Hooked Rug-making Not A Popular Hobby

Press, Volume C, Issue 29599, 23 August 1961, Page 2

Hooked Rug-making Not A Popular Hobby

Hooked rug-making is an old craft being revived as a hobby in the United States and Britain.. To find out if Christchurch women were following this trend, a reporter of “The Press” made a survey of women’s organisations and individuals. " '

It was found that it had not become popular and is not likely to until better quality wools, in a bigger range, become available. The high price of rug wool was another considered hindrance and also the amount of work involved.

Mrs G. M. Spenson, who visited London's Olympia Fair recently, said that the only new craft on display was hooked rug work. In England, she found that this was becoming tremendously popular with both men and women.

Her experiences inspired her to try the craft when she returned home. But she ran into difficulties that most of the women questioned have found. Superior quality rug wool is English, and hard to procure. The colour selection is limited and Mrs Spenson found she had to dye much of her wool. She used dyes in small tins costing about Is 4d each. These were most satisfactory, she found, and dyed true to colour.

It cost her about £lB for enough wool for two rugs, but she found that design patterns usually call for more wool than necessary. One Christchurch woman, who is almost 81, has made hooked rugs for years and still does it She is Mrs E. Mason, who first became interested about 70 years ago, when an elderly friend gave her a hook made from a long nail, and set inside a handle similar to screw - driver handles. She still has this. Spins Own Wool The wool situation did not worry her as she spun and dyed her own. She bought the wool by the fleece, spun

it on a spinning wheel which she still uses, plied it to make in thicker, then washed and dried the wool in skeins. For hooked rugs she mostly used natural wools, but many of her rugs she wove on a hand-loom and for these she dyed her wool. Her dyes came from the woods and fields. Lichens were used to produce several different tones. She used onion skins, roots such as bluegum and konini, lily-of-the-valley leaves and others, and berries.

Volcanic soil produced a pinky red. To get true reds, she obtained cochineal insects from a chemist.

All her ingredients were boiled to get the colour out, then mordanted to make the colour fast.

“Vegetable dyes produce no harsh colours,” Mrs Mason said. “You get the different tones by the length of the bottling time, but there is no way to guarantee reproducing the same colour a second time."

She found her dyes remained fast for years, and she has several rugs in her Cashmere home which have been washed many times and still look like new. Mrs Mason also used rags for hooking rugs, which she says will last for 20 or 30 years no matter how old the rags were to begin with. These are also washable. She

has always invented her own designs. Another elderly Christchurch woman, Mrs E. Davies, was not daunted by the lack of proper equipment. She had a wheelwright file hooks on Hie end of a four-inch nail and a six-inch nail, and used either rags or four-ply knitting wool folded into three strands.

Mrs Davies is a member of the Home Economics Association which began making hooked rugs in the depression to raise funds for relief work. In the interests of economy, the association used sugarbagging for its rugs but most women questioned bought rug canvas.

When Mrs Davies demonstrated her craft for a reporter it looked very simple. She hooked the wool through, knotted it with her needle, and the strands were later clipped. Fabric was hooked through in the same manner but not knotted. By having the end of the strip of fabric on the front of the work she could later bind it with an edging so it would not unwind. Fabric could also be clipped if desired, she said. Most local women’s organisations, which make a big feature of arts and crafts circles, reported that hooked rug making was not included at all in their list of activities, although some members had done it individually several years ago. A representative of the Beckenham Townswomen’s Guild thinks that the hobby will not “catch on” until the packages of pre-cut wool which are available in England and the United States are introduced here. “Women. do not want to have to do all the clipping that is necessary with hooked rugs.” she said. About two years ago her guild made similar rugs in cross stitch, using large bluntpointed needles, which became quite popular. Work in Hospitals

With some local institutions it was a different story. The chief occupational therapist of Christchurch Hospital (Miss B. K: Franklin) said that although they had not had many recent requests from patients for the work, it was quite popular among geriatric patients- The occupational therapist in charge at the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Foundation for the Blind said that no one in her department was making these rugs at present, except for one partially blind woman who did it at home—“but I am sure they would be capable of doing it,” she said.

At Sunnyside Hospital the patients make quite a number of hooked rugs. Wool from sheep on the hospital farm is spun in the occupational therapy department and dyed there. Most of the dyes used are commercial types, but the occupational therapist in charge (Miss J. A. Walker) said that some patients made vegetable dyes. Bark from silver birch and turkey oak trees growing in the hospital grounds, hedge berries, onion skins, and leaves of any type were used for this, and alum for the bordanting process. Designs came mostly from books, except where patients were able to invent their own, and rug canvas and rug hooks bought .commercially were used.

Tuberculosis patients at the Cashmere Sanatorium also practised this craft to quite an extent said the occupational therapist in charge (Miss J. F. Fisher). It was popular with bed-ridden patients because the work was not heavy to handle. Designs were painted on to rug

canvas unless it was a geometric pattern which could be worked from a graphThe hospitals have found the chief hindrance to the work is being unable to get the wool. A local carpet factory which formerly made thrums of wool available to the public has now channelled it through an arts shop in the city, so Christchurch Hospital gets most of the wool from an Auckland factory. The Country Library Service in Christchurch has a comprehensive range of books on rug-making, including up-to-date English and American editions. But a librarian reported that there have been very few requests for these books.