Silk Stocking Mats

Beginning in 1928, the Grenfell Mission sent out a call to socialites: "When your stockings run, let them run to Labrador!" The creative recycling of tattered stockings, dyed in soft hues, is just one of many innovations that made Grenfell hooked mats highly collectible folk art. In Silk Stocking Mats, Paula Laverty chronicles the development of a local craft into an art form. For generations Newfoundland women had augmented their family's unreliable fishing income with a "matting season" in February and March. Through the Grenfell Mission's Industrial Department, set up in 1909 to help develop cottage industries, the mat industry became an increasingly important source of income reaching peak production in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the women's mats became renowned for their strong design, meticulous craftsmanship, and distinctive northern images chronicling life in the north. Reindeer, sled dog teams, polar bears, schooners, outports, and florals are but a few of the mat designs.Silk Stocking Mats is the result of over seventeen years of exhaustive research and draws on personal interviews with older women who recall their hooking days, the study of hundreds of archival documents, and careful examination of countless Grenfell hooked mats. Laverty's book is beautifully illustrated with photographs and descriptions including rare and unusual as well as common mat designs.

Beginning in 1928, the Grenfell Mission sent out a call to socialites: When your stockings run, let them run to Labrador! The creative recycling of tattered stockings, dyed in soft hues, is just one of many innovations that made Grenfell hooked mats highly collectible folk art. In Silk Stocking Mats, Paula Laverty chronicles the development of a local craft into an art form. For generations Newfoundland women had augmented their family's unreliable fishing income with a matting season in February and March. Through the Grenfell Mission's Industrial Department, set up in 1909 to help develop cottage industries, the mat industry became an increasingly important source of income, reaching peak production in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the women's mats became renowned for their strong design, meticulous craftsmanship, and distinctive images chronicling life in the north. Reindeer, sled dog teams, polar bears, schooners, outports, and florals are but a few of the mat designs. Silk Stocking Mats is the result of over seventeen years of exhaustive research and draws on personal interviews with older women who recall their hooking days, the study of hundreds of archival documents, and careful examination of countless Grenfell hooked mats. Laverty's book is beautifully illustrated with photographs and descriptions, including rare and unusual as well as common mat designs.

This edited volume gathers eight cases of industrial materials development, broadly conceived, from North America, Europe and Asia over the last 200 years. Whether given utility as building parts, fabrics, pharmaceuticals, or foodstuffs, whether seen by their proponents as human-made or “found in nature,” materials result from the designation of some matter as both knowable and worth knowing about. In following these determinations we learn that the production of physical novelty under industrial, imperial and other cultural conditions has historically accomplished a huge range of social effects, from accruals of status and wealth to demarcations of bodies and geographies. Among other cases, New Materials traces the beneficent self-identity of Quaker asylum planners who devised soundless metal cell locks in the early 19th century, and the inculcation of national pride attending Taiwanese carbon-fiber bicycle parts in the 21st; the racialized labor organizations promoted by California orange breeders in the 1910s, and bureaucratized distributions of blame for deadly high-rise fires a century later. Across eras and global regions New Materials reflects circumstances not made clear when technological innovation is explained solely as a by-product of modernizing impulses or critiqued simply as a craving for profit. Whether establishing the efficacy of nano-scale pharmaceuticals or the tastiness of farmed catfish, proponents of new materials enact complex political ideologies. In highlighting their actors’ conceptions of efficiency, certainty, safety, pleasure, pain, faith and identity, the authors reveal that to produce a “new material” is invariably to preserve other things, to sustain existing values and social structures.

A visual how-to guide on the craft of tufting rugs, home decor, and more from the duo behind Tuft the World, the tufting company that has helped launch and educate a new generation of tufters. Tuft the World is an easy-to-follow and beautifully illustrated guide to tufting, whether you’re creating your first project or are a seasoned tufter. Brought to you by the preeminent experts in the machine-tufting field, this detailed crafting guide shows you, through step-by-step instructions and 175 full-color photographs, how to create contemporary, stylish, and enjoyable machine-tufted rugs, clothes, and objects. Within these pages, you'll learn about: Tufting machines, materials, and techniques Workspace setup How to create projects from start to finish, including everything from a bathmat, bedside rug, shawl collar, or chair slipcover to a picture frame, sculptural work of art, or stunning tufted cat tree! Contemporary rug artists and their designs The history of tufting and some of the women and men whose inventions brought the craft to life And more Unlike online videos about tufting, this book is a long-lasting reference showcasing the versatility and creativity of the craft by the experts—a highly accessible, thorough, and enriching guide. Included throughout are sidebars on the historical context for amateur and professional rug-making in America and spotlights on current tufting makers. This much-needed companion introduces and expands knowledge for the many new and experienced tufters interested in the booming craft of machine-tufted rugs and decor. Inspiring and simple to follow, this book is sure to make a tufter out of anyone.

