Tufted Bath mat with Peacock & Flower design, 1950s
date: label: Date made
content: 1948-1959 (Donor thought it was early 1950's)
notes: label: Description
content: Green chenille (tufted) bath mat with peacock and flower design. Cotton Part of set - goes with a matching toilet seat cover.
label: Description
content: The peacock has a bright red comb, beak, and eye. The tail is composed of bright red, pink, 2 shades of lavender, and purple. The flower is bright pink with bright green petals and stem.
label: Description
content: The tufted textile industry began in and around Dalton, Georgia in the very late 19th century – an industry begun, fostered by, and employing women. At first the product of hand-sewing in the workers’ homes, in the 1930s the industry had proven so successful that men entered the business, opening new, mechanized factories to take advantage of the popularity of the products. One of the most popular designs, common on the “spreadlines” of the Dixie Highway, where individuals and factory owners alike promoted their wares to travelers, was the peacock. This bathroom set is typical of an extremely popular decade or two of taste in many American homes. The peacock, brilliantly multi-colored, adorned bathmats and toilet seat covers, bedspreads and bathrobes, beach capes and pillow shams. The tufted textile industry would morph in Dalton Georgia into the city’s important carpet industry. But its roots in the woman-owned and woman-operated world of the hand-tufted chenille spread should be remembered. This bath set complements other tufted textiles in the collection: an all-white, hand-tufted daybed cover, with a peacock design, from the Dalton area, dating to the early 1920s, and a colorful machine-tufted bedspread with a peacock design, ca. 1950.
label: Description
content: ATHM Collection: # 2000.145.1; Gift of Grace S. Poellmitz
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Georgia, Dalton
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: 2017.0232.41
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0232.41
label: accession number
content: 2017.0232
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Bath mat
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: cotton (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: plain weave; machine-tufting (overall production method/technique)