..:: Home ::..  
Preserving the history of North America's folk art.

 
Current News Pages  Archive  
 

Rugs Of War
Saturday, June 28, 2008
A contributed article by HRMNA researcher Kerry Keddy

While a team of Chester historians are struggling to save the 200 year old heritage of North American rug hooking, the columns of the Globe and Mail in Toronto and the internet's E-bay offerings this weekend have been featuring the "Rugs of War" from Afghanistan.

Read More

We Get Mail..
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Ontario Enthusiasm Spills Over in E-Mails following the Keynote Address Excitement created by Museum Founder Suzanne Conrod

Make no doubt about it- Ontario rug hookers are as enthused as the researchers of the Hooked Rug Museum of North America about the preservation of rug hooking heritage. Maybe even more so, if the volume of e-mail questions following the Ontario Hooking Craft Guilds annual meeting is any indication.

Focus of many of the e-mailed responses was the unveiling of a very unique complete hand-hooked costume which had been hooked in Nova Scotia last winter by Yvonne Hennigar and Suzanne Conrod from a tiny snapshot dating back to the 1920’s- possibly earlier. It was the first knowledge that such a costume had ever been created by the Garretts to promote their rug patterns.

Read More

DO YOU EVER GET THE FEELING THAT YOU ARE A SPIDER ?
Saturday, June 28, 2008

Well-Come into Our Web ! www.hookedrugmuseum.org (and don’t you forget it)

This invitation is not as insidious as the headline might indicate. In fact , developing a professional Web site with all its intricacies is a complicated and challenging undertaking as we in HRMNA are discovering step by cautious step. We are effectively testing the potential of a very powerful communicative tool.

For the Hooked Rug Museum of North America research teams it feels like we have been sharing an inordinate amount of time with real live creepy crawlies and sticky strands of cobweb in the five years of basement and attic research while this project has been under development. The descriptive words remain the same but the meanings have changed dramatically as we venture into the nebulous world of the web.

Read More

A MILLION DOLLAR COLLECTION OF RUG HOOKING HERITAGE IS IN HAND
Friday, May 2, 2008

The assembly of a million dollar collection of North American rug hooking history has been confirmed at the 2008 annual meeting of the Hooked Rug Museum of North America Society. The art, artifacts and archival materials are described as“phenomenal by Nova Scotia Museum specialists. In the Keynote address to the annual meeting of the Ontario Hooking Crafters Guild , Suzanne Conrod , Founder of the Museum project announced that possible sites in which to house the collections for the first hooked rug museum, gallery and archives in North America are currently being explored.

She further disclosed that the Hooked Rug Museum had approached the Canadian UNESCO commission, seeking possible designation of rug hooking heritage as an endangered art. She accentuated the point that rug hooking had been “tramped on” for far too long and deserved to be recognized as the craft that had grown through a folk-art period to its current evolvement as a little recognized fine-art, “painting with wool”.

Read More

A Walk Down Memory Lane
Saturday, June 28, 2008
(Our newly developing web site includes this flashback in which rug hookers from anywhere may contribute personal reminiscences about rug hooking that have affected their lives or influenced the lives of others. Please keep them within 500 words and e-mail us an image if you desire. It is appropriate, following that wonderful welcome I received in Midland in May that one of our first items is an inspirational thought from, Orillia , Ontario. Thanks Cynthia for your poetic writing. Send your messages to Suzanne Conrod, at dornoc@eastlink.ca or to P.O. BOX 556,CHESTER, N.S., B0J 1J0)

What it "Feels Like" To Be a Rug Hooker
by Cynthia Young, Orillia Sunshine Hookers, Ontario

It is a spiritual, tactile journey into the past- a past rooted in survival. It includes men and women tossed in the waves of an unforgiving ocean , coming to a land where life was hewn of wind, water, earth and rock. In the ever present changing light, the shaper of clouds swirled in their midst. Were they oblivious to the rawness of this landscape? I don't think so. It became enmeshed in their being. And, at the end of the day, the larger movements of those toiling on the seas or the land became smaller. The rough hands of the sea mended a net, the hands of the kitchen picked up a hook. All transformed the threads of the day into necessities - nets and mats to sustain life in a new world.

Through time and migration, the spirit moves to different places, finds roots in different homes. The energy of those who came before, follows us. It transcends , takes new shapes, reflects on the landscape , and the ever changing sky. It translates new images for a new generation. So, we are rug hookers - rooted in the past, looking to the future. We honor our past. Like the fishermen mending nets, we mend the rugs of our ancestors, cherish their energy and hold sacred the spirit of those who nurtured us. ( The century old hooked rug pictured with this touching column has just been donated to the Hooked Rug Museum of North America by Mrs Myrna Reeves a very spry senior from Martin's River, N.S.)

