Arts & Crafts
Rug Renaissance
What to know before you buy.
By Dasha O. Morgan
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| A reproduction Gustav Stickley drugget rug—in
a flat weave, with an overlapping geometric pattern—is
on display in the living room of Craftsman Farms, his New Jersey
home, now the Stickley museum and a National Historic Landmark.
Photo Courtesy of Ray Stubblebine/The Craftsman Farms Foundation
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Rugs were an important part of Arts & Crafts houses. Far more
than mere floor coverings, their colors, textures, and patterns
helped integrate house and furnishings in the pursuit of a totally
designed environment. Many folks who own or restore these houses
today appreciate the creativity in their brick or stone fireplaces,
or the beauty of their wood mouldings and floors, and look to add
the finishing touch with an area rug. For lovers of bungalows, Prairie-school
houses, and other buildings from the early 20th-century, the search
often revolves around rugs with an Arts & Crafts aesthetic.
As the current revival of the Arts & Crafts movement continues
to grow, it has sparked a veritable rug renaissance that has been
unfolding for almost a decade. Every year, companies increase the
number of handsome reproductions on the market, and one can now
find rugs of all types in all price ranges and from all over the
world. Like reproductions of oak furniture and copper lighting,
today there are more options for Arts & Crafts rugs than ever
before—and with them comes a wealth of ways to complete an
Arts & Crafts home.
RUGS AT 1900
What is an Arts & Crafts rug? It’s a good question to
ask if you’re looking to buy, yet tricky to answer given that
the Arts & Crafts movement was not a style but a group of ideas,
a point of view. Since the movement rejected superfluous ornamentation,
and had a visual vocabulary inspired by nature, rugs typically featured
simple, bold, informal design themes rooted in the great outdoors.
Some favorite earthy (and highly stylized) motifs were gingko leaves,
thistles, flowers and, in the case of William Morris designs, willow
trees.
What Arts & Crafts rugs looked like at the turn of the century
certainly varied. Colorways ran the spectrum from hallmark moss
greens and shades of gold to more vibrant, gemstone-inspired palettes.
Rug patterns also took many forms; from a single stylized element
intertwined throughout, to a simple color block center with repeating
border, to combinations of the two. Construction ran the gamut too,
from hand- or machine-made tufted rugs imported from Europe, to
flat-woven rugs, such as those made by Native Americans, to hand-hooked
rugs made in America (see sidebar, right). A famous example of the
latter were the Abnakee rugs created by Helen Albee, sparse designs
sold at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition sponsored by Gustav Stickley
in 1903. Stickley himself sold a few rugs—mostly coarse, flat-woven
Indian druggets with plain, overlapping geometric patterns that
exemplified his thinking on floor coverings. In his 1910 catalogue,
he noted that rugs should be “unobtrusive in design,”
and give, “a quiet and harmonious background to the furnishings.”
While a variety of designs were woven on power looms by a host of
American manufacturers, those with the pocketbook could buy—or
commission—hand-knotted Persian-style rugs based on the designs
of William Morris manufactured in England, or others by architect
C.F.A.Voysey made in Ireland by a firm called Donegal Carpets.
Donegal is the only producer of Arts & Crafts rugs in the 19th
century that continues to make them today. It was founded in 1898
by Scottish textile magnate Alexander Morton, who established a
hand-woven rug plant on the west coast of Ireland, drawing on the
talents of locals who had worked with wool and weaving for generations.
ORIGINAL ISSUES
Most original Arts & Crafts rugs were quite coarsely woven by
today’s standards, featuring a count of between 25 and 45
knots per square inch in tufted rugs. Knots form the pile, so a
higher count means a thicker, plusher rug; for comparison, a fine
rug with intricate designs has 200 to 300 knots per square inch.
These coarse weaves were in keeping with the simple and informal
Arts & Crafts designs—a backlash against the fussy patterns
popular during the Victorian era—and manufacturers were able
to use thicker wool to achieve these designs. (The lifespan of the
rug, however, is sometimes shorter than rugs with a higher knot
count.) Unrefined as they might appear, Arts & Crafts rugs were
sold at upscale venues like Liberty of London and Stickley’s
Craftsman showrooms in Boston and New York.
