[2] Constructed of hand-hewn timbers and rough planks, the building was used as a storage and workshop space for several years while the museum decided how to renovate it as a textile gallery.
Common and exotic creatures such as cows, beavers, anacondas, and giraffes were inspired by zoos, traveling animal exhibitions, illustrated bestiaries, and geography books.
Finally, hatbox makers often copied illustrations of American city and rural scenes, historic landmarks, new modes of transportation, or important people and events published in popular books and magazines.
Popular paper designs include the New York City Deaf and Dumb Asylum, a duck hunt, a sidewheel steamboat, President Harrison's log cabin and a balloon ascension.
As America's economy grew in the 19th century, the increase in leisure time and the availability of inexpensive factory-woven cloth encouraged thousands of women to embroider, sew, and quilt bedcovers for their families and friends.
Shelburne Museum was one of the first institutions to collect and exhibit American textiles which possess bold graphic patterns, clarity of line, intense colors, and the imaginative combinations of human figures, animals and vegetation which is often whimsical and out of scale.
Over seven hundred quilts, coverlets, blankets, and bed-rugs from the 18th and 19th century illustrate the different types of bedcovers, the diversity of designs and fabrics, and the many methods of manufacture used by creative men and women.
Although the collection predominantly represents New England and the northern states, it also includes examples from the southern and mid-western regions, as well as from such distinctive groups as the Amish, Pennsylvania Dutch, and native Hawaiians.
Now quite rare, these thick, heavy bedcovers were embroidered with handspun and dyed yarns on wool fabric to create a dense pile surface similar to that of an Oriental rug.
As American women perfected the art of quilt making in the early 19th century, they developed more complex patterns often requiring hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces.