A Guild and Hooking Groups

Heritage Rug Hooking Guild

Abigail Smith Reproduction

Abigail Smith Hooked Mat

The Mystery Begins

The Mystery is Solved

Doris Norman

Hooking Community

Corn Husk Mats

Regional Sense of Identity

Exhibits, Fairs and Prizes

Modern-day Exhibitions

Erin McKenna

Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo, 1995 to this day

Pulling Loops of Love for New Brunswick

200 Hooked cushions for my 200th

Home Economics: 150 Years of Canadian Hooked Rugs

Regional Mat Makers

Mat hooking is alive and well throughout New Brunswick and this, in part, can be attributed to mat hooking groups. As hooking increased in popularity at the end of the 20^th century, groups of like-minded individuals began to gather. Sharing information, passing along hints on skills and techniques in much the same way as quilters who had been collaborating for generations at quilting parties or bees, as “ladies’ auxiliaries” at churches and at the Women’s Institutes.

In Fredericton, one group stands out: the Heritage Rug Hooking Guild (HRHG), New Brunswick’s only mat hooking guild.  When the founding members started the Heritage Rug Hooking Guild (HRHG) in 1982, the tradition had virtually died out. The group dedicated itself to preserving and promoting the historic craft; providing mat hookers with the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas; encouraging members to develop a sense of originality and beauty in colour and design; preserving traditional patterns, and promoting public awareness of the art form. They have been extremely successful.

The HRHG organizes workshops and teaches courses on the art of traditional mat hooking and promotes public awareness of the craft through exhibits and publicity. The membership is open to all who are interested in mat hooking. Members have varying levels of experience and hook in all different styles but they all care about mat hooking being recognized as an art in its own right.

One of the interesting aspects of the HRHG is their focus on education. They organize learning opportunities for their members periodically and constantly exchange on techniques and ideas.

This Guild was one of the first to mount regular exhibitions of their work at many venues, including art galleries and museums, raising public awareness of mat hooking as an art.

In 1995, a special event occurred in Fredericton, NB: the celebrated “Abigail Smith Hooked Mat”  from the collection of the New Brunswick Museum was to be on display for one day during Heritage Week at the HRHG’s exhibit at the National Exhibition Centre. Peter Larocque, New Brunswick Museum curator, and Doris Norman of the HRHG remembered visitors coming in and being in awe of the mat. For many, it was almost a pilgrimage since the mat had been so widely published and referenced. For Larocque it was truly enlightening to see how deeply an object could affect people; the powerful touch of something handmade.

So, what is the story of the Abigail Smith mat itself? It is the earliest site-specific, signed and dated hooked mat in Canada and it is inscribed: Worked by Abigail Smith New Maryland 1860. One would think that with this detailed inscription it would be easy to piece its story together, but nothing is ever that simple.

From the time Abigail Smith’s hooked mat was acquired by the New Brunswick Museum in 1944 there has been much speculation about its origin. It isn’t surprising that the mat’s story had become jumbled over the years, so many factors were at play. In 1967, in Arts in New Brunswick, Huia Ryder, art curator of the New Brunswick Museum, described it as a “…fascinating arrangement of a dove, an eagle, a vase of flowers, a house, a tree, and a cow all with floral border. The material used is all wool yarn in bright colours set against a dark background. The mat is as charming and quaint in appearance as found anywhere on the continent.” She also noted its inscription was similar to early samplers of the day. The path to finding out the truth took several decades, the involvement of several curators and members of the community, plenty of research…and some luck.

Originally, the mat was “found” by an antiques dealer and was for sale in Dixfield, Maine. Marius Barbeau, ethnologist and folklorist as well as curator at the National Museum of Canada (now the Canadian Museum of History), heard about it through Edna Greenwood in Marlborough, MA, who wrote: “…about the rug, I want it to stay in Canada and preferably in your museum. That is where it belongs…,” meaning the National Museum in Ottawa. On 28 May 1943, Barbeau wrote to F.C.C. Lynch, then in charge of the National Museum, about the mat’s importance, “…[T]his rug is the most valuable specimen of its kind, to my knowledge, with the name of the maker, and the date. New Maryland is a locality still existing, a few miles away from Moncton, N B. This rug was made by a Loyalist of this name on the date indicated. It would be worthwhile, indeed, to keep it in Canada, as otherwise it would be lost to us in our studies of the art and origin of hooked rug making – a topic now growing in importance.” Barbeau had erroneously situated New Maryland near Moncton, others surmised that the mat was from Nova Scotia, and based on the fact it was found in Maine, others thought it was of New England fabrication. Edna Greenwood also wrote, “…[T]wo years ago I came across a rug that was obviously Nova Scotian in workmanship that had “New Maryland 1860″ hooked into its design. I very much wanted to buy it, but the dealer who owned it asked $125 for it (it was about 3×2 [feet]) as it was made in Maryland (U.S.A.) during the Civil War.” It seemed everyone was trying to lay claim to this touchstone North American mat.