“Donegals were actually intended to be a lower-budget substitute
for Morris carpets,” says Tracy Davis, Donegal’s Director
of Operations. Because Morris’s rugs were made in England,
they were more expensive to produce. The rugs also differed a bit
in their construction. Morris carpets used cotton for the warp,
which forms the fringes, and some sort of bast (woody) fiber like
jute, linen, or hemp for the weft—the filling thread that
secures the knots in the pile. Donegals were usually constructed
using only wool for the warp, weft, and pile.
From a technical standpoint, Davis says using cotton or bast fiber
for the foundation can result in better dimensional stability, since
those fibers don’t stretch much when wet, like wool can. But
wool has the upside of being impervious to rot and other fungal
problems that attack bast. In terms of longevity, “It’s
really probably about a wash,” notes Davis.
The dying processes differed as well. Scholars believe Morris only
used natural dyes in his carpets, consistent with his overall philosophy.
“He was a purist,” explains Davis. Donegal, on the other
hand, used synthetic dyes that were less labor-intensive. A century
ago, there were downsides to both methods. “Morris’s
lack of dying expertise resulted in pieces that are somewhat washed-out
looking,” says Davis, “while the original Donegals were
garish in color.” Nowadays, of course, dying technology has
been perfected for decades, and you can find quality, long-lasting
rugs made from a number of materials—wool, silk, and mohair
among them—in both natural and synthetic dyes (also called
chrome dyes).
CHOICES, CHOICES
Today, the rug industry sees Arts & Crafts as a new niche market,
and suppliers are making every effort to offer products true to
the roots of the movement’s ideals—an emphasis on craftsmanship,
quality, and informality. The biggest price differentials stem from
the type of manufacturing process and the kinds of materials used
in weaving the rug. For example, a rug that’s machine-loomed
out of wool will be much less expensive than one of the same design
hand-knotted out of mohair. Nowadays Arts & Crafts rug production
is also a global industry, ranging from England and Scotland to
Tibet, Nepal, India, and China.
Modern rug manufacturers seek inspiration from the leading designers
of the Arts & Crafts period—Morris, Stickley, Voysey,
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Dard Hunter. Current rugs can be
found in a number of original patterns, as well as some looser interpretations
of designs from the era. In a way, the most important choice an
old-house owner has to make is the nature of design he or she hopes
to find—original, historical, or interpretive—because
almost all exist in a variety of materials and prices. There are
so many creative Arts & Crafts rugs on the market today, it’s
hard to categorize their design provenance beyond some general groupings.
An authentic design is a copy of an original rug—for example,
one designed by Voysey that was first in production over a hundred
years ago. Donegal Carpets still offers such rugs—hand-knotted
on the historic looms of its Killybegs factory, which were reopened
in 1999. These Irish originals, however, come at a price (about
$250 per square foot). As an alternative, Donegal also offers a
line of eight authentic carpets that are produced in India in pure
wool. These designs—most of which haven’t been seen
for nearly a hundred years—are re-created from their archives
and are more reasonably priced at approximately $55 a square foot.
The J.R. Burrows & Company of Rockland, Massachusetts, is another
example of an authentic design source. They feature exact reproductions
of rugs by Morris that are woven to order in England on Wilton or
Brussels looms of 80% wool and 20% nylon. One of these, the Tulip
& Lily pattern, designed by Morris in 1875, is considered among
the best known Arts & Crafts Movement carpets, and is one of
the only 19th century designs to be kept in current production throughout
the 20th century. A third approach is JAX Arts & Crafts of Berea,
Kentucky, which works hard to create rugs as true as possible to
the originals down to the knot count and yarns used. JAX began in
the early 1990s when owner Del Martin and his wife Jerri were dissatisfied
with Turkish copies of Donegal rugs they bought for their own home.
“I’m obsessive about getting reproductions exactly right,”
says Del. Their company now offers a wide range of authentic designs,
from William Morris to Gustav Stickley, made in Nepal and China,
with their hooked rugs going for about $12.50 per square foot.
Rugs with historically based designs take original Arts & Crafts
motifs or patterns that were initially created for a different medium:
applying a Dard Hunter border, for example, or a Morris curtain,
to a rug instead of paper or fabric. These are authentic designs
of the movement, but they’re being used in a totally new way.
Some rugs even combine the work of two different people, like Voysey
and Morris. The sources for these designs are abundant, and there
are countless versions of them.
