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The Great American Cover
Up: American Rugs on Beds, Tables, and Floors
June 5 - September 9, 2007
The exhibition The Great Cover
Up: American Rugs on Beds, Tables, and Floors, organized by Lee Kogan,
curator of special exhibitions and public programs, is on view at the American
Folk Art Museum from June 5 through September 9, 2007. This is the museum's
first presentation in more than 40 years that traces the history of American
rug making through different periods, forms, and techniques. Featuring approximately
65 rugs that span the end of the 18th through the mid-20th centuries, the
exhibition is drawn from public and private collections.
The Great Cover-up includes
many masterpieces that have rarely been on public view. Among the masterworks
are the American Folk Art Museum's stunning 13-foot Appliquéd
Carpet (c. 1860) and the magnificent Embroidered Carpet (1832-35)
by Zeruah H. Guernsey Caswell from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Other treasures from the American Folk Art Museum's collection include
the striking Knitted Rug attributed to Elvira Hulett, a member of
the Hancock Shaker community, whose design is a technical tour de force,
and the graphic Pictorial Table Rug, that powerfully illustrates
the strong link between church and home.
Rugs have been a ubiquitous presence in American homes
since the seventeenth century. The impulse to cover interior surfaces has
historically been both utilitarian and decorative. Early American rugs were
yarn-sewn, shirred, appliquéd, and embroidered; later techniques
included knitting, crocheting, and, most notably, hooking. "Because
of their prominent placement in the home and the physical area they occupied,
rugs became opportunities for strong visual statements," notes Ms.
Kogan. As many surviving rugs attest, the best examples transcend function
through the graphic power of their color and design as well as their technical
virtuosity.
Hand-Sewn Rugs
Contrary to popular belief, the tradition of handcrafted
American rugs descended from table tops and beds and finally to floors.
Some of the earliest rugs were bedcovers made by women in their homes. Known
as bed rugs, the name derives from the Norwegian "rugga" or "rogga"
and also the Swedish "rugg," and refers to a coarse fabric or
pile covering. These monumental textiles were yarn sewn, a technique using
a needle and wool threads in a running stitch, usually on a homespun linen
or wool foundation. Though no seventeenth-century examples survive, references
appear in American inventories and other documents from this period. The
large-scale carnation motif and other foliate patterns from the Connecticut
River Valley relate to English and European floral embroidery designs. One
of the extraordinary bed rugs in the exhibition is an 1803 example in a
palette of browns, gold, and red tones that vibrates dramatically on a black
background. Bed rugs were symbols of wealth and status; they were rare,
valuable, labor intensive to produce, and treasured by owners who used them
during cold New England winters.
By the first quarter of the 19th century, applique had
become a popular technique used to make table, hearth, and floor rugs. Appliqué
involves cutting elements from one fabric and sewing them onto another larger
foundation fabric. The technique lends itself to original geometric or pictorial
compositions created through the use of applied elements, sometimes embellished
with embroidery. The room-size Appliquéd Carpet is a highly
unusual example of this technique because of its enormous scale and intricate
floral imagery. The complexity of the design, the lavish use of color and
the endearing center block of one blue bunny nibbling a dandelion animate
the overall composition.
The Embroidered Carpet, a handmade masterpiece that
is also known as the Caswell Carpet, was made in Castleton, Vermont. Monumental
in scale, it is composed of 76 blocks with the addition of a detachable
hearth size rug along one edge. The square-block construction was embroidered
in chain stitch on a tambour frame. Tradition suggests that Zeruah Higley
Guernsey used a wooden needle fashioned by her father, a maker of spinning
wheels. Adorned with an elaborate imagery of stylized leaves, birds, and
baskets of fruit, the all-embroidered carpet also features a few blocks
of more naturalistic cats, puppies and an irresistible courting couple.
In the late nineteenth century a new type of appliquéd
rug, the wool button or "penny" rug, became popular. The name
referred to the technique of wool-on-wool appliqués of circles of
the same size or layers of graduated circles, sometimes outlined in embroidery,
in various colors applied in limitless arrangements on backgrounds of rectangles,
squares, ovals and hexagonals.
