces — to clothing. Other mountain weavers generally produced only placemats and finger towels.[3]:unnumbered Under Eleanor's marketing direction, Churchill Weavers made for itself a national and urban market in such places as New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles before there was a market in those areas for hand-woven goods. Eleanor used such techniques as in-store demonstrations and professional models in the company catalogs.[4]:133
Products
Besides clothing, throws and baby blankets, Churchill Weavers also created special-use fabric on commission. Among those commissions:
B.F. Goodrich commissioned Churchill Weavers to produce fabric for space flight in 1960. The company made 50 yards of anti-thermal fabric to be considered for use in coveralls for Mercury Mission astronauts to wear over a pressurized high altitude suit.[5][7]:2 For nearly a decade in the 1970s and 1980s, internationally known fiber artist Gerhardt Knodel commissioned Churchill Weavers to produce fabric for several textile installations, including "Free Fall" at Detroit's Renaissance Center; "Sky Ribbon: An Oklahoma Tribute" (1978) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City (destroyed in 1995 by a bomb blast) and "Grand Exchange" (1981) at Cincinnati Bell.[4]:14[5]
Advertisement showing a red Churchill Weavers throw draped over a chair and ottoman, ca. 1995
Churchill Weavers operated under the Churchill family for more than half a century. In 1973, Eleanor, then a widow of four years, asked Lila and Richard Bellando to take over its operation. Richard was the sole employee for the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen and organized its fair.[6]:12 Lila was an educator who had studied art at Berea College. The Bellandos operated Churchill Weavers as a family business until 1996 when they sold the company to Crown Craft in Georgia. Their reasons for selling were "to bring additional resources for production, corporate expertise in business matters, and better benefits for employees." Lila continued to manage the business for another 11 years.[5][7]:1, 13
Churchill Weavers continues to produce its distinctive handwoven items and has done so since its sale to an Indiana entity in 2007. It never ceased production.
Historic recognition
In 2007, the Kentucky Historical Society acquired the Churchill Weavers' archive with funding from the KHS Foundation and donor Joan Cralle Day, a Kentucky philanthropist and activist.[3]:unnumbered[5] The collection is a nearly complete representation of every Churchill Weavers product and weave pattern, with a fabric archive that contains more than 30,000 textiles. The collection also contains warping cards, design books and construction notes dating to the 1920s; sales brochures and catalogs; business records and correspondence; original photographs; vintage advertising signs; two antique looms that D.C. designed and built; scrapbooks containing the company's history; and other items.[3]:unnumbered
In January 2014, the Churchill Weavers building in Berea was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying both because of its significant place in the local Arts and Crafts movement and because of its connection to David Carroll Churchill.[8]
Citations
↑ NPS Form 10-900, OMB No. 1024-0018. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, accessed online
1 2 3 4 5 Chamberlain, Ernest Barrett. The Churchills of Oberlin. Oberlin, OH: The Ohio *Historical and Improvement Organization, 1965.
1 2 3 4 Kentucky Historical Society. "The Kentucky Historical Society presents a Preservation Exhibition Magic in the Weaving, the Churchill Weavers Collection *Revealed," an insert of "The Chronicle," Spring/Summer 2008
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Alvic, Philis. Weavers of the Southern Highlands. University Press of Kentucky. 2003
1 2 3 4 5 6 Elliott, Sara. Weaving Together Magic, 2008. No page numbers.
1 2 3 Alvic, Philis. "Churchill Weavers 80 Years of American Handweaving", 2003. Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. Paper 428. digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/428.
Alvic, Philis.Weavers of the Southern Highlands. University Press of Kentucky. 2003.
Alvic, Philis. "Churchill Weavers 80 Years of American Handweaving" (2003). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. Paper 428. digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/428
Chamberlain, Ernest Barrett. The Churchills of Oberlin. Oberlin, OH: The Ohio *Historical and Improvement Organization, 1965.
Churchill Chronicle. 10 October 1997.
Kentucky Historical Society. "The Kentucky Historical Society presents a Preservation Exhibition Magic in the Weaving, the Churchill Weavers Collection *Revealed," an insert of "The Chronicle," Spring/Summer 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Related Research Articles
The Jacquard machine is a device fitted to a power loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé. It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. The loom was controlled by a "chain of cards"; a number of punched cards laced together into a continuous sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Several such paper cards, generally white in color, can be seen in the images below. Chains, like Bouchon's earlier use of paper tape, allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not limited by the size of a card.
A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same.
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling. The method in which these threads are inter-woven affects the characteristics of the cloth.
Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band which meets this definition of cloth can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques without looms.