Stickley Furniture of Manlius, New York, first started offering
rugs in 1999 and has many historically based designs. All the rugs
in their Arts & Crafts series are hand-knotted in wool and of
heirloom quality; most are made in Nepal. Their Falling Leaves and
Light Tulip Fest patterns have been quite popular; both feature
botanical designs and retail for about $67 a square foot for standard
sizes. The Persian Carpet of Durham, North Carolina, has a host
of historic designs as well that are hand-knotted in India from
imported New Zealand wool.
Another group of rugs, sometimes described as ‘interpretive’
or ‘inspired’, take design ideas from artifacts within
the Arts & Crafts movement—a carving from a Mackintosh
desk, for example, or one component of a complex Frank Lloyd Wright
stained glass window—and turn it into the building block for
a rug. These rugs are some of the most popular today because they
have been specifically created with modern-day tastes in mind. For
instance, Tiger Rug of Warwick, Rhode Island, offers designs that
emulate motifs from the Craftsman catalog of Gustav Stickley in
a line made in Nepal. The Meadow collection from Nature’s
Loom features about a dozen Arts & Crafts inspired designs,
all hand-knotted in wool and made in India. Peerless rugs of Chicago
has a large group of rugs based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s windows
and architecture, many of which are made-to-order, also in Nepal.
The bottom line is, there’s a rich array of quality, interesting,
and beautiful floor coverings available to complement today’s
Arts & Crafts homes. Like buying antiques or artwork, choosing
which rugs best fit into your décor is a matter of color
scheme, pocketbook, and personal taste—the same criteria for
making Arts & Crafts rug purchases at the beginning of the last
century, too.
Dasha O. Morgan has been the editor of Rug News magazine for
five years.
| New Rugs |
| Manufacturer |
Design |
J.R. Burrows & Company
www.burrows.com |
authentic & historic |
Capel Inc.
www.capelrugs.com |
historic (Native American) |
Donegal Carpets USA
www.donegalcarpets.com |
authentic & historic |
Fair Oaks Workshops
www.fairoak.com |
authentic & historic |
French Accents Rugs & Tapestries
www.farugs.com |
authentic & historic |
Jax Arts & Crafts Rugs
www.jaxrugs.com |
authentic & historic |
NatureÍs Loom
www.naturesloom.com |
historic & interpretive |
Northfield Carpets International, LLC
www.northfieldcarpets.com |
historic |
Nourison
www.nourison.com |
interpretive |
Peerless Imported Rugs
www.peerlessrugs.com |
interpretive |
Persian Carpet Inc.
www.persiancarpet.com |
historic |
L. & J.G. Stickley
www.stickley.com |
historic & interpretive |
Tiger Rug Co.
phone: (401) 739-8595 |
interpretive |
| Antique Rugs |
Rahmanan Antique & Decorative Rugs, LLC
www.rahmanan.com |
|
David Cook
www.davidcookfine americanart.com |
(Native American) |
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A Production Primer
Rugs can be made a number of different ways,
from many different fibers. Typical yarns are made from
silk or wool, sometimes mixed with synthetics.
Hand knotted: Colored yarns are knotted by hand onto
a warp backing; the long ends are then sheared to create
a pile. Persian and Oriental rugs are hand knotted.
Flat weave: Colored weft yarns are woven through the
warps to create patterns. These rugs have no pile; some
examples are Kilims and Dhurries.
Hand hooked: A tufting gun—working much like
an oversized needle—is used to push and pull the
yarn through a pre-woven grid foundation. The yarn loops
are left intact to form a characteristically knobby
pile. Many craft rugs are hand hooked.
Hand tufted: Made with a tufting gun as above, but
yarn loops are then sheared, exposing the thread ends
for a soft and plush pile.
Machine made: Rugs are woven on mechanical looms, many
of these are made from synthetic yarns (olefin, nylon).
The Native Element
Because a connection to the natural world was an overarching
theme of the Arts & Crafts movement, Native American
rugs—particularly Navajo—were also often prized.
“Native American handicrafts were idealized by many
Arts and Crafts practitioners, who believed that American
Indians lived in harmony with nature and represented a
vanishing culture worthy of preservation,” explains
David Cathers, a leading Arts & Crafts scholar.
Capel Rugs has a modern line called Woven Spirits, based
on Native American designs and created on authentic, vertical,
Navajo looms. All are hand woven, signed by the artisan,
and made in either Mexico or India. It’s also possible
to find original Native American rugs at auction.
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