“Is a collection ever complete?” asks Patricia Smith in the brochure which accompanied the exhibition of her Grenfell rugs at the American Folk Art Museum in 1994. Her answer? “After 150 or so rugs, the answer for me is yes…mostly.” Today that same collection remains almost in its entirety and will be offered in The Collection of Sanford L. Smith on January 30th. Patricia Smith, previously married to Sanford Smith, was the director of The Smith Gallery and a dedicated Grenfell rug collector. She and her husband both had an appreciation for folk art of different types and keen eyes for design and color.

Grenfell rugs were made in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador between about 1918 and 1940. They are hooked rugs with colorful designs depicting scenes of Northern life such as polar bears, huskies, puffins, geese, dog sled teams, and icebergs, to name a few. They were made mostly in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador where British medical officer Sir Wilfred Grenfell established a medical mission in 1892 at St. Anthony, Newfoundland. He admired the local craft of hooking rugs and turned the craft into a cottage industry, known as Grenfell Labrador Industries. The rugs, hooked by local women, were of the finest quality and sold to spas and resorts in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The rugs were originally hooked from strips of cotton and wool. After about 1928, they began using women’s nylon stockings as a cheap and available alternative. The Industrial even published ads in Canada, the United States and Great Britain, asking women to “save their silk stockings” and “let them run to Labrador!” They received crates full of stockings from all over the world. The sales of these rugs provided local women with their own income, or they exchanged their work for medical services and food and clothing vouchers. The local artists created mats from kits that included a design on burlap and hooking materials.

Patricia Smith fell in love with Grenfell rugs when she encountered her first in a Brimfield-type field one day. In the 1980s she collected the rugs and in 1988 the first exhibition including her rugs was shown at The Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San Jose, CA. In 1994, the American Folk Art Museum put together an exhibition titled Northern Scenes: Hooked Art of the Grenfell Mission which included a large selection of Mrs. Smith’s rugs and was curated by Grenfell rug expert, Paula Laverty. The exhibition went on to travel to several Canadian institutions and the next major US exhibition was at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont in 1996, followed by the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto, Ontario from 1999-2000. That showing of Patricia’s rugs was so successful, it traveled again across Canada through 2002. The success of these shows created a great interest in the rugs as folk art and in 2005, curator and expert Paula Laverty published her book Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission, which features some examples of the rugs in this collection or other similar examples.

The charming colors and designs of the Grenfell rugs are a visual reminder of the history of the women who spent the frigid “matting season” months of February and March hooking these mats and other wares. While they originally served a utilitarian purpose and were used as indoor rugs, placemats, tablemats, and sometimes even as purses and book covers, today they can be appreciated for their charm and contemporary feel. Patricia’s is an exemplary collection of this fine handicraft and honors the individual women makers.

Patricia Smith’s collection of Grenfell rugs will be offered in our upcoming sale, The Collection of Sanford L. Smith on January 30th.

CATALOGUE ONLINE: Friday, January 17

GALLERY PREVIEW

Friday, January 17: 9am – 5pm
Saturday, January 18: 11am – 5pm
Sunday, January 19: Closed
Monday, January 20: 9am – 5pm
Tuesday, January 21: 9am – 5pm
Wednesday, January 22: 9am – 5pm
Thursday, January 23: 9am – 5pm
Friday, January 24: 9am – 5pm
Saturday, January 25: 11am – 5pm
Sunday, January 26: Closed
Monday, January 27: 9am – 5pm
Tuesday, January 28: 9am – 5pm
Wednesday, January 29: 9am – 5pm