Rug Designer Helen R Albee

Illustration: Helen R Albee. Hooked rug design in two tones of chocolate and brown, with sketchy motifs  in apple green, 1906.

Helen Albee was by no means the inventor of hooked rugs, but she was able to take an indigenous rural craft medium found in New England, and turn it into a highly successful design orientated venture that proved to be one of the most popular of the American rug making schemes seen at the beginning of the twentieth century.

These Abanakee rugs as they became known were derived from work that had traditionally been produced by the farming communities of New Hampshire. Odd scraps of fabric from worn out clothing were cut into strips and then drawn through rough canvas with hooks, hence the name hooked rugs. Many were produced in rural communities through necessity. They were often crude and were strictly produced for domestic consumption. It was Albee who had the foresight to notice that if the rugs were produced with an element of design and with a careful choice of both fabric and colour, an extra income could conceivably be procured for local farm women who were the original producers of the hooked rugs. These were often women with no outlet for financial betterment and were from families and communities that often struggled to make ends meet.

Illustration: Helen R Albee. Hooked rug design in green, red, orange, brown and black, 1906.

Albee reorganised and to a large extent, reinvented the hooked rug. She no longer used redundant second hand fabrics, but dyed her own, producing large amounts of subtly graduated tones using a number of colours, all of which were used in order to both blend and harmonise the finished rugs to both their compositions and their larger interior surroundings.

The rugs went through a series of decorative incarnations, but eventually Albee settled on forms that followed some of the geometrical elements of oriental and Native American formats. However, she was always careful not to follow these recognisably decorative formats too closely as she felt that indigenous originality was much more important than the copying of successful international styles that obviously belonged to other cultures and regions. 

Illustration: Helen R Albee. Hooked rug design in apple green, 1906.

Albee and her endeavour proved to be extremely successful both creatively and financially. Her locally produced craft rugs fitted comfortably into the framework provided by the American Arts & Crafts movement, with Albee and her rugs featuring more than once in Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman magazine. Unfortunately, the illustrations shown in this article, although actually from one of The Craftsman features, were originally produced in black and white, therefore none of the subtleties of the rugs colour tones can be seen. However, the compositional design work is impressive and shows that Albee clearly understood both the medium and some relatively progressive ideas concerning the effect that could be achieved with particular attention to colour gradation and minimal pattern intrusion. I have included a description of the colours that were originally intended for each of the designed rugs. These descriptions can be seen under each illustration shown in this article.

Illustration: Helen R Albee. Hooked rug design in red and blue, 1906.

Albee, through her own strength of character and belief in the merit of the medium of hooked rugs, or at least her belief in what she thought was conceivably possible to achieve, produced an independent and wholly unique example of American homegrown craft. It was individuals of the calibre of Albee that helped to structure the uniqueness that was such an important element of the American Arts & Crafts movement. A movement that may well have had its origins in that of British Arts & Crafts, but was to produce a whole range of indigenous craft mediums that were rooted deep in the American experience and, as in Albee's decorative rugs, helped to give character and focus to the movement.

Illustration: Helen R Albee. Hooked rug design, 1904.

Helen Albee's popular book Abnakee Rugs was produced at the height of her success and gives some interesting insights into her abilities and her judgements as far as American homegrown crafts are concerned.

Further reading links:
Abnakee Rugs
Rug Hooking in Maine 1838-1940
The Rug Hooker's Bible: The Best from 30 Years of Jane Olson's Rugger's Roundtable [With Pattern]
Pictorial Hooked Rugs
The Complete Book of Rug Hooking
Rags to Rugs: Hooked and Handsewn Rugs of Pennsylvania
Hooked Rugs: An American Folk Art
Creating an Antique Look in Hand-hooked Rugs (Framework)
Hooked Rugs: History and the Continuing Tradition
Geometric Hooked Rugs: Color and Design (Framework)
Hooked on Wool: Rugs, Quilts, And More
American Hooked and Sewn Rugs: Folk Art Underfoot
The Rug Hook Book: Techniques, Projects And Patterns For This Easy, Traditional Craft
The lore and lure of hooked rugs,
Celebration of Hand-hooked Rugs (Rug Hooking)
Rug Art - Rescued From Oblivion: A Hooked Rug Museum of North America Research project
The Complete Guide to Collecting Hooked Rugs: Unrolling the Secrets
The Secrets of Color in Hand-Hooked Rugs: Your Complete Guide to Selecting and Choosing Color
American Hooked Rug Patterns (International Design Library)
The Americana Collection: Hooked Rugs (That Patchwork Place)