Despite Barbeau’s attempts, but mainly due to the exigencies of the Second World War, the mat did not get to Ottawa but fortunately it did find a home in Canada. In 1944, a call went out for assistance to fund its purchase and thanks to the generosity of Christina J. and Sophie R. MacLaren of Saint Andrews, NB, the mat was acquired for the permanent collection of the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, NB. This is yet another example of how women often spearhead initiatives to save cultural traditions. The MacLarens’ donation was an exceptional show of support, especially after the austerity of the Great Depression and the privations of the war years.

By the end of 1944, the mat was safely housed in the province, but this was just the beginning of unravelling its mysteries. Once it was established that the mat was made in New Brunswick near Fredericton in the community of New Maryland, the task of confirming its maker was started. A few members of the public sent letters declaring that they had an ancestor Abigail Smith who was the maker of the mat. Research eventually uncovered at least five Abigail Smiths, ranging in age from 9 to 80 years, in the New Maryland area at the time of the mat’s production. In the late 1980s, Noël Ireland, a researcher from Rusagonis, NB, completed an in-depth review of new archival resources that became available. After considering all the options, it was decided that the most likely candidate for maker of the mat was Abigail Smith (1818-1861), the daughter of Israel Smith and Sarah Tracey. She taught for many years in a one room schoolhouse built on her father’s property in New Maryland. This was the prevailing consensus until 2008 when a sampler donated to the Fredericton Region Museum (York Sunbury Historical Society) prompted a re-evaluation.

The sampler was made by 9-year-old Susannah Smith in 1853 and bore almost the same inscription and motifs as the Abigail Smith hooked mat. One piece of correspondence in the New Brunswick Museum’s files had recounted that the mat was made by 13-year-old Abigail Smith and that the design had been drawn by her 16-year-old sister, Susannah. The information had come from Mrs. Alma E. Estey (1875-1958), the daughter of Abigail Smith, but had been set aside because the mat was thought to be too large and complex for someone so young to have made. Considering the impressive intricacy of other girlhood embroidery, in retrospect it is not difficult to imagine this mat being completed by a capable and determined girl entering womanhood. Importantly, this definitive evidence finally confirmed the true identity of the maker of the province’s most celebrated mat.

A founding member of the HRHG, Doris Norman, has been a catalyst in reviving mat hooking in New Brunswick and helping it to thrive. Norman is a skilled mat hooker who has been teaching the craft and inspiring others to take it up for over 35 years. Born in Blacks Harbour, NB, and raised in Deer Island and Saint John, NB, she has lived in Fredericton, NB, most of her adult life. Hooking has been part of her creative practice for quite some time – really since her early memories of seeing her grand-mother Bradford’s mats in the upstairs hall of her home. This memory stayed with her, and once she started to hook, she dedicated herself to the craft in countless ways.

Alternating teaching courses and taking courses at the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia School at the beginning, Norman has been a certified RHGNS Teacher since 1985 and a Pearl McGown instructor since 2007. She belongs to the Association of Traditional Hooking Artists (ATHA), The International Guild of Handhooking Rugmakers (TIGHR), the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia (RHGNS), and the Ontario Hooking Craft Guild (OHCG). She has also taught at the Newfoundland and Labrador hooking schools. Norman specializes in Celtic art, William Morris, Jacobean, realistic and primitive pictorials, Mayan/Peruvian art, stained glass hooking, and dyeing techniques.

Locally, Norman has been widely involved in, and responsible for, hooking’s revival and its ongoing vibrancy. She’s taught classes at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and the New Brunswick Community College’s night classes program, inspiring many to join the guild or local groups, thus ensuring that hooking remains very much alive in communities throughout the province. She is also a founding member of the New Brunswick Mat Registry. She was also the first teacher to run the hooking branch of Fredericton’s EdVenture program, an education-vacation model implemented in the region. And she also taught classes in Sitansisk (Saint-Mary’s First Nation). Her work has been published in Canadian Living, Rug Hooking Magazine as well as in Deanne Fitzpatrick’s “Hook Me a Story” and Paulette Hackman’s “Story Rugs”. One of her pieces can be found in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s permanent collection and many others are in private collections.

