Beyond Knitting
The Inspiration in a Humble Rag Rug
When Winifred Nicholson and her husband walked into the Cumbrian farmhouse of their neighbor Margaret Warwick, they saw something that changed their way of seeing art forever. Cumbria is in the northwest of England and it’s long been the home of many famers.
Winifred Nicholson, The Warwick Family, c.1926, oil on canvas, Private collection.
Margaret, a farmer’s wife, was sitting at a frame made by her husband Tom and stretched across that frame was a piece of sacking—what we in America call burlap or what the British called hessian.
Margaret was using a hook and long thin strips of wool to make pictures of farm animals which she surrounded with multicolored striped borders. Winifred and Ben had seen their first rag rug.
Is he a Roman or Byzantine mosaic? He’s a wool Galloway Bull hooked by Mary Bewick, 1960s, Private collection.
Ben Nicholson immediately drew up a design he liked and commissioned Mary Bewick, Margaret’s daughter, to reproduce his design in rags. It was a series of chessboard squares of light and dark colors and other squares dedicated to farm animals. Ben left the animal choices and animal designs up to Mary.
Though Ben Nicholson’s original rug design doesn’t survive, this similar one by Winifred does. Winifred Nicholson, Sketch for Animal Squares rug, Private collection.
Winifred continued to design, make, and commission rag rugs throughout her life. She was a champion of the rugs and their makers wherever she went, and she even taught her children, grandchildren, and great-nieces to make rug drawings directly on hessian.
So many rugs connected to Winifred have been lost to time and use. They were, after all, mainly made to be used on floors. But luckily for us, some were saved and we can see them from now through the early summer at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) in the northeast of England and at Tullie House, Carlisle, in the northwest of England.
Rug by Florence Williams, Cumberland Landscape, August 1968. Private collection.
Before I take you on a tour through some of my favorite rugs from the exhibition, let me talk a bit about rag rugs and which kind you’ll see in the exhibition.
As many of you will know, rag rugs come in many forms across myriad cultures from woven to braided to knotted to clipped or looped. T-shirts, yarn, saris, and jeans—practically anything can find its way into a rag rug.
In Britain, there are two prominent forms of rag rug making. “Proddy,” “proggy,” “peggy,” and “clippy” describes rugs made from cut fabric, usually wool, about the length and width of your finger.
A proddy rug sample I made under the guidance of my Cumbrian sister-in-law. Recycled denim from jeans and wool from a coat. 8 x 6.5 inches.
The bottom of the rug will be covered in bumps, the top will be shaggy with a pile determined by the length and width of your cut strips. Usually, these types of rugs are better for waves of color or multi-color designs, but not so much for making pictures. This is only because their shaggy, fat pile makes images indistinct.
But what Margaret was making is another type of rag rug less common in Britain and more common in the U.S. and Canada, which is often called a loopy, hooky, or hooked rug.
A hooked rug called Wander which I made to be used as one side of a throw pillow. Lace, leather, polyester, yarn, denim, and recycled clothes. You can see the front and the back and how, in many cases, the reverse is similar to the public side of the hooked rug.
To create these rugs the maker holds a long thin strip of wool (or yarn or other material) under the burlap with one hand, pokes a gap in the weave of the burlap with a pointed hooked tool, and grabs a bit of that woolen strip with the hook bringing a loop of the strip up through the burlap.
Then the maker moves to an adjacent gap in the burlap, inserts the tool, and brings up another loop of the long strip. These continuous loops create lines. Lines next to each other create shapes. Shapes become sheep, cows, tigers, and the Cumbrian landscape.
Margaret used a frame to hold her hessian taut, but not all rug-makers do. Some hook with the burlap on their lap or on a table. Like so many crafts, there are ways to hook nearly as diverse as the people creating. Even some of the rugs in the exhibit didn’t keep to strict rules.
A rug made by Florence Williams based on a drawing that Winifred’s grandson Jovan Nicholson made on hessian with a marker. Farmyard, 1960s, Private collection.
In some places, like this little house, wool embroidery seemed the best idea.
What was most fascinating to me was the way that thinking in strips of wool meant the makers had to largely abandon perspective and think more like Romans or Etruscans who laid tiny bits of mosaic into the floors of their bathhouses to make scenes.
It’s also not that far from intarsia or type knitting. Every bump is like a pixel or a stitch and it’s how you lay the bumps next to each other that creates a sheep or a car traveling along a road.
Margaret Warwick, Two Cats by a Fire, c. 1923, Tulle House and Art Gallery Trust, Carlisle.
As a painter, Winifred was endlessly fascinated by the way that rag rugs paired color and shape down to their essence. The rugs informed her painting and her painting crept into the rugs she designed.
Having made both proddy and hooked rugs, I can say that both give me immense pleasure especially because I can take scrap material and give it new life as a cushion top or a floor rug. It’s the ultimate in working with with what you have. And hooked rugs work with scrap yarn, too!
Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs continues at MIMA until March 23 and resumes in Carlisle on April 5 through June 15.
You can hear the MIMA’s curator speak about the exhibit and read the notes. And there is a gorgeous book including all of the rugs from the exhibit.
Top image credit: Mary Bewick, Sheep, 1960s, Private collection.
Want to catch up on all that’s going on at MDK? Our homepage provides a good overview.