In Waldoboro, Maine, another unique rug style developed
distinguished by its sculptural surface. These rugs are characterized by
densely piled loops cut at different heights on a linen foundation fabric,
thereby creating three-dimensional surfaces. The rugs often feature a central
oval with ornamental designs and motifs of flowers, leaves, fruits, and
lush baskets of fruits and flowers that are contained within florid, scrolled
borders. This style became so identified with Waldoboro that any rug made
elsewhere that is three-dimensional is called a "Waldoboro type."
Rug hooking is one of the few forms of needlework that
is thought to have originated in North America. The tradition may have started
in Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces. By the middle of the nineteenth
century, hooking became the most popular technique for handmade rugs, in
both numbers and pattern variety. This was largely due to the importation
of burlap from India by about 1850. The coarse woven fabric made of fibers
from the sturdy jute plant were used to make sacks for dry goods. The discarded
sacks provided an inexpensive, easily available cloth for a rug foundation.
Unlike earlier techniques that usually employed a needle, the new technique
used a hooking tool. Thin strips of fabric or yarn, usually wool, were pulled
through a grid foundation using a hook and leaving a loop on the surface.
The pile was either left in loops or sheared. The flexibility of this technique
could be used for simple geometrics but also encouraged the most original
pictorials. Among the hooked rugs in the exhibition, Close Finish
is a whimsical example of a popular pastime whereas the monochromatic palette
and simplified abstract forms in the Solitary Tree resonated with
the modernist sensibility of the early 20th century.
Capitalizing on the growing popularity of handmade rugs,
in the 1860s an enterprising Maine tin peddler, Edward Sands Frost, introduced
nearly two hundred preprinted patterns on burlap for hooked rugs. Frost's
success led other individuals and companies to print patterns, and by the
early twentieth century prepackaged kits were widely available. Inspired
by Frost, the Lion with Palms is an example of a rug pattern by Ebenezer
Ross, another early entrepreneur. The packaged kits promoted rug hooking
as a popular and authentically American craft. Although these were not original
designs, creative rug hookers often altered the preprinted patterns to produce
individualized results.
Rugs for Sale: Community Efforts
The popularity of rug hooking led to regional styles and
later to the growth of cottage industries for profit and as agencies of
social change. One of the most well-documented philanthropic and idealistic
efforts at the turn of the 20th century was that organized by British physician
Dr. Wilfred Grenfell. He founded a medical mission in Labrador and Newfoundland
and established a cottage industry to help villagers augment their meager
incomes. During the winter months he encouraged the women to make hooked
mats, produced from silk-stocking material, that were sold throughout North
America. It was the innovative artist Rhoda Dawson who raised the artistic
level of Grenfell mats. Included in the exhibition is the abstract Fish
on Flake featuring a bold repetitive pattern of split cod drying on
a wooden platform or flake.
A lesser-known community effort was that of Douglas and
Marion Volk and their children, New York artists who summered in the vicinity
of Center Lovell, Maine. They encouraged the revival of local handicrafts
to help the local economy and bring an awareness of the Arts and Crafts
aesthetic to the area. In 1901 they initiated a project of handmade rugs
known as Sabatos Rugs. From the raising of sheep to shearing the wool to
the dyeing and hooking, only one known example survives from this labor-intensive
effort.
Originally, hand-sewn and hooked rugs were enjoyed within
the intimate confines of the home. Today, their public appreciation provides
a fascinating glimpse into the private spaces of American life. "Handmade
rugs continue to be collected, cherished, and created. Whether they are
early examples made from handspun wool yarn on a linen foundation or hooked
on burlap in wool, cotton, rayon, or velvet, historical and contemporary
rugs are now frequently displayed on the wall as objects to admire and to
study. There has been a resurgence of interest in the creation of handmade
rugs by both amateurs and professional fiber artists. As a result, a substantial
community has emerged, supporting national and international rug hooking
guilds, publications, and exhibitions, " comments Lee Kogan
Wall text panels for the exhibition
-
- The impulse to cover interior surfaces has historically
been both utilitarian and decorative. Rugs in particular have been a ubiquitous
presence in American homes since the seventeenth century, whether displayed
on the bed, the table, the floor, or, more recently, the wall. Early American
rugs were yarn sewn, shirred, appliquéd, and embroidered; later
techniques included knitting, crocheting, and, most notably, hooking. Because
of their prominent placement and the physical area they occupied, rugs
became opportunities for strong visual statements. As many surviving rugs
beautifully attest, the best examples transcend function through their
visual power and technical virtuosity and are now considered masterworks.
