Four-corner Post Loom

The second most common style of loom found in the Southern Appalachians before the Handicraft Revival is the Four-corner Post loom, often referred to as the "Barn-frame" loom. This loom is built on the principle of a cube, and resembles a four-corner post bed in both shape and size. The Four-corner Post loom is even more common in New England than in the Southern mountains. The placement of the beater --- a free-swinging device which packs newly woven threads in tightly --- provides information about the dynamics between industrial and folk design. Originally this loom had a beater which hung from above and a frame of slightly different construction. At some point the frame of the loom was modified to accommodate a beater from below. It is thought that the "innovation" of beaters which pivot from below was originally introduced so that power looms would take up as little factory space as possible. One possible explanation for this loom variation is that the loom was built sometime after textile mills appeared in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. It was probably modified by a former textile mill worker who, having left the mill, returned to the mountains to resume handweaving, and introduced this new variation in loom construction.

Plaid Flannel Textile

This textile was copied from a handwoven fabric belonging to the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee. Wool flannels such as this would have been used as dress or shirt fabrics. The plaid textile illustrates the capability of the simplest two-treadle handloom to produce decorative fabrics through the use of color with plain-woven material.