Home Economics

Guest Blog post from the Textile Museum of Canada, by Paul Henderson February 8th is the last chance to see Home Economics: 150 Years of Canadian Hooked Rugs at the Textile Museum of Canada. Presented in conjunction with the Museum’s 40th anniversary, Home Economics explores the unique stories and histories that have informed hooked rugs in Canada, the highly recognizable forms of folk art with roots in 19th-century North America. Featuring over 100 rugs from the Museum's rich archive of international material culture, the exhibition represents generations of artisanal entrepreneurship, women’s domestic and collective work, as well as rural development in Canada. The exhibition will highlight examples from each region, focusing on the stories behind rug hooking traditions over two centuries. Among the significant pieces featured in Home Economics are rugs by Emily Carr that were produced alongside her renowned paintings, an array of Grenfell mats hooked in Newfoundland and Labrador beginning in 1892 using kits distributed by the Grenfell Mission to generate income, and those designed by artists and hooked by local women for sale to tourists visiting Quebec led by Georges-Édouard Tremblay and Clarence Gagnon. Later rugs include those by the “Gagetown Hookers” – Lydia and Raymond Scott – as well as contemporary pieces by Maritime artists Nancy Edell, Deanne Fitzpatrick, Hannah Epstein and Joanna Close, with Toronto’s Barbara Klunder and Heather Goodchild, and Yvonne Mullock from Calgary. Home Economics: 150 Years of Canadian Hooked Rugs The Textile Museum of Canada 55 Centre Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Until 8 February Yvonne Mullock with Mary Francis Decker (Calgary) USE ME (2013) The artist’s clothes, burlap, hooked, 54 x 81 cm. Collection of the artist Heather Goodchild (Toronto). Journey (2010), Wool, burlap, hooked, 95 x 165 cm. Collection of Scott Lauder. Photo by Evan PennyLydia and Raymond Scott (New Brunswick), Untitled (1950 – 1980) , 100 cm x 54 cm. Gift of Margaret Light, T2008.23.8. Courtesy of the Textile Museum of Canada Hooked Rug, Canada, c. 1940, 101 cm x 49 cm, T77.0055. Courtesy of the Textile Museum of CanadaEmily Carr, Double Eagle Rug (1915 – 1920), Cotton, wool, hooked, 70 x 152 cm. Collection of Jody Doulis and Kathryn Taylor