-
- In a citation from 1810, the Oxford English Dictionary
defines a floor rug as "a little rug for your hearthstone."
Large rugs for the floor rather than a bed or tabletop were still rare,
and were likely expensive imported carpets. Even as industrial carpeting
was introduced and flourished through the nineteenth century, many different
types of hand-sewn floor coverings, and some table coverings, continued
to be made at home, especially in rural areas. There has been a recent
resurgence of interest in the creation of handmade rugs by both amateurs
and professionals.
-
- Some talented creators design and make rugs for profit
in the spirit of the cottage industries that emerged at the turn of the
twentieth century. A larger number, however, forms a community of rug hookers
who support regional, national, and international guilds and associations,
publications, and exhibitions of handmade rugs.
-
- Though their motivations may differ from those of their
gifted predecessors, makers of rugs, past and present, share a need for
self-expression. Today, the public enjoyment of hand-sewn and -hooked rugs-once
appreciated only within the confines of the home-provides a fascinating
glimpse into the private spaces of American life.
-
- Lee Kogan, exhibition curator
-
- Museum exhibitions are supported in part by the Gerard
C. Wertkin Exhibition Fund and the Leir Charitable Foundations in memory
of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir.
-
-
- RUGS FOR SALE: COMMUNITY EFFORTS
-
- Philanthropic and idealistic aims were at the heart of
some cottage industries at the turn of the twentieth century. Among the
most long lived and successful was the effort spearheaded by British physician
Dr. Wilfred Grenfell. In 1892, the idealistic young medical missionary
arrived in the Canadian province of Labrador and Newfoundland on a hospital
ship. He recognized the dire medical, social, and economic needs of the
communities and decided to dedicate himself to improving the quality of
their lives. Grenfell founded a medical mission and three hospitals. He
also established a cottage industry called the Industrial to help villagers
augment the subsistence income they derived from fishing and trapping through
the production and sale of handicrafts. These included weaving, woodworking,
embroidery, and, most notably, hooked mats made primarily from dyed silk
and rayon stocking material, as well as brin, a burlap thread. During months
of enforced idleness each year, when the ferocity of the icy winters resulted
in the citizens being landlocked, Grenfell encouraged local women to make
mats that were marketed throughout North America. He himself designed some
of the mats, but it was a talented British artist, Rhoda Dawson, who originated
some of the Industrial's most handsome and sophisticated mat designs.
-
- The Shenandoah Community Workers organization was founded
in 1927 through the philanthropic vision of a wealthy woman who owned hundreds
of forested acres around Bird Haven, a secluded mountain area in the Allegheny
Mountains of Virginia. Her grandson, Philadelphia manufacturer William
Bernard Clark, recognized the strong legacy of handwork in the local population.
Continuing his grandmother's work, he set up the Forest Community Foundation
in 1931 to serve community needs, offering employment and economic support.
Following the construction of a furniture factory, both fine handicrafts
and furniture were sold through a mail-order system. In November 1933,
the Shenandoah Community Workers were featured in Needlecraft magazine,
illustrated by a photograph of an unidentified female worker hooking the
Simple Simon rug design with a punch needle.
-
- Douglas Volk, his wife, Marion, and their children Wendell
and Marion, were New York artists who participated in the Arts and Crafts
movement. From their summer home in the vicinity of Center Lovell, Maine,
they encouraged the revival of local handicrafts infused with this aesthetic
philosophy. The industry they initiated around 1901 included handmade rugs
known as Sabatos Rugs. Only one known example survives from this labor-intensive
effort that engaged about two dozen workers over the course of five or
six years.
-
-
- APPLIQUÉD RUGS
-
- Appliqué is a nineteenth-century term for an earlier
needlework technique known as applied-work. Historically, appliqué
has had many uses in clothing, upholstery, bed furnishings, and quilts.
By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, it had become a popular
technique used to make table, hearth, and floor rugs.
