1924 Hearthstone Rugs Exhibition

Today I received a copy of the catalogue put out by The Anderson Galleries of New York City in 1924 for the exhibition and sale of the Anna M. Laise Phillips Collection. I had so hoped that the catalogue would be heavily illustrated with photos of all the rugs. Alas, my hopes are dashed. The catalogue is 28 pages with one beautiful photo of a specimen which was reproduced from The Bulletin for the Art Center of New York (pictured here via a scan: more on this rug below).

What an exhibition this must have been! Phillips had on display and sale 183 pieces: the vast majority rugs, not all hooked, and a few quilts. Some were antique rugs and some were rugs her workers had made for the show. She writes:

"I have the pleasure in offering this collection from our Hearthstone Studios, the quaint old-fashioned homes of the descendants of our earlier American rug makers. The Antique rugs have been in the families of our workers for several generations, some of them for a longer time, carefully guarded and kept clean; but softened to harmonious tones by time, which blots out vivid colorings in art as well as nature...Rug making is an hereditary art that for a period slumbered, but did not die; because scattered throughout America, tucked away in little villages and country communities are women who to-day are bending over their rug frames, fashioning with painstaking fingers rugs in the same way that their grandmothers constructed floor coverings. The offerings here shown are made primarily to perpetuate the art of rug and quilt making, and to encourage our workers by CREATING A MARKET FOR THE EXPRESSION OF THEIR INHERITED IDEAS OF DESIGN, COLOR AND TEXTURE" (from Foreword; capital format: original to Phillip's text).

The rugs in the catalogue were collected by Phillips from the homes of her workers from "the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River" and "the Southern States too" (from Foreword).

The catalogue offers a full description of each piece in the exhibit - almost as good as a picture but not quite! Here are a few just so you can see the variety of subjects and materials used:

"STRIPED HEARTHSTONE HOOK RUG. Evenly and closely hooked. Ashes of rose and reseda-green stripes alternating with those of dull gold of equal width. An unusual rug. Size, 5 feet 6 inches x 2 feet 9 inches."

"RARE OLD FLEUR-DE-LIS HOOK RUG. Early American. Original design, closely hooked. A quartet of fleur-de-lis in soft old red in centre surrounded by faint lavender flowers and pearl-gray foliage. Size, 5 feet 4 inches x 3 feet 11 inches."

"CANARY BIRD HEARTHSTONE HOOK RUG. Very fine close hooking of hand-spun lamb's wool. Field in natural gray (uncolored, made by carding together the wool from a white lamb and a black one). Original design. Sprays of flowers and foliage with canary birds. Scroll border in tans, yellows, maroon and black. Size, 5 feet 3 inches x 1 foot 9 inches."

"MARINE HEARTHSTONE RUG. Deep, close, fine hooking of homespun lamb's-wool. Lighthouse rising from the sea on small island with misty purple-tinted sky in the background, sea gulls hovering near; mixed brown and fawn-colored border. Size, 4 feet 2 inches x 2 feet 5 inches."

I have become enthralled with Phillips. I am finding her name pop up in books from the period authored by others. Kent, in fact, drops a line in his book that one of her Hearthstone rugs sold for a four-digit price.

So I started digging around The Bulletin for the Art Center of New York, volume 1 no. 9 (April 1923). I found a mention of Phillips and a (second!) exhibit that she had put on for the Art Center and a fuller description of the rug pictured above:

“Mrs. Anna M. Laise Phillips held her second annual exhibition of American hand-made rugs at the Art Center from March 12-31. She displayed a number of antique and modern rugs from the Hearthstone Studios, the rural home of her rug makers. In the collection was a large carpet eleven by twelve feet, hooked in a basket-weave design, copied from an old rug, also shown. This rug, which is seamless, required the efforts of fifteen workers for seven months, but the result is a rug which stands out as a masterpiece of the handcraft. It is made for a seashore home, to be placed in the dining-room opening towards the sea. The colors are soft dregs of wine, a ‘hit-or-miss’ arrangement giving a purplish rose effect. A reproduction of it is shown on the cover of this issue of the BULLETIN” (p. 171).

