Hooking the Antique Look

After many years of hooking in smaller cuts and with brighter colors, I suddenly had a hankering to make a rug that looks as old as the hills. This idea started with an antique frame. Well, it really started way back in March of 2009 with Janice Lee.

Of course, many of us started hooking because we loved antique rugs and wanted to mimic that look. After I had learned to hook in September of 2008, I eagerly drove to Valley, Nebraska, every single Friday afternoon to hook at Janice Lee's Rug Hooking Store. Having that weekly group of rug hookers spurred me to hook as many hours of the day as I could. Janice was hooking a rug or two a week, and that became my goal. Sometimes I DID finish a rug in a week, but I don't think anyone can match Janice's output! My first-ever workshop was all about Heirloom Rug Techniques, taught by Janice in March of '09.

This is my Kopp Floral, adapted from page 69 of the book, "American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot" by Joel and Kate Kopp. I had been hooking for seven months at this point. In Janice's group, we were always looking for new challenges, and we grew like weeds! Notice the straight-line hooking in the background of this rug, one of the attributes of antique rugs. Also, note how the side-scrolls and corner-scrolls look like the rug hooker ran out of certain woolens and had to make do with something else. This only adds to the charm.

Here's the original on page 69 of the Kopp book.

The Table of Contents for Janice's valuable workbook for her Heirloom Rug Workshop

I was obsessed back then with the history of rug hooking, and my copy of "American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot" by Joel and Kate Kopp--as well as other similar books--was a constant inspiration. (You can still find the Kopp book, out of print and a little pricey.). For Janice's class, I decided to try to replicate the floral on page 69, originally hooked sometime between 1885 and 1895, photos above.

Janice provided each of us with a three-ring binder--I still have mine today. It's full of excellent handouts with photos to demonstrate each technique. I've taken dozens of workshops since then, and I have never received such substantive written material from a teacher since that first class with Janice.

The Kopps note that this rug is in a private collection and was likely hooked between 1900 and 1910.

This antique floral adaptation led to my next one, another Kopp rug, whose symbolic imagery and umber-colored beauty will always intrigue and fascinate me! Who was the woman, back at the turn of the 20th Century, who hooked herself, standing on her little mat, seeming to implore a moon-like supreme being shining above the Tree of Life? To her left, we see vines entwined and festooned with hearts, which symbolized lovers who had been separated in life. In the stories ofTristan and Iseult or Barbara Allen, for instance, the vines planted on two lovers' graves would grow together, joining them in death at last.

On the far left edge of the rug is the man whom she desires in a golden halo. Is he a lost love? A young husband who died? Is he simply the imagined lover she yearns to meet and marry? Another interpretation is that she hooked this rug to commemorate her wedding, and perhaps she is offering a prayer of gratitude. Perhaps the vines are a symbol of the couple's love, which will last forever, even beyond their lives on earth. We can't know the mind and heart of this artist. The meaning of her rug will be forever mysterious, but thank goodness this incredible piece has been preserved by a collector and published by the Kopps.

And by gosh, I had to adapt it myself. My pattern was very large, but I was on fire. It took me three weeks.

This is my version of the rug on pages 96-97 of the Kopp book. I call it my Kopp Wedding Rug, hooked in 2009.

[There's an ongoing conversation about whether we should adapt these images of antique rugs from books like the Kopps'. To my knowledge, it's not illegal, so long as 70 years have passed since the artist's death. But still, it is an ethical question, and though opinions abound, there are no definitive answers. I don't benefit from my adaptations, and I hope these rugs honor the original folk-artists and Joel and Kate Kopp.]

Fast-forward to my purchase of an old tramp-art frame from Janice maybe a dozen years ago. I found the frame irresistible, and yet it has sat empty on top of a pie safe (also bought from Janice) until recently, when I started to think about hooking something to fill it.

I paused the tv and snapped a photo with my phone. It looked like the "old-as-dirt" kind of image I wanted to hook for the tramp-art frame.

Last winter, I was watching TV, and whoa! An image caught my eye. I snapped a blurry photo on my phone. Loons on a pond. Golds and greens. This image was my jumping-off point for a new-old rug. I wanted to make something that could have been found in the back of a dusty old shop.

Beading and using some old noodles from long ago were part of the pleasures of hooking this rug.

One of the fun parts was beading the backs of the loons to get the dotted look of their plumage. I dug into a bag of very old noodles in a #8-cut for the darks and off-whites for beading. Most of this little rug is hooked in a #7 using woolens I cut for this project.

Do we all know the technique called "beading"? It's when we use two strips at one time, hooking alternate loops with one color and then the other color. Beading can create a bump or a ridge on the back of the rug, so it's not recommended for floor rugs. But if your rug will live on the wall or in a frame like mine--bead away. This technique is great for beauty lines and many other features in hooked rugs.

I used a couple of these wools for the finer patterning of loon feathers.

I gathered some wool for hooking loon feathers. I don't think I used all of these, but I remember one of them was very thready. Thready wools are a pain to hook, but the reward is worth it for me.

I'll include a final photo below, friends, but I'll finish by saying how DOWNRIGHT DELIGHTFUL it's been to come back to hooking an heirloom style rug. It won't be my last. Thank you for reading my Noodlings today, and Happy Hooking!