-
- Appliqué involves cutting elements from one fabric
and sewing them onto another, larger foundation fabric. The technique lends
itself to original geometric or pictorial compositions created through
the use of single-layer or multilayered applied elements. Most appliquéd
rugs are made primarily from wool, often in dark, saturated colors. Finer
details may be added through embroidery and appliqués cut from lighter-weight
fabrics. The room-size Appliquéd Carpet in this exhibition
is a highly unusual example of this technique because of its monumental
scale and dazzling imagery.
-
- By the mid-nineteenth century, appliqué became
the basis for a type of table rug known variously as a penny, button, coin,
or money rug, whose primary design motif is a circle. The rug could be
composed of same-size circles that were cut using a template and repeated
across the surface, or of multiple circles cut in graduated sizes. The
latter were stacked in decreasing size order, with the smallest on the
top, and then sewn onto the foundation. Embroidery, often buttonhole stitching,
was usually added around the circumference of each circle. Penny rugs were
finished into geometric shapes-square, rectangular, oval, or hexagonal-and
remained popular into the twentieth century.
-
-
- BED RUGS
-
- Some of the earliest handcrafted American rugs were bedcovers
made by women in their homes and known as bed rugs. The name derives from
the Norwegian rugga or rogga and also the Swedish rugg,
referring to a coarse fabric or pile covering. Production of these
textiles was labor intensive, and they were typically yarn sewn, a technique
executed with a needle and yarn in a running stitch. Though no seventeenth-century
bed rugs survive, references appear in American inventories and other documents
from this period. Heavy, warm, and monumental in scale, bed rugs were symbols
of wealth and status and were highly valued by their makers, who often
signed or initialed and dated their work.
-
- A small number of extraordinary eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century bed rugs are known today. Most are from the Connecticut
River Valley, though examples have also been located in other parts of
New England and elsewhere. A significant group of about a dozen bed rugs
from the Connecticut River Valley features a predominant carnation motif
that relates to stylized sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and
other European floral embroidery designs.
-
-
- EMBROIDERED CARPET
-
- The handmade masterpiece Embroidered Carpet, also
known as the Caswell Carpet, was made between 1832 and 1835. It was intended
for and placed on the floor of a rarely used parlor in the maker's house
in Castleton, Vermont. Zeruah Higley Guernsey designed and made the rug
more than a decade before she married Memri Caswell in 1846, undertaking
the laborious preparatory process of shearing the sheep, spinning and dyeing
the yarn, and preparing the homespun-wool foundation. Tradition suggests
that she used a wooden needle fashioned by her father, a maker of spinning
wheels.
-
- The carpet is composed of seventy-six blocks with additional
blocks comprising a detachable hearth-size rug along one edge. The entire
carpet was embroidered in chain stitch. Its square-block construction is
embellished with stylized leaves, birds, and baskets of fruit that derive
from earlier needlework traditions. On the lower left, two blocks featuring
cats and one featuring puppies are rendered in a more naturalistic manner,
their sources traced to printed prototypes used in other mediums at the
time. The pair of courting figures in a block near the center of the rug,
once inexplicably covered with fabric, lends a personal and humanizing
touch.
-
- Two squares were designed by two Native American medical
students at the local Castleton Medical College who lived for a time in
the Guernsey household and demonstrated an interest in the carpet. The
square designed by one of the guests, Francis Bacon, bears the inscription
By FB (sixth row, second from right). The square initialed LFM
(top row, fifth from left) is thought to be by the other student. Zeruah
Guernsey embroidered her own initials and the year 1835 at the top of the
rug.
-
- EDWARD SANDS FROST AND PREPRINTED PATTERNS
-
- Printed rug patterns were available by the 1850s, when
Chambers and Leland of Lowell, Massachusetts, offered stamped embroidery
patterns and prepared patterns on burlap. But it was Edward Sands Frost
(18431894), an enterprising Biddeford, Maine, tin peddler, who recognized
the growing popularity of handmade rugs in the 1860s, as well as their
commercial potential. In 1876, when Frost sold his business, he had introduced
about 180 preprinted hooked-rug patterns on burlap.
