American Rugs
By Estelle H. Ries
World Publishing Company
1950

As you can see this excellent little book has been around a while. I found it in the throw-away bin of a used book store. I’m always looking for books on rugs, carpets and tapestries, and free is my favorite price. I think I would have paid good money for this one, however. If you wish it can be found on Amazon but–as you might guess–not for free.

This little time-capsule of a book is less than 70 pages long. While the average book is usually 9×8, this diminutive beauty is closer to 7×5. It contains 61 black and white illustrations and 6 colored plates. The plain yellow cover displays a much lovelier–if slightly tattered–hooked rug. It’s short enough so you won’t get bored reading it and long enough so you might learn something about American rugs.

It starts with a discussion of rag rugs in colonial times and how the weavers of the day, primarily housewives, had to make rugs with whatever fabric presented itself: most likely rags, remnants of family clothing. It ends with a chapter titled “Modern Hooked Rugs.” The author complains that most modern hooked rugs are made “on stamped patterns…which have little in common with the improvisions and spontaneous productions, unique and unduplicated, of the individual craftsman.” Keep in mind that “modern” in this book means over half a century ago. I wonder what she would have thought about the instructional video I watched on You Tube the other day on how to hook a rug. Doubtless there are plenty of “stamped patterns” still out there, but surely there must be some “improvisions and spontaneous productions” also.

There’s a chapter on Navajo rug making for those of you who think Native-American decorative arts went unappreciated until the last twenty years or so. The author, writing in the 1940s feels that the earliest rugs were the most beautiful because the dyes produced by herbs and berries were far superior to the modern “coal-tar” colors. Are “coal-tar” colors the best we can do today, sixty years later?

Most of the book is taken up with a discussion of hooked rugs. At first, in common with all American rugs, it was the housewife that produced them in hopes of beautifying and warming her home. They weren’t made during the early colonial period, but sometime after 1700 they caught on and by the 19th century the author estimates that the average housewife in cold New England could produce two hooked rugs a year. Apparently the time available for creating works of art had increased greatly since the colonial period. While some of the designs are crude, some show a great deal of talent.

Unfortunately few hooked rugs produced before 1850 survive, and by 1890 they were being tossed aside in favor of machine manufactured rugs. Once proudly handed down from mother to daughter, they became little more than trash. Fortunately they were discovered by collectors before disappearing completely. As noted earlier, this book was written more than half a century ago: Googling the keywords “hooked rugs” brought 506,000 responses; certainly their fame lives on; and not just in old books if the online instructional videos I found mean anything. Look, for example, at the list of books on American Hooked and Sewn Rugs.