Women Yesterday and Today 5: Practical advise about rug making in the 1920s

To assist women of leisure, Phillips lays out a number of rug types she is familiar with, including a few photos. She markets them as rugs of "sentiment and symbol". She says that floral rugs were most popular, the rose surpassing the rest, although she mentions geraniums, morning glories, fuchsias, and verbenas "scattered over the surfaces of many of our early hooked rugs" (pp. 39-40). She describes geometric designs created by using a yardstick and the dinner plate, and cutting patterns out of stiff cardboard. She talks about Welcome Mats and Emblematic rugs with patriotic symbols. She is familiar with Picture rugs, Marine rugs, and Animal rugs. She also mentions Memory rugs, recalling a meeting with an 86 year old woman who handed Phillips her rug and said, "That's my pony; that's Jack, our old black Jack, and that's the field he used to browse in, and that's the sky behind it, and that's the same old fence and the old bars I used to let down when I took the cows to pasture when I was a girl" (p. 46).

She also tries to help these women think about the rooms in their homes and what kinds of rugs might be suitable for their "city and country homes." So we get a tour of the wealthy woman's home in the 1920s, from the new-spangled living room, dining room, bedrooms, guest rooms, nursery, halls, maid's room, porches, sun parlor to the family's camps and hunting lodges (59-72).

She also gives practical advise, telling them how to get started with a frame and foundation. She recommends burlap because it would be a waste to use hand-woven linen "in such an inconspicuous place as the foundation of a rug" (p. 94). She suggest buying the burlap at a department store, or, if better grade is preferred, at a needlework shop.

As for design, she is very adamant. She purposefully calls her chapter "Marking the Design" because she wants to revive the art of rug making "as it was in the best of days" before stamped designs, when "each worker wrought the outline of the thing she wished to picture herself" (p. 101). She complains that companies at the time, with the revival in the interest of early American furnishings, had accelerated their stamped designs, not only reproducing the old designs but also inventing new ones by combining some of the features of the primitive designs with more modern design elements (p. 102).

She advises the new rug hooker to become childlike again. To draw with the abandon of a child. To express herself. "Design your own rugs, and simple or imperfect, quaint or grotesque, the finished piece will not only contain bits of your own clothing and household fabrics, but it will reflect the ideas you may have as to formal or informal patterns" (pp. 104-105). She gives practical suggestions for drawing animals, making geometric templates, creating scrolls and so forth.

But when all is said and done, Phillips comes to the point that has been haunting the book and her desire to bring rug hooking to women of leisure: "Here is the material and the equipment and the willingness to make a present-day hooked rug by the best of old-time methods, yet the hands lie limp in our laps and we gaze at our lovely floral design and the straight line border, and all that we have read and all that we have tried to treasure in our memories have simply evaporated. We have a feeling of our own inadequacy - we are lost - and for the moment our good resolution to make a rug has also taken to itself wings. We can see one thing only, that expanse of canvas, and although it is but a little mat of not more than six square feet we gaze on it as though it were the Sahara Desert" (p. 118).

Phillips identified that "thing" that keeps rug hooking from becoming the craft of many. Personal feelings of inadequacy and fear that immobilize us - not knowing what to do next, what will look right. Her suggestion to start on the edge probably wasn't very helpful to the women she had hoped to persuade to pick up hooks. So although Phillips appears to have been part of the reason that rug hooking moved into new circles and became a craft of the woman of leisure, it would take another woman to come along and offer another solution that addressed head on the problem Phillips had identified.

Women Yesterday and Today 4: More on Anna Laise Phillips

As we celebrate the history of women this month, I want to return to the story of Anna M. Laise Phillips and her book Hooked Rugs and How to Make Them (1925). My last post about her discussed her as a business woman who set up a brokerage-type rug business in the 1920s. She developed a network of various pods of hookers, often in rural poor neighborhoods around the East and the South, and purchased rugs that they themselves designed and hooked from "rags." She marketed the rugs in New York city as authentic American folk art "like grandma used to make" at a time with Americana and nostalgia for the good ol' days (before industrialization) was on the rise in the states. She was very successful in selling these rugs, moving them into the homes of wealthy women and collectors. It appears that she was so successful that she went out on the state farm circuit lecturing about rugs, in order to solicit rugs from women she would meet there and establish new pods.

If we ever wonder why our hooking groups today are called "guilds" all we have to do is remember that the origin of our craft is connected to the fact that women who were hooking rugs in the teens and twenties were doing so to sell them. They found it convenient to gather together during the day at the guild leader's house and hook together. Phillips talks about two or three neighbors gathering in the kitchen and hooking their rugs.