-
- Frost's subjects ranged from florals and animals to patriotic
and fraternal designs and numerous geometric patterns. His commercial success
led other individuals and companies to print patterns, too. In 1886, Ebenezer
Ross of Toledo, Ohio, invented the punch needle to replace the crochetlike
rug hook, and he sold this new tool along with a catalog of fifty-six patterns,
mostly Frost designs. Around 1880, the Gibbs Manufacturing Co. in Chicago
advertised an innovative rug-hooking device and sold it with a catalog
of fifty rug patterns, many also quite similar to Frost patterns. By the
early twentieth century, prepackaged kits were widely available. Such patterns
and devices promoted rug hooking as a popular and authentically American
craft for the masses and found a ready market in the context of the Colonial
Revival movement. Despite some criticism that these products stifled creativity,
rug hookers often altered the preprinted patterns to produce individualized
results.
-
-
- HAND-SEWN RUGS
-
- Early coverings for beds, tables, and floors were all
called rugs or carpets. A variety of techniques was employed to create
these hand-sewn rugs, including yarn sewing, shirring, appliqué,
and embroidery.
-
- Yarn sewing is executed with a needle and two-ply wool
yarn in a running stitch, usually on a homespun linen or wool, or grain
bag foundation. In this technique, the needle is worked in and out of the
fabric at close, regular intervals, leaving a pile of densely spaced yarn
loops on the top surface. The loops can be cut for a sheared effect or
left uncut. Early hearth rugs were often yarn sewn, as were bed rugs. Some
table rugs and hearth rugs were shirred, a form of appliqué that
utilized scraps of fabric, which were increasingly available as America's
textile industry flourished during the early years of the nineteenth century.
The most popular type of shirring was the chenille method, in which a line
of running stitches was sewn down the center length of a cut fabric strip.
The fabric was gently gathered along the stitches until it resembled a
small caterpillar and was then stitched onto a foundation, usually linen.
-
- Embroidery techniques were also used to embellish surface
coverings, though perhaps less frequently. The depiction of Major General
Henry Knox on horseback is embroidered in tent stitch, completely covering
the wool foundation, while the extraordinary Embroidered Carpet (also
know as the Caswell Carpet) is executed in plain chain-stitch embroidery
on wool.
-
-
- RUGS FOR SALE: COTTAGE INDUSTRIES
-
- The mass production of Edward Sands Frost's patterns
set the stage for the development of rug-hooking cottage industries in
the United States and Canada during the early part of the twentieth century.
Rugs for sale served two primary agendas: profit for personal gain and
recognition, and profit for community-based philanthropic goals. The early
entrepreneurs-Frost, Ross, Gibbs, and others-created a commercial market
for hooked rugs that continued into the twentieth century. James L. Hutchinson
of Brooklyn, New York, began his interest in rug production as an avid
rug collector. In 1927, he sold 342 rugs from his personal collection at
auction through Parke-Bernet in New York. Around that time, he also began
to commission rug hookers to make finished rugs from patterns he provided.
These were original designs predrawn on burlap by his wife, Mercedes, a
printer, illustrating his own, often witty, texts. Over the next two decades,
the Hutchinsons sold hundreds of their rugs through public auction at Parke-Bernet.
-
-
- WALDOBORO RUGS
-
- A distinctive sculptural rug style developed in Waldoboro,
Maine, influenced by the knowledge of European craft traditions brought
to the area by early nineteenth-century German immigrants. Waldoboro rugs
are characterized by densely piled cut loops and deeply saturated colors
on black, cream, sage green, or sometimes gray linen foundation fabrics.
The loops were cut at different heights, thereby creating three-dimensional
surfaces. The rugs often feature a central oval with ornamental designs.
Typical motifs were flowers, leaves, and fruits, as well as lush baskets
of fruits and flowers, contained within florid, often scrolled borders.
Birds, considered bad luck, were not part of the original Waldoboro pictorial
scheme. However, the three-dimensional rug style became so pervasive that
all rugs with relief surfaces are now termed "Waldoboro type,"
no matter where they originated, which motifs are used, or whether they
are worked on a linen or burlap foundation.
-
-
- HOOKED RUGS
-
- The hooked rug is considered an indigenous North American
art form with possible origins in Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, hooking was the most popular technique
for making handmade rugs, in both numbers and pattern variety. One reason
for this was the increasing availability of burlap, a coarse woven fabric
imported from India by about 1850 that was made of fiber from the sturdy
jute plant. Burlap was commonly used for sacks to handle dry goods such
as coffee, tea, tobacco, and grains. These sacks provided an inexpensive
cloth to be reused as rug foundations.