SPOTLIGHT ON ------ Marie Stella Bourgeois
SHE HELPED TRANSFORM RUG HOOKING INTO A FINE ART

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Acadian style hooked rugs started their journey around the world from the village of Cheticamp -the doorstep into Cape Breton's national park and the dramatic scenery of the renowned Cabot Trail. The magnificence of the rug art of Marie Stella Bourgeois however, rivals even that awesome scenery.

The hand hooking of rugs has been a utilitarian and economic heritage in Cape Breton ,Nova Scotia for many years but the fine art mastery of a select group of rug hookers from that region has been for too long remained a well hidden treasure of the rug art world. Like many other components of rug hooking history, these world class artists have long suffered from the lack of a spotlight being shone on their achievements.
Read More

News Flashes from the World of Hooking
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Famous Quote

Hillary Clinton said on Nov 8, 1997 as she opened a wing of the National Museum of Women and the Arts in Washington DC-I recall that there were those who argued strenuously that it was not necessary to have a whole museum devoted to women and the arts....I can recall not so long ago, when I was in college that the leading art history books don't even mention women.....and there were others who said that women's arts were part of collections around the world and now there was no need for us to do anything special.. so this museum proves all the doubters wrong....it is time my husband has said to honor the past and imagine the future.
Read More

"Maggie" Takes a Trip
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

When Maggie McKeen stepped out of the train onto the Alma Railway Station platform in Pictou County ,Nova Scotia for a breath of fresh air back i the 19th century she never suspected that someone in the 21st century would write a story about her long trip to the big city of Boston, Mass. from rural Inverness, Cape Breton. "Maggie's Diary" by Alex Smith of Halifax relates the excitement of that adventure for the young lady who travelled by horse and buggy, steam engine and ocean liner. Enroute she wrote her diary and told of her flirtations, and her awe when she viewed for the first time Boston's Ame's building- the tallest structure she had ever seen. Hooked Rug museum founder, Suzanne Conrod was invited to create the hooked frontspiece (shown above) for the book. Maggie is depicted in the red outfit (center) . The dog barking at the steaming engine is Suzanne's trademark in many of her illustrations.
Read More

UNESCO ASKED TO DECLARE RUG HOOKING AN ENDANGERED HERITAGE
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

News Bulletin - Discussion have been opened with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO to determine the possible designation of North American rug hooking as an endangered art form because of the continuing losses of its history.

The submission to the UN was disclosed by the Hooked Rug Museum of North America’s Founder, Suzanne Conrod, as Keynote Speaker to the 2008 Ontario Hooking Craft Guild’s annual meeting in Midland, Ontario.
Read More

EARLY 1900’S RUG LADY AWES ONTARIO AUDIENCE
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Midland, Ontario- History walked into the annual meeting of the Ontario Rug Crafters Guild on May 2 to the surprise of more than 300 attendees. Guest Keynote speaker Suzanne Conrod had arranged to have an image of an early 1900’s snapshot placed on each seat in the Midland,Ontario convention hall. It pictured an image of a woman completely garbed from head to toe in a hand hooked costume who had been an early marketing feature from the 1892 rug pattern factory of the late John E. Garrett in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.
Read More

HERITAGE COLLECTION OF CENTURY OLD YARN MAKING ARTIFACTS GIFTED TO HOOKED RUG MUSEUM PROJECT
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Picture a little seven year old girl with a tiny glass-ribbed scrub-board cleaning sheep’s wool and picking out “burrs” from the tangled fleece while standing alongside her beloved grandmother in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia some 65 years ago and you have a fleeting image of the heritage of talented rug hooker Beatrice Mason
Read More

The Cat's Meow
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008


Three hooked rugs depicting a series of whimsical cat images- have become building blocks of what is an international voluntary effort to create the first Hooked Museum of North America.
The trio of hand hooked art marks the beginning of a continent wide “hook-in” of fund raising projects in the United States and Canada ,designed to demonstrate widespread support for a Nova Scotia initiative to preserve the seriously endangered history of rug hooking which started in old “Acadia” and has swept across the continent.

Read More

Government Praise for Museum Project
Wednesday, September 05, 2007 


Replication of more than 50 historic Garrett rug hooking designs salvaged from the remnants of an 1892 pattern factory in New Glasgow, N.S. has earned the  highly successful "AT GRANDMOTHER'S KNEE" program more plaudits. The program, initiated by researchers from the Hooked Rug Museum of North America, formally opened the annual meeting of the New Horizon's for Senior Citizens (Service Canada) Review committee meeting this week at Oakwood House in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Read More

 
 
Copyright (c) 2006 Hooked Rug Museum of North America Society. All rights reserved.   Terms Of Use  Privacy Statement