Paperweight, The Collings Taylor Co., Makers of All Wool Shoddies, Cleveland, Ohio
date: label: date made
content: early 20th century
notes: label: Description
content: Paperweight; depicts a ram on one side and an image of a manufacturing plant on the other, The Collings Taylor Co., Makers of All Wool Shoddies, Cleveland, Ohio.
label: Description
content: The definition of the word “shoddy,” until the American Civil War, was “recycled wool fiber.” Only in 1861 did the term become a synonym for defective quality – related to scandals surrounding the overuse of wool shoddy in Union army uniforms at the beginning of the war. In spite of this connotation, the actual use of shoddy in the US textile industry increased in the late 19th and 20th centuries as supplies of new wool became more expensive and subject to overseas competition for resources. At first confined largely to the middle Atlantic states, by the 1890s the growth of garment manufacturing in cities of the mi-west, such as Cleveland and St. Louis, encouraged new shoddy mills to open in those cities, taking advantage of the local supplies of “clippings” (the leftovers after garment pieces were cut out of woolen cloth) which could be reduced again to fiber and reworked into new yarns and cloth. Collings, Taylor & Co. operated the Cleveland Woolen Mills, which, together with another Cleveland firm, F. Muhlhauser & Co., comprised one of the country’s largest suppliers of shoddy, not only to American mills, but to textile centers in England, France, and Germany.
label: Description
content: ATHM Collection: # 2008.58.1 (FIC, no provenance)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: American Textile History Museum Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2017.0232.44
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0232.44
label: accession number
content: 2017.0232
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Paperweight
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 7/16 in x 2 3/4 in; 1.11125 cm x 6.985 cm