-
- Hooked rugs bear a close resemblance to yarn-sewn rugs
in that both techniques result in raised loops that can be left as they
are or clipped to produce a sheared pile. As opposed to the earlier technique
of yarn sewing, which employs a running stitch on a wool or linen foundation,
rug hooking is accomplished by pushing a hook through the top of a coarse,
even-weave foundation (such as burlap) and drawing the fabric or yarn from
the underside to the top. Yarn-sewn and hooked rugs seem identical on the
top surface, but an examination of the underside reveals distinct differences
between the two techniques: Hooked rugs display a continuous line of thread
on the underside, while yarn-sewn rugs show discrete spaces between the
running stitches.
-
- A seemingly limitless range of hooked-rug designs, from
repeated simple geometrics to detailed original pictorials, can be achieved
using raw materials as diverse as cut-up rags, fabric strips recycled from
old clothes or linens, and yarn. By the mid-nineteenth century, the popularity
of rug hooking led to regional styles and, later, to the growth of cottage
industries for profit and as agencies of social change.
Object labels from the exhibition
-
- Knitted Rug
- Attributed to Elvira Curtis Hulett (c. 1805-1895)
- Probably Hancock, Massachusetts; c. 18901895
- Wool with embroidery
- 50" diameter
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.295
-
- The striking Knitted Rug attributed to Elvira Curtis Hulett
is a remarkable tour de force. Hulett, a member of the Shaker community
in Hancock, Massachusetts, was a weaver whose name appears on an early
nineteenth-century pattern draft for huckaback, a woven fabric. Hulett
used a glowing autumnal palette in this rug. It is knitted in a complex
construction of concentric rings patterned with crosses, stripes, diamonds,
checkerboards, and strips of contrasting colored wool yarn, giving evidence
of her early experience as a weaver. It is further embellished on the outer
ring with embroidered cross-stitching, forming chevrons, and bound with
a braided edge. Strict regulation governed by the Millennial Laws of 1821
and revised in 1845 allowed carpet use by the Shakers, but they "were
to be used with discretion and made plain." It has been suggested
that this rug may have been placed in an area where sales and business
with the "outside world" took place.
-
-
- Vase of Flowers Appliquéd Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; c. 1840
- Wool and velvet on wool with embroidery
- 28 1/4 x 54"
- Collection of Peter and Barbara Goodman
-
-
- Pictorial Appliquéd Table Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Possibly Otisfield, Maine; c. 1840
- Wool, gauze, and embroidery on wool
- 29 x 53"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.293
-
- This table rug is thought to depict the very home in Otisfield, Maine,
in which it was made and used. The graphic architectural representation
provided a dramatic background for social activities within the home. The
spare elements feature a sturdy house with two gable-end chimneys and a
nearby church linked by a double length of fencing that borders a path.
This establishes in symbolic terms the close tie between home and church
that was fundamental in American life at the time.
-
-
- Appliquéd Carpet
- Artist unidentified
- Northeastern United States, possibly Maine; c. 1860
- Wool on wool with embroidery
- 112 x 158"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian, P1.2001.294
-
- The extraordinary room-size Appliquéd Carpet by an unidentified
maker bears some resemblance to smaller appliquéd and embroidered
bed and floor rugs made in Maine from around 1845 to 1879. Its monumental
size, flawless condition, exquisite design, and technical virtuosity clearly
identify it as a major nineteenth-century textile masterpiece. Its scale
also causes wonder at the maker's ambition and daring in designing and
constructing such a large rug in a technique fairly incompatible for use
on a floor.
-
- The composition may be described as a series of densely patterned borders
surrounding a central medallion featuring trees, flowers, birds, and a
whimsical blue rabbit. In contrast to the rigid square or rectangular blocks
that characterize many other examples from Maine, the repeated floral motifs
separated by arch-shaped leafy branches give this carpet a distinguishing
dynamic.
-
-
- Appliquéd Table Rug
- Artist unidentified
- New England; c. 1820
- Wool, silk, linen, and cotton on wool
- 21 1/2 x 29"
- Collection of Elliott and Grace Snyder
-
-
- Appliquéd Table Cover
- Artist unidentified
- Probably Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; c. 1870
- Cotton, wool, and silk on wool with tufting and embroidery
- 33" diam.