Through a close look at the history of the modernist hooked rug, this book raises important questions about the broader history of American modernism in the first half of the twentieth century. Although hooked rugs are not generally associated with the avant-garde, this study demonstrates that they were a significant part of the artistic production of many artists engaged in modernist experimentation. Cynthia Fowler discusses the efforts of Ralph Pearson and of Zoltan and Rosa Hecht to establish modernist hooked rug industries in the 1920s, uncovering a previously undocumented history. The book includes a consideration of the rural workers used to create the modernist narrative of the hooked rug, as cottage industries were established throughout the rural Northeast and South to serve the ever increasing demand for hooked rugs by urban consumers. Fowler closely examines institutional enterprises that highlighted and engaged the modernist hooked rugs, such as key exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1930s and '40s. This study reveals the fluidity of boundaries among art, craft and design, and the profound efforts of a devoted group of modernists to introduce the general public to the value of modern art.

From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth century, the evangelical Protestant Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, created a network of hospitals, schools, orphanages, stores, and industries with the goal of bringing health and organized society to settler fisherfolk and Indigenous populations. This infrastructure also served to support resource extraction of fisheries off Labrador's coast. In Slow Disturbance Rafico Ruiz engages with the Grenfell Mission to theorize how settler colonialism establishes itself through what he calls infrastructural mediation—the ways in which colonial lifeworlds, subjectivities, and affects come into being through the creation and maintenance of infrastructures. Drawing on archival documents, maps, interviews with municipal officials, teachers, and residents, as well as his field photography, Ruiz shows how the mission's infrastructural mediation—from its attempts to restructure the local economy to the aerial surveying and mapping of the coastline—responded to the colony's environmental conditions in ways that expanded the bounds of the settler frontier. By tracing the mission's history and the mechanisms that enabled its functioning, Ruiz complicates understandings of mediation and infrastructure while expanding current debates surrounding settler colonialism and extractive capitalism.

Dr Wilfred Grenfell, physician and folk hero, recruited thousands of volunteer workers for his Newfoundland and Labrador seamen's mission, many of them Americans from Ivy League institutions. As the medical mission grew to become the International Grenfell Association, establishing institutions along the Labrador and northern Newfoundland coasts, Americans also became resident staff leaders in the region, and Grenfell himself married an American, Anne MacClanahan, who led mission activities. The Grenfell Medical Mission and American Support in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1890s-1940s reveals the nature and extent of support from Americans throughout the distributed privately run social enterprise until the 1940s, before the region joined Canada. Essays explore the organization's claims to share an Anglo-Saxon heritage with the United States, American reaction to its financial scandal and creation of an incorporated association, its promotion of sport and masculinity, and the development of education and schools in the region and the mission. The organization's strong ties to the United States are exemplified by Grenfell's friendship with American physician John Harvey Kellogg; the donation of clothing from American donors; the work of one American woman on her affiliated mission unit; the impact of American philanthropy and training on the construction of the mission's main hospital in St Anthony; and the superior American-accredited health care facilities and their clinical achievements. From its corporate base in New York City, the International Grenfell Association blended contemporary social movements and adopted American notions of philanthropy. The Grenfell Medical Mission and American Support in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1890s-1940s offers the first thorough history of an iconic health and social organization in Atlantic Canada.

New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Gift Books of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, House Beautiful, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, Luxe Interiors + Design, People StyleWatch, Garden & Gun, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, and more John Derian’s home goods empire reaches far and wide—in addition to the four John Derian stores he owns in New York and Massachussetts, his products are sold by more than 600 retailers worldwide, including Neiman Marcus, ABC, and Gump’s in the United States; Conran and Liberty in the UK; and Astier de Villatte in Paris. It all started with his now-iconic collectible plates decoupaged with 19th-century artwork sourced from old and rare books, a process that credited him with elevating the decoupage technique into fine art. Over the past 25 years, the brand has expanded greatly to include home and general design gifts and products. Now, for the first time ever, comes the book John Derian fans have been waiting for. Culled from the thousands of images that have appeared in his biannual collections, here is an astoundingly beautiful assortment of nearly 300 full-bleed images in their original form. From intensely colored flowers and birds to curious portraits, hand-drawn letters, and breathtaking landscapes, the best of John Derian is here. The result is an oversized object of desire, a work of art in and of itself, that brilliantly walks the line between commerce and art, and that is destined to become the gift book of the season.