Thank you for this! It’s such a cool art form. I have fond memories of stopping in Carlisle as I finished the Hadrian’s Wall path with my husband and son. Tullie House is a good reason to return.
How interesting and so beautiful. I look forward to your columns- loved the 2 cats!
While I enjoy the works of the Masters – often it is in the humble offering (mostly done by woman)that I find myself most inspired by- thank you for bringing these to our attention.
That landscape knocked the breath out of me!!! How wonderful to see these. Thank you!
Thankyou for sharing this. As a native Cumbrian (actually Westmorland when I was born in the 50’s ) I had no idea that “hooking” was common there.
Rug hooking has always been a way to provide floor coverings and use up old clothes here in Nova Scotia where I now live. And is now a popular art form and pastime.
Hey Sara! Former Bluenoser here and agree that NS has a vibrant and longstanding rug hooking tradition. In fact I am looking at a Cheticamp piece as I type. There’s so much inspiration just from the landscape. K now I’m homesick
Fascinating! Thanjs!
Amazing process and history!!! Really makers art!!Recycling into art!! And they never knew how much we would need that in these days!!! I see grandchildren’s old t-shirts and making pictures of their favorite places. Right beside their tee quilts I am planning!!! Beautiful! Now to look up type knitting?! Did I miss something there? Hummmm
What lovely rugs! Maybe this is what I should be doing with leftover yarn.
I was just thinking the same thing!
When I lived in Philly, there was a small community of rug hookers that I learned the craft. It was fun. As with some crafts, I eventually moved on because just how many rugs did I need. Or hang on the wall.
Than you for the tour!
Rug hooking stole my heart some years ago. Love the examples you’ve showcased here!
Go to Cheticamp on Cape Breton and visit Lola’s Hookers to see beautiful examples of a dying art form. Everything in the shop was hooked by one of the women whose portraits hang on the wall. Most are in their ’80s now.
Hooking rugs was a serious source of income when these women were young.
I met someone in the shop who talked about coming home from school and hooking rugs for 3 hours everyday before she did her homework.
Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, has in its textiles collection a series of hooked rugs by Patty Yoder (1943-2005), which depict farm animals and rural life. Her Alphabet of Sheep is an amazing example of rughooking colors and techniques. The Museum’s Hat and Fragrance Gallery contains all types of textiles, including quilts, woven coverlets, and cross-stitched samplers.
These are beautiful! I love the cats and the landscapes! Am I mistaken to think rug hooking had a big vogue as a kids’ craft in the late 1960s-early 70s, along with crewel, needlepoint, potholder weaving, and other things that could be sold as kits? I remember taking a crafts elective in third grade (in a NYC private school) where the crafts were knitting, crocheting, macrame, needlepoint, crewel, and rug hooking. We hooked mini-rugs from kits for years afterward. You could buy kits with the canvas and the cut yarn pre-packaged, and fill in the design with a latch hook. (Most of the kits were small-scale–cushions, toilet seat covers–not whole rugs.) I also recall that one of the names for bulky yarn in the old lists is “rug yarn,” which I associate with hooking.
You are not mistaken and I was one of those kids!! I distinctly remember hooking a tiger rug kit and how much fun it was to see the picture come to life.
You’re right, Amy…latch-hook rugs were definitely big in the late 60’s – early 70’s for all ages of crafters. Many of the women in my family gave it a try and I made a groovy 2’x3’ zodiac rug from a Lee Ward’s kit in junior high. 🙂 Latch hook rugs didn’t wear too well…a pillow probably would have lasted longer. I added my Mom’s craft supplies to mine when she passed and found a now-vintage latch hook…such fond memories! I see a lot of pieces of the loopy hooked fiber art now, a local fiber arts festival had a group doing a demo two years ago. What a fun post!
I love the two cats by the fire piece!
My mom and grandma made rag rugs, and I remember helping sort the rags. Theirs were rolled into a rope and stitched together in a round or oval shape. It was a great way to use up the scraps from sewing and mending. I loved helping with those. I was not so fond of the hooked rugs, but if I’d know I could make art, it might have been a different matter!
This was great! I love vintage needlework and this is something you do not often see.
Thanks!
Thank you for giving hooking its due. There continue to be many forms of this art: hooking, punch needle (both rug size and miniature), and tufting. And they’re being done all around the world now.
Beautiful!
Both my grandmothers made rugs. One was a braider, and the other a hooker. I remember the latter in the 50s. Her daily routine was doing her housework in the morning; then after a quick lunch, a bath, and a change into a clean house dress. She’d then hook (she did use a frame) while watching the soaps.
Thank you for this. I would love a tutorial–I guess I should check YouTube first. I have been fascinated by pegged rugs for a long time. I remember the latch hook kits of my childhood.
There is a reference to pegged rugs in a Margaret Drabble novel that is based loosely on her mother’s life in northern England–sort of a reference to the drudgery women in the early part of the 20th century dealt with, making rugs out their husbands’ old trousers.
Beautiful works and I love yours too!
I really shouldn’t be considering any new hobbies but wow, is this ever inspirational and tempting!
Wonderful rugs. May nobody ever dismiss as craft what is capital A ART.
Thank you for sharing g those antique hooked rugs.
As a textile artist it was such a joy to view.
This is inspiring! Latch hooking never really interested me, but these, wow! Thanks for another fascinating visit, Jeni!