"A triple badge in Coventry ribbon"

When I retrieved Sh.Misc. 1639 from the shelf, I wasn’t sure what to expect from an item described on the catalog card as “Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration. Mementoes, tickets, programs…” Many of the components turned out to be fairly common–though no less interesting!—pieces of ephemera such as programs, fundraising letters, performance tickets, and even a train schedule. But one item was a little more exciting.

The collection of ephemera contained in the envelope labelled Sh.Misc. 1639.

Item 16 is a badge, made up of three panels connected by a button, featuring detailed pictures woven in silk floss. I thought this might be a unique item in the collection, but it turns out that the Folger actually owns several silk pictures, most of them also related to Shakespeare or the tercentenary.

 The 1864 Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration, hosted in Stratford-upon-Avon by a committee of local Shakespeareans, coincided with the rise of woven silk pictures as a major commodity produced in nearby Coventry. While Coventry was traditionally known for its ribbon-making industry, and had adopted the use of Jacquard looms following their invention in the early 19th century, it was hit hard by a recession following the Cobden Treaty of 1860. The treaty lifted import tariffs, allowing Great Britain to cheaply import ribbons from France and beyond, and increasing competition for Coventry’s products. The town was forced to explore additional avenues of trade, and one of them was the woven bookmark. 

ART Inv. 1040 (size S)

The most famous bookmark weaver was Thomas Stevens, who produced a line of elaborately detailed silk-picture bookmarks which he trademarked as “stevengraphs.” They featured images of landscapes, historical figures and events. While stevengraphs were always distributed with with Stevens’ distinctive mounting and labels, as shown above and below, the weaving process itself was not unique, and soon other purveyors of woven silk pictures sprang up, such as J. Caldicott and Owen Brothers. 

Close-up of Thomas Stevens’ stamp on the mounting of one of his stevengraph bookmarks (ART Inv. 1040 (size S)).

Stevengraphs and other silk pictures were created using the same basic process used by all Jacquard looms— a series of cards is punched with a pattern, directing when the loom should raise or lower the set of threads in the warp to reproduce the pattern in a cloth.¹ Stevens’ process, and that of other silk picture manufacturers, also used a set of punch cards, but these were created from an image ten times larger than the bookmark itself would be, allowing for a high level of complexity.² Stevens and other manufacturers soon expanded from bookmarks into other silk picture formats, including postcards and badges.

Early in the career of the silk picture trade, the Tercentenary Celebration offered an opportunity to show off examples of Coventry’s craftsmanship. The firm Mulloney and Johnson³ produced the official four-part silk badge, and even demonstrated a Jacquard power loom to attendees at the celebration.⁴ Journalist Andrew Halliday mentioned the ribbons in his account of the celebrations, published in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the year round: “item: a triple badge in Coventry ribbon with the Bard’s lineaments in floss silk, and woven representations of natal spot, and church containing dust…”

ART Inv. 1038 (size S) and Sh.Misc. 1639 item 16

Stevens did not miss his chance to capitalize on the moment either, producing several commemorative bookmarks featuring an image of the Shakespeare funerary memorial in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church.⁵

ART Inv. 1039 (recto)

ART Inv. 1039 (verso)

Though stevengraphs and other silk pictures were produced up until the Second World War, they are remembered today mainly as a minor collectible item.