- Collection of Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, Pennsburg,
Pennsylvania, 18.38.118
-
-
- Bed Rug
- Attributed to Deborah Leland Fairbanks (1739-1791) and unidentified
family member
- Littleton, New Hampshire; 1803
- Wool
- 101 x 96"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Gift of Cyril Irwin Nelson in honor of Joel and Kate Kopp, 2004.14.3
-
-
- Basket of Flowers Chenille-Shirred Table Rug
- Artist unidentified
- New England; c. 1830
- Wool on cotton
- 16 x 25 1/2"
- Collection of Ronnie Newman
-
-
- Two Houses and Basket of Flowers Chenille-Shirred Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Found in Vermont; c. 1800
- Chenille-shirred cotton and wool appliqué on linen with embroidery
- 20 x 31"
- Collection of Ronnie Newman
-
-
- Packard Bed Rug
- Unidentified Packard family member
- Jericho, Vermont; 1806
- Wool
- 94 x 90 1/2"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Gift of Cyril Irwin Nelson in honor of Cary Forney Baker Jr., 2002.31.1
-
-
- Embroidered Carpet
- Zeruah Higley Guernsey Caswell (1805c. 1895)
- Castleton, Vermont; 1832-1835
- Chain-stitch embroidery on wool
- Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Gift of Katharine Keyes in memory of her father, Homer Eaton Keyes,
1938, 38.157
-
-
- Sheared Plaited-Wool and Shirred Hearth Rug
- Mary Peters (1777-1835)
- Massachusetts; c. 1800
- Wool on linen; ink signature on reverse
- 34 x 70"
- Collection of Ronnie Newman
-
-
- Two Houses and Large Flowers Yarn-Sewn Rug
- Artist unidentified
- New England; c. 1800
- Wool on madder-dyed linen
- 18 x 25"
- Bob and Becky Alexander Collection
-
-
- Mourning Urn and Willow Chenille-Shirred Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Massachusetts; c. 1800
- Wool on cotton
- 31 x 71"
- Collection of Ronnie Newman
-
- Mourning art was a form of expression that captured the American imagination
at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
Familiar in silk embroideries, watercolors, jewelry, and ceramics, it is
unusual to find such memorial motifs as the urn and willow tree featured
prominently on rugs.
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- The popularity of mourning art in early America was largely inspired
by the death of the nation's most admired hero, George Washington, in 1799.
Loss and remembrance were expressed through specific iconography and sentiments,
often classical in nature. But the motifs and sentiments were also responses
to the Romantic movement and ideas about death from the Second Great Awakening.
In this rug, the traditional symbols of mourning-the willow tree and urn-are
flanked by two oversize baskets of flowers and a profusion of other foliate
and fruit forms that send an intense message of life's power.
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- Home in Thomaston Maine Embroidered Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Thomaston, Maine; c. 1876
- Tent-stitch embroidery on wool
- 28 3/4 c 53 1/2"
- Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Gift of Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1965 (65.246.2)
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- This embroidered rug was once thought to have been made as early as
c. 1800, and to depict the Revolutionary War hero Major General Henry Knox
(17501806) arriving at his house "Montpelier" in Thomaston,
Maine, near Waldoboro. Based on motifs, techniques, and materials, it is
now believed that the imagery on the rug was drawn from a colored etching
featuring Knox's headquarters, and that it was made around 1876, in celebration
of the nation's centennial year.
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- The exuberant landscape is filled with details. The two-chimney gabled
house, garden, and picket fence are surrounded by an abundance of trees,
a pond with ducks, as well as cattle, sheep, horses, flowers, and birds.
A figure smoking a pipe faces the mounted figure on horseback, his right
arm raised as if in greeting.
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- Center Medallion with Satellite Stars and Animals Yarn-Sewn Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; c. 1825
- Wool on linen with bias shirring and embroidery
- 55 1/4 x 35 1/2" (59 x 38 5/8 x 3 1/4" under plexi)
- Collection of Winterthur Museum
- Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont, 1964.1777
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- Bengal Tiger Yarn-Sewn Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; c. 1820
- Wool on linen
- 41 3/4 x 68"
- Collection of The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, 1954-647
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- This yarn-sewn rug depicts a tiger in white with stripes of rust and
brown on a green field. A scalloped border, sometimes called lamb's tongue,
faces inward on all sides. This was a popular border design used in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century decorative arts.
