The American country look has become so popular, it is getting underfoot. ”There are so many `country` homes, primitive hooked rugs have become very desirable,” said Leila Lindahl of Geneva, a distinguished artist in rug hooking who has been practicing and teaching for 37 years.
”I think the craft is definitely growing,” she said.
”The primitive–or country–look has brought it to people`s attention. Everybody wants what`s in the magazines and newspaper articles. You`d be surprised how many young people are getting into it. Older people, too; their old rugs have worn out and they find out how expensive new ones are.”
Examples of the work Lindahl has done over the years show that traditional rug hooking is a versatile craft permitting an array of designs, from the primitives, with their naive lines and scant detail, to intricate faux Orientals and even quilt geometrics.
”But you see at antiques shows that the antique primitive rugs that have animals, or flowers–something live in them–are especially valuable, even when they`re not in very good condition,” Lindahl said.
Because the price of the antique primitives has skyrocketed, making them virtually untouchable by the average person, the interest of do-it-yourselfers has increased, Lindahl said, and new patterns inspired by the original primitives are much in demand.
Rug hooking is ”the only true original American craft,” said Suzanne Hamer of St. Charles, a teacher of the craft whom Lindahl trained. Hamer created some of the primitive hooked rug designs displayed on these pages.
A look at hooked rug history unravels some of their appeal.
Generally, the best old rugs had a naive, freehand look and were a recording of the flavor of American life of the early 1800s.
Rug hookers put lots of love and human interest into their work. They often chose as a theme a portrait of a beloved pet: a faithful dog, a pampered cat or one that was a champion mouser, the trusty family horse that could out- trot all others. All have been immortalized in wool by the anonymous artists who made them.
Sometimes everyone in the family put his hands down on the burlap to be outlined. Meaningful events such as courtships and marriages also were themes. This sort of thing still goes on today. Many times Lindahl has a request for a custom rug pattern, she said, ”for a cat especially, or a dog, that`s just like another member of the family.” She also has created rug patterns that are portraits of real houses, and has in mind doing a primitive of a beloved antique Pontiac belonging to a relative.
Hand-hooked rugs were first made in Maine and Nova Scotia. Folklore holds that women in the region were dazzled when they saw the opulent Oriental rugs sea captains brought back from their voyages. Because only the wealthy could afford them, the ordinary homemaker had to create her own.
Even sailors and farmers hooked rugs, and in some antique rugs, two gauges or naps can be detected, which probably meant husband and wife sat opposite one another while working on a rug.
As in quilt making, rug hooking became a way to recycle scarce fabrics. New Englanders cut old clothing and blankets into coarse strips, then worked them into burlap saved from sugar sacks.
About 1850, preprinted patterns came on the market. The best of the ready-to-hook designs were those of Edward Sands Frost of Biddeford, Me., a door-to-door peddler and tin cutter who made zinc stencils from old boilers and transferred the designs, which he had copied from originals done by the housewives, to burlap. Many of the stencils he used are now at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich.
Lindahl is a spiritual successor to the rug-hooking pioneers of long ago. She is self-taught.
She said ”it was a need” that led her to start. She and her husband bought a home in 1947. Because commercially sold rugs were expensive, she made a braided rug, 9 by 12 feet, in beiges, roses and mint greens, for her living room, all in wool from used clothing.
”A neighbor lady from Belgium taught me how to do braiding,” she said.
”I never intended to hook a rug, but I had scraps of material left over from the braided rug and decided to put them to use as a hall runner.”
She learned to hook from a 25-cent pamphlet that was advertised in McCall`s magazine. The result was a checkerboard rug, completed in 1951.
”And then my friends saw the hooked rug and wanted to be taught how to do it. My husband said, `You`re not going to take up my living room every night to teach,` and so he built me the studio in the basement.” Its walls are hung with finished rugs and illustrations that are inspiration for others. Lindahl gives private lessons and classes two days a week. She started with braided rugs and then got into hooked rugs a few years later, assisted by Hamer since 1973.
Although Lindahl mainly does hooking today and calls braided rugs ”wool- eaters” because of the material they require, some of her most charming pieces are a combination of the two techniques. The main design is hooked and the outside edge is braided, such as in a hearts patterned rug, called
”Pioneer,” and ”Friends: Bear and Kitten.”
