Our primary goal was to hold a rug registry “clinic” where we display, and register rugs to the OHCG’s Heritage Rug Registry. This is an important initiative to document the rugs, history and culture associated with rug hooking and their makers. There was a team on hand dedicated to displaying, registering, labelling and photographing these vintage treasures…and they were busy! More on that in another post.
Plus, we had a separate display of rugs by our own vintage treasure, Joyce Jones, who is still hooking at age 98 (she is currently working on a large William Morris design!). Many of her favourite rugs were on display.
As usual for a hook-in, we had several vendors with a wide variety of goods for sale. There were speakers, and treats and prizes! We also held a raffle for some interesting prizes, with the proceeds going to Grace Church’s school lunch program, providing a hot lunch to over 100 local high school students each week. We raised $359 for this worthwhile cause.
The 3 speakers all spoke on a topic related to vintage rugs. First up was Linda Alderdice in a pre-recorded interview via zoom, telling us about the importance of rug registries and how they work. Linda is the chair of the Ontario Hooking Craft Guild’s Heritage Rug Registry (as well as the president of the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia). Her enthusiasm for heritage rugs was clearly evident!
Next up, we heard from Katie Kennedy who is the curator of the Northumberland County Archives and Museum, telling us about the Archives and the new facility under construction. Her group is also working on an interesting project to interview local rug hookers in order to record their stories. Three members of the Northumberland Rug Hookers have been interviewed, with the hopes to add more stories in the near future.
Rounding out our collection of speakers was Roxanne Shaughnessy, Senior Curator and Manager of Collection at the Textile Museum of Canada. She brought along a wonderful slide show of rugs held in the collections of the Textile Museum.
Here are a few more photos from the day. There will be another post detailing more about the registry itself.
Thanks to everyone who attended (more than 100 of you!), and to the speakers, and the vendors….and to all of the volunteers who made this such a successful day.
More to come on rug registries in a subsequent post.