She also talks about the dye pot being "as much a part of the kitchen equipment as is the stove today." The rags they used were turned into "beautiful colors" from "barks, roots, and herbs brewed and combined to make the desired tint." They used vegetable dyes grown in their gardens. Saffron raised for medicinal tea made a brilliant golden color when used as a dye. Logwood and onion skins were also used (p. 30).

I noticed when reading Phillips' book that her brokerage business is only part of her story. What she is doing in her book is trying to persuade wealthy women to try to hook rugs. She describes her audience as women who " attend to their household duties systematically and conscientiously, yet have their leisure hours when they might be doing some other form of expressive work if they could only decide what to take up" (p. 10). It is a hard sell because this was a craft of poverty that used "rags." All the books from this period talk about the women using materials that were so worn they couldn't be used for anything else anymore. So they hooked them into rugs that they would walk on (think farmer's boots) or put in front of their hearths (think cooking and open fires). During this time, rugs were largely made by women of poverty to sell or trade for food and clothing.

Nevertheless, she tries to bring the craft to a new audience in her chapter "Making Rugs for Ourselves" (pp. 87-100). She does so by trying to persuade women of leisure that the craft is "old" and "American" and part of the "revival" of past. Tired of industrialization and commercialism? Tired of cheap imitations? Tired of mechanical perfection? Then rug hooking is for you. At a time when women had just won the right to vote, Phillips writes, "This chapter is written in the spirit of helpfulness, of encouragement to our women to return to something which they can do in their own homes, by their own firesides, while father reads his paper or even while he is at the club" (p. 88).

But her big move was to convince these wealthy women of leisure that by hooking rugs they were not becoming part of a merchant guild. They didn't have to sell their rugs. She writes, "Lest I weaken, I am going to tell you right here: do NOT make rugs to sell, make them for YOURSELF" (p. 88). She advises them against making rugs for "your lover, your husband, your mother, or your friend, for if you do you will not make a really individual rug. Make rugs for yourself. Make the kind of rug you like, the kind that appeal to you, the kind of rugs that you would keep forever...Leave it to the other woman to make her kind of rug. You make your own kind" (pp. 88-89).

As for the rags, she is suggests that rugs making is a good recycling project. Instead of disposing of "father's pants" why not turn his ugly old worn out cast offs into "articles of virtue and delight"? Why not make your home beautiful with the things you already have? (pp. 89-90).

In another post, I will review what Phillips knows about rugs during her time, and how she suggests to go about making them.

Women Yesterday and Today 3: Anna M. Laise Phillips

I have been continuing to reflect on women's history, and reading some old books I never got around to until now. And I would like to share one in particular with you today because it is a testament to the time that Lady Anne Grenfell was operating her mission mat business and may explain why she was so successful. It also lays some of the historical narrative necessary to understand what happened when Pearl McGown came on the scene.

Six years ago I was in an antique mall and my husband was rummaging around the old books there. He came across a book I bought although I did not recognize. It was written in 1925 by Anna M. Laise Phillips. It is called Hooked Rugs and How to Make Them. I recall leafing through it and shelving it at home. And forgetting about it. Until I found it again as I have been preparing to write this series of posts on historical women in rug hooking.

From the first lines of Phillips' book, I was captivated. She writes in the first lines of her foreword: "Sometimes I wonder if the thing itself is as big or important as the reason for its being; and in view of the darkness and dawn, the chaos and then the order, the trials and then the joy of our work, it seems that the things we do are but the outlet of our inner selves" (p. 9). She goes on to call rug hooking "expressive work" and she states that she hopes her book will encourage women who have "leisure hours" after attending their "household duties" to express themselves by hooking a lovely rug for their hearths. It is very clear throughout the book that Phillips' wished to cultivate rug hooking as an individualistic expressive folk art form (more on this in another post on another day!).

How did she learn about rug hooking? She tells the story of a bleak December day when she was traveling in the Alleghenies mountains to visit a cemetery where some of her kinsfolk were buried. She is traveling in a very poor part of the mountain country and states that she stopped by the dilapidated home of a "big, motherly woman" whose husband was ill and unable to work. When she enters the home, the woman apologizes for its sorry state, including the fact that her house had no heat. The woman then tells Phillips, "Indeed, I can make rugs and I work fast, too. If you'll let me make you one I am sure you'll be pleased." Phillips says that the woman was so earnest that it nearly broke her heart. The woman needed something to do to earn an income since her husband had been ill for a year.