Other rugs Lindahl has made, such as in the ”paperweights” pattern, were designed by the late Pearl K. McGown, considered one of the world`s foremost rug designers, winner of international awards and author of five books on the subject. McGown initiated widespread interest in hooked rugs in the 1930s.
Lindahl and Hamer, like most serious rug-hookers, belong to the National Guild of Pearl K. McGown Rug Hookcrafters Inc. Annually the teachers belonging to this guild meet for a week-long workshop at Jekyll Island, Ga.
Unlike other methods, the hooking of rugs by hand has remained noncommercial. Supplies are generally available through mail order.
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”All they need to buy is the hook for $1.50 and a 14-inch quilting hoop for $10 and a pattern from as low as $5 up,” Lindahl said.
One also needs a cutter to make thinner strips of the wool material for
”painting,” a technique that gives subtle shadings, almost as if with a brush, she said. The cutter is the most expensive item, $75 to $80.
The material is ordered in swatches of colored wool from Dorr Woolen Mills, a New Hampshire firm that makes woolens for hooking.
”I would say $15 to $20 would be a fair estimate for the materials on a small piece, such as a chair seat,” Lindahl said.
As for their finished value, Lindahl said, ”Primitives are insured for $50 a square foot; the finer ones at $100 a square foot.”
Lindahl said it is very difficult to compare prices on, say, a 4-by-6-foot hooked rug she has just finished and one with a similar pattern made in the late 19th Century.
”Some antique rugs that come out of a certain collection or are special command high prices,” she said. ”A lot of antique rugs are very fragile. If they`re very old then they need repair, which brings down their value.”
As for the price on a new one, she said, ”If it was made on commission I usually suggest a charge of $50 a square foot.”
The biggest investment of the maker is time.
The time it would take to make a 4-by-6 rug, which Lindahl said is ”a pretty good size,” would depend on the design.
For a practiced person such as Lindahl, ”I would think a primitive could be done in three months, but I would say at least nine months for an Oriental. That means hooking six to eight hours a day, which is a lot of pressure. A novice would take a lot longer,” she said.
On the other hand, ”You should be able to make a small rug in a month,” Lindahl said.
The traditional hooking method, Lindahl pointed out, is not to be confused with latch hooking, which requires different instruments and comes in commercial kits using yarns that are not hand-dyed.
”If you hook with yarn, as they often did in the `60s,” Lindahl warned, ”it doesn`t wear well and it is very expensive. It is faster, but you can`t do all of this beautiful shading. This is so much more artistic,” she said of the traditional method.
Though some hooked rugs are hung on the wall as art, many are used on the floor.
”They get prettier as they`re walked on,” she said. ”What I want you to know is how well they wear if made in the traditional way,” because the wool strips stand up to traffic better than yarn.
In traditional hooking the instrument used is like a crochet hook with a wooden handle that pulls the strips of wool through a burlap canvas. Designs can be fine-tuned thanks to the uniform cutting of the wool flannel fabric swatches into the strips, which are one-eighth inch wide to about one-fourth inch for the primitives, and even thinner for finer work.
”In the old days, they hand-cut the strips with scissors,” Lindahl said. ”It was a husband`s job.”
The technique is easy, however, and can be learned ”right in the first lesson,” she said. ”Everything is on the right side. (The underside is smooth.) All the pile or loops are on the top.
”The first thing to do is to get the right height (to each stitch) so the loops are uniform; unless you want sculptured hooking, as when portraying vegetables or animals,” she said. The wavy unevenness gives the surface a stippled effect.
Rugs are not the only thing that can be hooked.
”There are just endless things you can make,” Lindahl said. ”You can make purses, wall hangings, vests, coats, even hooked `paintings.` ”
Besides the creative satisfaction, she said, ”the other thing about this craft is there`s a lot of camaraderie. It is good therapy for people to sit down together.
”Most of my students have gotten interested by watching someone else do it,” Lindahl said. ”And once we get them hooking, they`re hooked.”
Lindahl will demonstrate the craft of rug hooking at A Day in the Country, an antiques show May 31 at Le Roy Oaks in St. Charles.