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- The visual source for the tiger in this and another nearly identical
rug may possibly be traced to a woodcut in an edition of Thomas Bewick's
A General History of Quadrupeds. However, the maker of Bengal
Tiger Yarn-Sewn Rug may have seen a real tiger. Exotic
animals intrigued the American public in the early nineteenth century.
In 1809, Hachaliah Baily (17741845), an entrepreneur in Somers, New
York, bought an interest in Nero "the Royal Tiger" from the animal's
owner. The tiger may have been one of a pair shown in Salem, Massachusetts,
in 1808. During the 1820s and 1830s, tigers and other wild animals were
also illustrated on advertising posters for itinerant menageries.
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- Large Flowers and Animals Yarn Sewn Rug
- Artist unidentified
- New England; 1842
- Wool on linen
- 28 x 66"
- Collection of Elliott and Grace Snyder
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- Yarn-Sewn Rug
- Artist unidentified; initialed "P.A.L."
- Probably Oneida County, New York; c. 1803-1812
- Wool on dry spun linen
- 36 x 69"
- Collection of Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York
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- Dominating this rug is the American eagle and shield depicted in red
and white, with arrows and olive branches. Seventeen white stars on a blue
field above the eagle suggest the rug was made between 1803, when Ohio
entered the Union, and 1812, when Louisiana became the eighteenth state.
The border design of concentric colored circles and four corner stars within
a circle is a familiar motif in early rugs and other decorative arts.
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- Rainbow Pot of Flowers Chenille-Shirred Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; 1830-1850
- Wool on linen
- 34 x 63"
- Collection of Steven and Helen Kellogg
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- Praying to the Moon Hooked Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Found in Saugerties, New York; c. 1910-1920
- Wool on burlap
- 29 x 50"
- Private New Jersey collection
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- This rug exemplifies the potential for original expression inherent
in rug hooking. The unique composition depicts a couple facing away from
each other and separated by a bold geometric pattern sprinkled with hearts.
The woman extends her arms toward a wide-eyed full-moon face above a tree.
The scene hints at romance, courtship, love, and marriage. In her appeal
to the moon, the woman appears to be filled with desire for the handsome
gentleman depicted on the left. While this composition is open to interpretation,
it is interesting that the moon has often been associated with mythological
goddesses as well as the lunacy of romantic love. In popular culture this
has found expression in such phrases as "crazy in love."
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- "M.E.H.N." Hooked Rug
- Artist unidentified
- Probably New England; 1868
- Wool on burlap
- 46 x 32 1/2"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Gift of Joel and Kate Kopp, 1979.27.1
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- Pot of Flowers Hooked Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; 1885-1900
- Wool on burlap
- 41 1/2 x 37 1/2"
- Collection of American Folk Art Museum, New York
- Gift of a Museum friend, 2001.33.1
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- All Had a Good Time Hooked Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; c. 1930-1950
- Wool and cotton on burlap
- 45 1/2 x 37"
- Collection of The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, 1973-2.1
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- House Hooked Rug
- Lucy Barnard (18001896)
- Dixfield Common, Maine; c. 1860
- Wool on burlap
- 36 x 65 1/2"
- Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Gift of the Salisbury-Mills Fund, 1961, 61.47.2
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- House with Rainbow Hooked Rug
- Lucy Barnard (1800-1896)
- Dixfield Common, Maine; c. 1860
- Wool on burlap
- 29 x 60 "
- Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Gift of the Salisbury-Mills Fund, 1961, 61.47.3
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- These are two of three surviving rugs executed by Lucy Trask Barnard
that honor what family descendants have identified as the Barnard house,
including outbuildings and a stable on a hill surrounded by trees and flowers.
In one example, the architectural scene is rendered within the classic
floral oval format encircled by a profusion of blossoms. The second features
a colorful rainbow arching over the house. This may have symbolic significance,
as the rainbow often implies union and forgiveness, deriving from the rainbow
that appeared in the sky after the biblical flood. Liberties with the scale
of flowers as opposed to small figures in a canoe in the foreground add
a visual appeal to the composition.
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- Automobile in Landscape Hooked Rug
- Artist unidentified
- United States; 1937
- Wool on burlap
- 84 x 84"
- Kristina Johnson Collection of American Hooked Rugs