: Sumpter Priddy III recalls the moment that he first experienced
Fancy, a cultural phenomenon of such immense proportions that its
dimensions have remained uncharted for more than 150 years.
Exploring an abandoned Surrey County, Va., farmhouse built by an
ancestor of his in 1836, the boy, who spent summers nearby with
his grandparents, stood transfixed in a grain painted interior
before a marbleized mantel embellished with gilt sunbursts.
Years passed before Priddy, by then earning his master's degree
in early American culture at Winterthur, understood what he had
seen. The "aha!" moment came while sitting in a class taught by
Kenneth Ames. The instructor projected a slide of an 1837
jacquard coverlet. Its dizzying pattern prototypically Op art,
the coverlet was signed "J.M./DAVIDSON/FANCY WEAVER."
"It was like a lightening bolt. Here was a man who considered
himself not a 'decorative' weaver but an 'imaginative' one," says
Priddy, emphasizing the nonrational, purely visceral pleasure
that early Nineteenth Century Americans derived from Fancy in all
of its expressions, from music and literature to cuisine to
decor.