When Phillips got home to New York City she began receiving packages of rugs from the woman: rugs with morning glories and marigolds scattered across them. She considered them good quality. Phillips paid her. More rugs arrive. There is more cash exchange. We learn that the woman told her neighbors about her new income and they begin to have "little rug parties where two or three gathered and visited" and hooked rugs to send to Phillips.

Soon Phillips has more rugs than she knows what to do with. And doesn't want to keep buying them for herself since she was running out of extra money. So she wrote the hookers and told them that she couldn't buy anymore of their rugs. They wrote back, "Please, Mrs. Phillips, don't stop buying our rugs. You are keeping the coal shovel and the bread knife going."

So Phillips regrouped. She asked the woman and the group of hookers she had organized to hook rugs for a year, working with "bits of cotton and wool, with here and there a thread of silk" creating "rugs from her (the hooker's) own designs." When Phillips had enough rugs, she put on an exhibit at the Art Center in New York. She showed "a few nice pieces" in order to show that the work of this group of women "deserved to be encouraged." The show was successful and the rugs sold. The buyers then began commissioning work from the women, and the "bread knife" and the "coal shovel" were kept going through their patronage.

I actually found the New York Times article from May 14, 1922, which describes the exhibition Phillips was referring to. The Exhibition was called "Old and New Types of American Handmade Rugs" and it was billed as a collection of American handmade rugs "patterned after the very old ones and made by women whose mothers, grandmothers and even great-grandmothers were skilled rugmakers." She had on display seven types of rugs: knitted, crocheted or "cottage rugs", braided or "grandma's rocker" rugs, rag or "Betsy Moore" rugs, and two kinds of hooked rugs. The first type she called "old-fashioned rugs" that were made from a variety of materials. And a new concept rug she called "hearthstone rugs" because of it "cheerful homelike appearance", rich coloring, and thickness.

The New York Times article states that the hookers were "groups of women throughout this and other States in the East and South who, being skilled in the art of rugmaking, are anxious to make their work practical. All the work is done in the individual homes and each woman completes her rug after her own design and according to her own methods of work. The result is a very unusual collection of handmade rugs...It is the aim of Mrs. Phillips to broaden the scope of this work so that other women who are equally skilled may be given employment in this kind of occupation which brings out their skill and talent for making beautiful floor coverings, without leaving their homes."

What was going on here? I haven't been able to find an official biography of Anna Phillips, but reading between the lines of her book, I suspect that it was not a chance encounter with a stranger in the mountains that brought rug hooking to Phillips' attention. Phillips' was visiting the area to attend to the graves of her relatives and when she leaves the hooker's home and returns to New York city, she mentions that her trip had taken her back "to the scenes of childhood." This makes me think that the "big, motherly woman" was Phillips' impoverished relative, and Phillips agreed to buy her rugs while her husband was convalescing to keep the family from starvation. And once the neighbors heard about it, they wanted in too. So Phillips' found herself in a difficult situation. She had understood her offer to buy her relative's rugs to be a temporary measure, and now she was being sent boxes of them.

From photos in her book (which I have digitalized here), I can see that she was a wealthy woman. She shows us a room in her house adorned with hooked rugs, a room which she calls "Ye Heartstone Studios". I imagine that the name "heartstone rug" is meant to reflect her studio name. So I think she had connections in New York society which allowed her to put on an exhibition at the Art Center where other patrons could buy the rugs her relative's group had hooked. This appears to have been so successful that Phillips branched out, going around to various state and county fairs to tell about her cottage industry and invite women to hook rugs to sell to her. She mentions particularly a group of women who were school teachers from the rural districts of Memphis, Tennessee, who were delighted to find out that they could make rugs out of "old materials" and sell them to Phillips (p. 158).

What appears to have happened in the 1920s was a revival of rug hooking as part of a revival of Americana. Phillips attributes it to post-WWI emotions and nostalgia for the good ol' days, and I have no reason to doubt her on this. It seems that New York city was one of the main centers of commerce for things Americana. It was becoming vogue for wealthy city women to have American folk art in their homes. Phillips appears to have known this and creates a cottage industry from it, just as Lady Anne Grenfell was doing in Canada. The differences are stark though. Phillips is not supplying kits and instructions to her workers. She encourages them to create rugs from their own designs because she is certain that only when this freedom is granted to her workers will the rugs be truly expressive.