Reverse side of the Lincoln Parlor Damask. Silk warp and worsted filling.
Our annual Open House Showroom and Mill Tours are slated for Saturday, December 5 and Sunday, December 6, from 9-5pm each day. The mill will be open weekdays starting December 7 for the rest of the Holiday Season.
The showroom will include our historic bed hangings, carpets, and drapery fabrics. New historic patterns from our jacquard loom will be available as scarves, shawls for the Holiday Season. The showroom will remain setup through the end of the year but our Open House weekend will allow visitors to see all of our historic machinery in action.
This year the mill has been weaving the drapery fabrics for Lincoln’s Home in Springfield Illinois. The original damask fabric used by the Lincolns in their home circa 1862 survived in the archives of the National Park Service. It was reproduced in the 1980’s by Scalamandre and now is being reproduced again by Thistle Hill Weavers. Using the existing fragment as a evidence, the worsted wool yarn was spun in Maine and dyed in Philadelphia; the silk was spun and dyed in Japan. These draperies will hang in the front and rear parlors of the Lincoln Home.
Thistle Hill has also reproduced the other draperies in the Lincoln Home, gossamer dimity for the bedrooms and the hall, and embossed moire worsted for the library.
Besides weaving drapery for the Lincoln Home, Thistle Hill has been busy weaving “Lincoln” shawls for Beekman 1802 Mercantile, in the style of the shawl that Abraham Lincoln wore which survives in the Smithsonian Institution collection. Thistle Hill’s reproduction of the shawl appears in the trailer for the movie “Lincoln, A Team of Rivals” released a few years ago.