A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed in 1784 by Edmund Cartwright and first built in 1785. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by Kenworthy and Bullough made the operation completely automatic.
Ikat is a dyeing technique used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric.
Khadi or khaddar is handspun, hand-woven natural fiber cloth from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh mainly made out of cotton.
Balaramapuram is a small town in the Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, India.
Balaramapuram is famous as the centre for the production of traditional varieties of handloom textiles meant for the contemporary cloth wearing style of Kerala. Its unique craftsmanship makes it an ideal heirloom. .Balaramapuram is also famous for mutton dishes,chicken dishes,oysters and fish items.Religious harmony place a great role.St: sebastians church perunal during the month of january is a great example of this harmony.Balaramapuram also has a railway station.
A selvage or selvedge is a "self-finished" edge of fabric, keeping it from unraveling and fraying. The term "self-finished" means that the edge does not require additional finishing work, such as hem or bias tape, to prevent fraying.
Assam silk denotes the three major types of indigenous wild silks produced in Assam—golden muga, white pat and warm eri silk. The Assam silk industry, now centered in Sualkuchi, is a labor-intensive industry.
Ada K. Dietz was an American weaver best known for her 1949 monograph Algebraic Expressions in Handwoven Textiles, which defines a novel method for generating weaving patterns based on algebraic patterns. Her method employs the expansion of multivariate polynomials to devise a weaving scheme. Dietz' work is still well-regarded today, by both weavers and mathematicians. Along with the references listed below, Griswold (2001) cites several additional articles on her work.
A reed is part of a weaving loom, and resembles a comb. It is used to separate and space the warp threads, to guide the shuttle's motion across the loom, and to push the weft threads into place.
The reed is securely held by the beater, and consists of a frame with many vertical slits. Floor looms and mechanized looms both use a beater with a reed, whereas Inkle weaving and tablet weaving do not use reeds.
A Sambalpuri saree is a traditional handwoven ikat or sari wherein the warp and the weft are tie-dyed before weaving. It is produced in the Bargarh, Sonepur, Sambalpur, Balangir district, Boudh District of Odisha. The saree is a traditional female garment in the Indian Subcontinent consisting of a strip of unstitched cloth ranging from four to nine metres in length that is draped over the body in various styles.
Geo. Hattersley was a textile machinery manufacturer from Keighley, West Yorkshire in England, founded in 1789 and responsible for the Hattersley Standard Loom and other types of loom.
The Textiles of Mexico have a long history. The making of fibers, cloth and other textile goods has existed in the country since at least 1400 BCE. Fibers used during the pre-Hispanic period included those from the yucca, palm and maguey plants as well as the use of cotton in the hot lowlands of the south. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish introduced new fibers such as silk and wool as well as the European foot treadle loom. Clothing styles also changed radically. Fabric was produced exclusively in workshops or in the home until the era of Porfirio Díaz, when the mechanization of weaving was introduced, mostly by the French.
Today, fabric, clothes and other textiles are both made by craftsmen and in factories. Handcrafted goods include pre-Hispanic clothing such as huipils and sarapes, which are often embroidered. Clothing, rugs and more are made with natural and naturally dyed fibers. Most handcrafts are produced by indigenous people, whose communities are concentrated in the center and south of the country in states such as Mexico State, Oaxaca and Chiapas. The textile industry remains important to the economy of Mexico although it has suffered setback due to competition by cheaper goods produced in countries such as China, India and Vietnam.
Donegal tweed is a handwoven tweed manufactured in County Donegal, Ireland. Donegal has for centuries been producing tweed from local materials in the making of caps, suits and vests. Towards the end of the eighteenth century The Royal Linen Manufacturers of Ulster distributed approximately six thousand flax spinning wheels and sixty looms for weaving to various Donegal homesteads. These machines helped establish the homespun tweed industry in nineteenth-century Donegal. Although Donegal tweed has been manufactured for centuries it took on its modern form in the 1880s, largely due to the pioneering work of English philanthropist Alice Rowland Hart.
Pochampally Saree or Pochampalli Ikat is a saree made in Bhoodan Pochampally, Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district, Telangana State, India. They have traditional geometric patterns in Ikat style of dyeing. The intricate geometric designs find their way into sarees and dress materials. The Indian government's official air carrier, Air India, has its cabin crew wear specially designed pochampally silk sarees.
Berta Frey was a well-known New York weaver, who spoke and taught about weaving techniques for many years. She was one of the founders of the Handweavers Guild of America.
Dorothy Kate Burnham was a Canadian textile scholar, author and museum curator.
Suzie Liles is an American fiber artist, master weaver, the owner of the Eugene Textile Center and co-owner of Glimakra USA, in Eugene, Oregon.
