Sisters at the Loom:
19th Century Rockbridge Families & Fabrics
Sunday, December 15, 2:00 PM
Manly Memorial Baptist Church
202 S. Main St., Lexington
Cap RHS’ 85th year with a deeper dive into our 2024 Exhibit, which was curated by our year’s final presenter, Frances Richardson. Her illustrated slideshow will discuss the origins of a project: drawn from the early 19th century weaving patterns inked onto small scraps of paper, shared with friends and family, and now preserved at Washington & Lee, and. More broadly, the representative group of “ordinary women, with extraordinary skills,” further highlights a range of everyday connections, financial exchanges, and social networks linking the farmsteads and stores near “Panther Gap” (near Goshen, in the northwestern corner of Rockbridge). Richardson will also discuss how these traces of material culture have helped to shape her own curiosities and practice as a weaver, joined by a wider group of fellow “Sisters at the Loom,” who have used these historic patterns – scripted and pinned by local hands two centuries ago – to create contemporary and often colorful reproductions of their own.
The complementary exhibit, “ROCKBRIDGE WEAVERS” remains open on weekends at the RHS Museum through December 2024 (Saturdays and Sundays, 12-4, 101 E. Washington St.). There, you can see live demonstrations on Richardson’s 6-foot antique loom. You can also learn about these histories virtually, via an online exhibit developed with staff in W&L’s Special Collections Archives and Digital Humanities Division. A video feature by the Rockbridge Report gives you a further glimpse of the displays and design, and clips of the weaving process, itself.
Before the featured presentation, outgoing President Larry Spurgeon will introduce the nominees for next team of RHS Officers, and provide an overview of proposed revisions to the RHS Constitution and By-Laws (you can review those updates, approved by the Board in November, HERE. Our contributing members are invited to vote for adoption of those recommendations, as well as the proposed Officer slate for 2025-2026: President, Tom Roberts; Vice President, Julie Goyette; Secretary, Cathy DeSilvey; Treasurer, Stephanie Hardy.