The Textile Artwork of Altoon Sultan

Illustration: Altoon Sultan. Turquoise Circles.

Textile art can take many forms and use many mediums. In recent years a number of craft processes not usually associated with textile art have been incorporated by some of the more enterprising and non-judgemental artists. Some of the skills that have been incorporated into textile art include many that were considered to be the lesser craft skills, most of which were on a strictly amateur basis and have rarely if ever seen any professional aspect to their medium. These include such staples of the amateur world as crochet, macrame, hooked and rag rugging, to name only a few.

Illustration: Altoon Sultan. Boxed Circles.

Hooked rugs have always been seen as belonging to a world of instant necessity and practical need. The skill of hooked rugging was never considered part of any Arts & Crafts revival or even part of a middle class accomplishment package that was expected from every woman before and after marriage. These art and craft packages would usually include such skills as drawing, needlework and weaving, but could include some of the more unusual craft skills such as metalwork and ceramics. Rug making itself has a very high standard of achievement and status. When it was strictly in the field of weave, embroidery or even print it could and was often considered to be an art form in itself. However, rag and hooked rugs were another matter entirely and were rarely if ever mentioned in the same format and were not seen as a skill or part of any other medium. These rugs were strictly the property of some of the lowest and most poorly paid members of society. The skill has therefore been tarnished with an image of low social status and inapproachability.

Illustration: Altoon Sultan. Tiles.

Altoon Sultan is a Vermont based fine artist who sees no stigma or prejudice in the skill of hooked rug making and has incorporated it effortlessly into her fine art work as a process of that art rather than as a minor support skill. She has a subtle eye for both texture and colour variation, as can be seen in the images shown in this article, all of which are the work of Sultan. For the artist it is not just a matter of producing a pattern out of the hooking technique, there is also the much subtler use of the direction that the loops take within the composition. Some compositions switch the direction with a change of colour or texture, while others use the change of loop direction in order to add a subtle pattern for the eye to follow.

Illustration: Altoon Sultan. Ovals.

Whereas the traditional hooked rug technique used scraps of fabric that could not be utilised for any other domestic use, and therefore were limited as to the range of the creative process, Sultan does not have this problem. Her fabrics can be individually and subtly dyed to produce a close range of colour shades and tones making the work appear both coordinated and connected. Each piece or ruglet, is an individual and unique process, from initial sketch and composition, through to the dyeing and hand picking of fabric strips, to the actual making.

These pieces are not rugs and cannot be placed on the floor. They are art pieces for the wall only. This is not to say that Sultan finds that there is something embarrassing about the medium or the skill involved in hooked rug making. It says much more about her being able to see the medium outside its narrow confines, often narrowed by outside elements rather than within the medium.

By highlighting the work of Altoon Sultan, it shows that no process within the textile world should be considered lower and less significant than another. All are processes that were learnt and handed down across generations and all have value. If we start to rationalise and grade the differing skills and techniques that are part of the large and varied world of art and craft textiles then we are also guilty of rationalising and grading the generations of people who, usually through necessity produced and honed those skills in the first place.

Illustration: Altoon Sultan. Blue Circle, Red Triangle.

Altoon Sultan has an interesting and comprehensive blog where her thought processes and methods of work can be seen in much greater detail than I have shown here. Her blog Studio and Garden can be found here.

The images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:
Altoon Sultan blog