Little Loomhouse weaves art and history for a new generation
Located on Kenwood Hill in Louisville's South End, the Little Loomhouse taught generations of children about the spinning and looming folk crafts of Kentucky.
Today, thanks to volunteers, the looms are still at work, and visitors young and old are still learning about the art of weaving. The facility, a collection of three historic log cabins, is named on the National Register of Historic Places and is the largest repository of textile patterns in the country.
The site owes its beginning to Lou Tate Bousman, a Kentucky native who developed a love of weaving and collected traditonal patterns from mountain weavers. She became a noted expert on handwoven textiles, with exhibits in New York and Louisville. After moving into the Kenwood Hill cabins to set up her looming operations, she began using the professional name of Lou Tate.
Tate, who founded the Kentucky Weavers Guild and began publication of Kentucky Weaver Magazine, died in 1979, but many of her books and collected patterns remain at the Little Loomhouse.
Famous visitors to the Little Loomhouse include Lysette and Patty Hill, the two Louisville sisters who created the "Happy Birthday" song; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The main cabin, called the Esta Cabin, dates from 1870. It is best known as the site at which the words for the birtyday song emerged. Patty Hill changed the words of "Good Morning to All" (a song written by the Hill sisters) into the familiar birthday lyrics at a birthday party for her sister, Lysette. You can read the entire story on the Little Loomhouse's Happy Birthday to You page.
The Esta Cabin became first a summer cabin and then a gathering place for Kentucky artists, poets and writers in the early 20th century.
Today the Esta Cabin serves as a museum of sorts for textile samples and weaving and spinning artifacts. The neighboring cabin, Tophouse, serves as the headquarters for weaving demonstrations and lessons and houses the looms that are on display. The third cabin, Wisteria Cabin, contains a gift shop and the facility's offices.
- by Ivonne Rovira, Louisville Reporter for HelloMetro
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