Evolution of floor coverings

Why make hooked mats?

Though mats were hooked for functional purposes – to warm the floor, stop the cold from coming in through windows and doors and to sell in exchange for necessities, they were also pieces of art, objects of beauty, and became even more so over the years.

Indeed, hooked mats were subject to a certain hierarchy. As Thérèse Melanson and Simone Smith explain, a new mat would be placed at the living room door, the prized position in the house. When a new mat was made and the living room mat used and worn, it would be moved to the kitchen, and then sometimes out to the barn. Others report that nice mats were often placed upside down (to keep them clean) and only turned over when the priest, minister or other important company came calling.

Becoming increasingly comfortable showing their mats, although not always at ease calling themselves artists, women started exhibiting their creations outside of the home and at local shops.

At their most popular, county fairs and exhibitions proved to be great places for women to show their mats. Whole sections were dedicated to decorative arts and home crafts (or women’s fancy work as it was sometimes called). Some artists even had their pieces shown in Boston and New York like Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard. Pegi Nicol MacLeod exhibited a mat she designed, possibly hooked by “Mrs. J. Pye Weed White” at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and won a prize at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for her mat, Corn Poni. This exhibiting catapulted the status of mats from functional objects to works of art. Many makers did not perceive themselves as artists; the very act of submitting a mat to a gallery or museum for viewing and judging, was quite a step.

Even the very prolific Ida Boudreau started raising the price of her mats after being featured in Dolores’ Breau’s seminal photographic project documenting the people of Memramcook, Portraits of a People (1996). This recognition led Boudreau to raise her prices in her later years – a much-deserved hike.

The purpose of hooked mats has undergone some transformations over the years. Electricity, better insulation and access to more affordable floor covering have virtually eliminated the need to create mats for function. Yet hookers keep on hooking. It seems that the creative aspects of mat hooking and its benefits have retained their importance for mat hookers.

Women can be a driving force in helping traditional crafts be preserved, gain recognition and evolve. Dr. Elizabeth McLeod (1875-1963), for example, first studied then taught Applied Arts at the Ladies’ College and Fine Arts Department of Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB. She saw the emphasis of education go from making “things” to making “art” and the role of women transforming as they became professional artists. This was a shift that she helped make happen in her role as a professor and artist; inspiring students themselves to become artists, teachers and arts professionals. McLeod chose to remain unmarried during an era when many married women often abandoned their art or set it aside for family.

In the 1960s and 1970s with the resurgence of fine crafts, artists like Danielle Ouellet and Francis Coutellier in south-eastern NB, started creating art that used textile techniques, including mat hooking.

Danielle Ouellet, one of the many who learned to hook with Grand-Barachois’ Gabrielle Savoie Robichaud, started making original fibre art in the 1990s at the suggestion of her very artistic young daughter, Janick. Her first hooked mat was about 20 cm (8 inches) in diameter and was made as an art piece, meant for hanging on a wall. Today, she still melds “found objects” – from seed pods to rubber wheel inserts – with various fibres to create collages, dolls and hooked mats. One constant in Danielle’s work is her use of children’s drawings. Greatly inspired by her children’s, and now her grandchildren’s, creations, she has assembled a plethora of hooked, punch-hooked and embroidered pieces based on their themes.

She has exhibited hooked mats and textile art in solo exhibits and fairs, with Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo, as well as in group exhibits, such as a small hooked mat exhibit with three other artists at Curio Art Gallery in Shediac, Sackville’s Fog Forest Gallery as well as other venues in Saint John and Moncton. Over the years, she has managed a collective art gallery, La Maison des Artisans, with pieces from NB’s artists in Moncton and ran an art gallery above her and her husband’s restaurant in Shediac. Her pieces are personal and reflect her openness and her background in community outreach and home economics.

Ouellet taught mat hooking throughout south-east NB and encouraged many to hook using their own designs, with no limits – to help foster creativity. Her teaching included children and youth in scout groups, in schools and in youth associations, being a strong believer in the creativity of children. She also gave a conference on her art at the Amherst Fiber Festival in the early 2010s.

Her encouragement and influence led to the creation of hooking groups and she has been part of Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo from their very start. Ouellet’s pieces can be found in collections in the region and abroad; her main collector, now deceased, bought a piece from each of her shows. The Province of New Brunswick purchased her work for gifts at the Jeux de la Francophonie in Africa, as well as Université de Moncton.

Francis Coutellier, originally from Belgium, taught visual arts at Université de Moncton, and was head of the Visual Arts Department for several years. He has influenced more than one generation through his art as an educator, curator and collector. Coutellier has exhibited his work around the world and has pieces in collections far and wide, including the New Brunswick Museum, La Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben–Cohen, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, collectionsArtNB, University of New Brunswick and Harvard University, USA. He worked closely with Yvonne Dupuis to create large wall hangings in hooking using his designs and Yvonne Dupuis’ skills with the hook.

This change from function to include art means that hookers who used to choose hardwearing material or what they had on hand that would be durable on the floor can turn to less durable fabrics or yarns and even unconventional materials to express their creativity. This work has moved to the walls of their home, not to their floors. 

Mat hooking was predominantly perpetuated in rural households from one generation to the next and wool was used much longer in those areas due to the presence of woolen mills throughout New Brunswick (Briggs & Little Mills, Willis Woolen Mill and Humphrey Woolen Mills to name a few). Rather than displacing home textile practices, these small mills processed raw wool into yarn and helped keep homemade cloth and hooked mat production alive. They provided a more easily accessible and affordable source of wool. Throughout its history, mat hooking seems to have been predominantly rural, but it was also popular among urban dwellers, often as a decorative art or pastime.

So why, in this day when a myriad of floor coverings can be bought, do we create floor mats? And why did our ancestors create them?

As in the past, both women and men hook to pass the time. Long winters on the farm gave women and their entire families some time away from more labour-intensive activities to make floor coverings. Their productions were used to warm their homes, literally and figuratively, adorning their floors, chairs, footstools and sometimes even walls.

Mat hooking was, and remains, an accessible form of art for many. They make floor coverings to honour ancestors and their traditions. They also hook to express their creativity, individuality, messages, stories and thoughts through this medium, equal in value to any other artistic medium, yet People hook to remember, to participate in the artistic world around them, to give thanks and to commemorate events.