From the Vineyard Gazette edition of Dec. 6, 1935:

The approach of winter with its gray and stormy days that are inevitable, stirs an instinct among Vineyard people to turn their hands to home employments: the making of rugs, knitting and similar things; the various forms of handicraft that have survived from the colonial days in spite of machinery and machine made goods.

Stimulated by the activities of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Workers’ Guild, which seeks to preserve these old-time arts, there is perhaps, more interest shown in these homely employments, than has been noticeable for some years. Older by far than the country, and quite as important as any part of the country’s history, it is an interesting sight to see men and women engaged today in work that faddish though it may be at the present time, was once vital to the welfare of their ancestors. It was as much a part of everyday life to spin, weave and knit as it was to eat and breathe in the olden days, and while the ancient guilds were not transplanted to the Vineyard from Europe, nevertheless their influence was certainly felt in the development of the home arts and crafts as practiced here from keen necessity in those days of the pioneers.

No one knows today just how far the system of self-sustenance was carried out among the early Vineyarders. They can only guess at its extent from the relics that had survived the change of times. It is quite apparent that home industries supplied the major part of the clothing, hardware and implements commonly employed by the farmer fisherman and hunter, and their families, and this through a lengthy period which lasted until the natural wealth of the Island could be developed and turned into cash or its equivalent to be used in the purchase or exchange for a finer grade or article than could be made at home. The working out of this system was an extremely lengthy process.

Iron was scarce and expensive and was then employed only when absolutely necessary. It is not from any reason of cheap labor, or sentiment that wooden pins are found today, securing the framework of houses, or even employed in fastening the shingles to the sides. Iron was too scarce and costly to be used by any of the settlers, and probably not available at all in the very early days.

The wooden barrel hoop, the wooden hinges for doors, the bars which took the place of gates, because they required no tool for construction save the axe, and no metal whatever in construction, the wooden barrow, even wooden plows, ox yokes and bows, and a thousand other things were constructed by the men, not to mention the numberless articles made by the women of the settlements.

These things were made in winter, during those cold, stormy days when little could be done out of doors and when the man of the house assembled his few crude tools and prepared for the warm seasons to come.

Seated by his roaring fireplace, stacked with the great logs that he had chopped, he carved his ox yoke, the timbers for his boat, or fashioned the ramrod for his flintlock gun, employing the methods of the Indians, the fire and the sharpened stone in achieving the desired result. Wooden harrow teeth have been discovered on the Vineyard within a few years’ time, with points sharpened and hardened in the flames.

On the opposite side of the fire his wife spun, wove or knitted, preparing garments and fabrics for her family’s use, or dyeing the cloth with the simple homemade dyes known to the early whites and their Indian neighbors.

The house in which they lived was an example of crude home construction, with its hand-hewn log floor, its doors of whipsawed boards, perhaps not even planed, its walls fortified against the cold by means of a crude mortar composed of clay and chopped marsh grass, plastered and packed between timbers. Perhaps the inner walls were lathed and plastered, and if so, the laths were split out by hand, and the plaster was a mixture of burned oyster shells, and sheep’s wool or salt hay.

A century of this sort of struggle to master the business and science of providing for their own needs, saw a people on the Vineyard who lacked for little and found all necessities right on the spot where they were needed, and many of the luxuries besides. Not only did every man and woman work in their own homes at manufacture of clothing and implements, but there had sprung up in the various communities certain men who were gifted beyond their fellows and who erected workshops in which they worked at turning out a better grade of article than could be made in the average home, and who likewise made repairs of various kinds for their neighbors. Their workmanship was fine indeed, and the articles they turned out were prized by their possessors.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com