Holes, Herringbone and the Hands Behind the Loom: Sizing Up a Ten-Pound Welsh Blanket

November salerooms have a particular smell: cold radiators, dust, and the faint lanolin ghost of wool. That is where you will find it — a Welsh blanket, folded into a squat rectangle in a box lot beside three mismatched plates and a torch that does not switch on. The paper says ten pounds. The real question is whether you are buying a century of domestic history or a future donation back to the same saleroom.

A carthen — the Welsh word you will see on labels and hear from dealers — is not simply a blanket. It is a working object, woven to sit on a bed, over a chair, across a lap in an unheated farmhouse. That is why the good ones feel almost indecently heavy. Before you fall for the colour, get both hands under it.

Weight, Weave and the Selvedge Test

A proper Welsh wool blanket has heft. Fold it and it should slump rather than flop. Hold it up to the saleroom lights and look along the selvedge — the finished edge running the length of the cloth. On a well-made piece it is tight, straight and slightly thicker than the body of the blanket. If it ripples, puckers or has been crudely overlocked at a later date, the piece has either been cut down or repaired by someone in a hurry.

Turn it over. Tapestry blankets — the ones with bold geometric colour blocks — are usually double cloth, two layers woven as one. You should not see a messy wrong side. If the pattern appears only on one face and the reverse is a tangle of loose threads, you are looking at something cheaper, possibly not Welsh, and certainly not worth more than a fiver.

Colour Bands: A Signature, Not a Style

The bands of colour near each end are the closest thing many blankets have to a signature, though they are not a reliable guide to a particular mill. Different weavers used different combinations, and families often had their own favourites. What matters at auction is integrity. Faded bands that still sit within the weave are honest wear. Bands that look suspiciously bright, or that stop dead at a seam, suggest the blanket has been pieced together from two damaged ones.

Hold a section against your phone torch. Genuine old wool has a slight halo of fibre; modern acrylic blends shine. The colour should sit in the yarn, not on it. A blanket that has been freshly dyed to look Welsh will often smell of vinegar and have a flat, even tone that no attic could produce.

Moths: The Difference Between a Story and a Sieve

Here is where a tenner can turn into a bargain or a biohazard. Moth damage is not the same as wear. Wear happens where the blanket has been used: along fold lines, at the foot end, where a chair back has rubbed for forty years. Moth holes appear in the middle of a panel, often in clusters, and they are usually small, circular and accompanied by a gritty dust in the creases.

Look closely at the hems and the seams. Moths love a dark, undisturbed fold. If you find three or four holes the size of a pea, that is survivable — a blanket can be darned, and a darned blanket still keeps a lap warm. If the fabric crumbles between your fingers, or the holes have joined into a tear, walk away. You are not rescuing it; you are adopting a problem.

The Blanket-Stitch Repair: A Biography in Wool

A repair is not automatically a defect. Welsh blankets were made to be mended, and a neat blanket-stitched edge or a carefully darned patch tells you the blanket was valued enough to be saved. Look at the thread: if it is a close match in thickness but a slightly different shade, that is a repair done at home, probably decades ago. If it is shiny polyester, it is recent and probably cosmetic.

Bad repairs are easier to spot than good ones. Iron-on patches, glue, and machine zigzag over a raw edge are all signs that someone has tried to stop a blanket falling apart rather than restore it. A good repair sits flat when you run your palm over it; a bad one has a ridge you can feel through the cloth.

Labels, Ticks and the Mill Names

Many Welsh blankets have lost their labels, and a missing label is not a red flag. What you want to see, if anything survives, is a woven or printed label with a mill name, a wool mark, or the words pure new wool. Faded print on a cotton tape is a good sign; a crisp, bright label stitched on with fresh thread is not. Check the stitching holes around the label. If there are old holes with no label, someone has removed it — possibly because it said Made in England.

Also look for the small coloured tick marks sometimes woven into the selvedge. These were often weaver's marks or quality checks, and they are a charming detail rather than a valuation tool.

The Nose, the Shrink and the Tenner Question

Smell it. Damp wool smells like a cellar; smoke is hard to shift; mothballs will fade but take months. A clean, lanolin-rich smell is what you want. Ask about washing only after you have bought it — most salerooms will not thank you for a tutorial. At home, do not machine wash unless you are prepared to felt it. Cold hand wash with a wool detergent, no wringing, dry flat. Or pay a specialist. A ten-pound blanket that costs forty pounds to clean is still cheap if the weave is sound.

The tenner question is simple: would you pay ten pounds for the story? If the answer is yes, buy it. Welsh blankets are not rare, but good ones are getting harder to find at the bottom of a box lot. And a blanket with a few honest holes, a faded band and a careful darn is a better document of domestic life than a perfect one that has never been used.

Check the fringe, too. Hand-knotted fringes are a sign of quality, but a worn fringe can be trimmed back. Just do not trim it yourself before you have lived with it for a week.