HOME ECONOMICS 150 years of Canadian Hooked Rugs

The Nickle Galleries is hosting a hooked rug exhibition called HOME ECONOMICS 150 years of Canadian Hooked Rugs.  I have been wanting to see this and today I was on campus, so I slipped over to the Taylor Family Digital Library (TFDL) hoping that they would be open.

Hooked rug with polar bears,
Grenfell Mission, Newfoundland and Labrador,
after 1916, Gift of Ginny Sloan,
Textile Museum of Canada.

One of Eliana El Khoury's friends was with me, someone Eliana knew from the Toast Mistress group.  Jackie and I walked into the gallery, first enjoying the John Hall: Travelling Light A forty-five-year survey of paintings.  But our mission was to get to the hooked rugs exhibition, since both of us grew up in homes where our mothers had hooked rugs.  I was telling Jackie that I still have the metal tools that my mother used when she made braided rugs.  I don't remember now, where the rug hook that my mother owned went to.

At any rate, it is hard not to be interested in a utilitarian art that has now turned into collector's items.

Hooked rug with beaver, Canada, c. 1940, 
Textile Museum of Canada.

The most surprising element of the collection was a rugged hooked by Emily Carr.  Apparently she hooked rugs to make money and one of them went to England and has now been returned and is travelling with this exhibition.

I am wanting to take the three grandchildren next door over to see these rugs.  Why not get them into an Art Gallery.  I do remember reading that it is OK to take children into a gallery, just look at one or two pieces and then to leave.  The idea is to give them a taste of what is inside and get them out again before they get bored.

Getting bored is no problem here.  The rugs are curated into groupings that are interesting:  French Canada, the East Coast, farm scenes, one rug is named Laura Secord, so I shall try to tell them the story about Laura Secord before we get over there with the kids. And I think that might have been my favourite rug.

March 16th at noon there is an official Exhibition Tour of the Gallery by Michele Hardy.

There is a talk on March 23 called Textile and Texting: New Generations by Giuseppe di Leo.

March 30th, the noon hour talk is "Who are 'The Folk'?  Folkloristics and the Creation of a Subject" by Kevin Anderson.

Well, there you go.

Hope to see you at the Nickle.

At least if  you have even a passing curiosity about hooked rugs.  The exhibition is inside the gallery, on the upper floor.

Everyone Welcome - Always free!

Arta