For Norman, the mat hooking community is generous and thrives on the interaction involved in learning about and furthering the art and craft of hooking. Both teachers and students should enjoy what they’re doing, and hook what they like, whether it be a pattern, a modified pattern or their own original design, traditional or contemporary. One point about which she is adamant: before reproducing or modifying a pattern or image, a hooker should always ask permission, since artistic copyright is so important.

Today online communities provide a forum for hookers to exchange information and ideas. Many Facebook groups geared solely to mat hooking unite artists from around the world. Creators like Deanne Fitzpatrick in Amherst, NS, and Lucy Richard in Moncton, NB, offer online courses and tutorials. Guilds have solidified mat hooking’s place in textile arts and crafts. NB’s Heritage Rug Hooking Guild is the province’s only guild, and the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia (RHGNS) includes several New Brunswick representatives on their Board.  The International Guild of Handhooking Rugmakers (TIGHR) also has many members in the province.

Mat hooking also stays alive and vibrant through its many groups across the province, hookers gather periodically to hook, learn and share. Many groups organize learning opportunities: notably, the RHGNS holds an annual week-long hooking school where workshops taught by certified and experienced teachers are offered to hookers.

In the southeast region, Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo, a group started by students of Gabrielle Savoie-Robichaud, have been practicing, promoting and exhibiting the art of mat hooking through innovative means. Its members create original, hooked wall hangings that are often based on a theme and use unusual materials – some pieces created as sculptural works and pieced murals. The membership, usually between 15 and 20, comprises women (and sometimes men) from diverse backgrounds. Part of their mission is to evolve, perpetuate and teach mat hooking in the area. They have mounted group exhibits in four World Acadian Congresses (Congrès mondiaux acadiens) and have exhibited in museums and galleries such as the New Brunswick Museum, the Musée acadien de l’Université de Moncton and the UNB Art Center. Most of their works are products of the members’ own original designs. In advance of the 2014 World Acadian Congress held in and around Edmundston, NB, members Annie Richard and Line Godbout met with ground-breaking Acadian artist, Claude Roussel who was originally from the area. Together, the group and Roussel partnered on a unique exhibit that would travel throughout New Brunswick. The group transformed a selection of Roussel’s early works and designs into hooked versions – a collaboration that provided great insight for the hookers and a new audience for the artist.

In recent years, a number of groups have organized formally and informally, creating exhibitions and making contributions to mat making:

Hookeuses de Grande-Digue Hookers, Grande-Digue

Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo, Shediac

Sussex Tea Room Rug Hookers, Sussex

Past Time Matters, Moncton

Past Time Matters Eve. Rug Hooking Group, Moncton

Kent Hookers/Hookeuses de Kent, Richibucto

Miramichi Rug Hookers

Riverview Rug Hookers

Quoddy Loopers, Saint Andrews

Carnegie Rug Hookers, Saint John

KV Library Rug Hookers, Quispamsis

The Cathedral Matters Guild, Fredericton (no longer hooking together, proceeds donated to Cathedral restoration fund)

The Evening Matters, Fredericton

Plaster Rock Legacy Loopers,  Plaster Rock

Lighthouse Rug Hooking Group, Saint Andrews

The McAdam Hookers, McAdam

The New Brunswick Museum houses two unusual and rare mats hooked using corn husks. The oldest, dating to about 1840, is said to have been made by Mary Ann Toole (1816-1897) with the assistance of her mother, Amy Shaw Toole (1788-1876), of Kars, Kings County, NB. Using natural and dyed corn husks, the mat features a central design of green foliate branches within a geometric chevron border of green blocks. Another mat, dated to February 1900, was made by Margaret Ann McVicar Barton (1849-1914) of The Range, Queens County, NB. Her daughter, Amy Iva Barton Wanamaker (1881-1970) described how the work was done, “My mother dampened a few husks at a time and rolled them in a cloth to keep them damp while hooking.” The mat was put on the living room floor and had “constant, rather hard use” for about sixty-five years. To date no other examples of corn husk mats have surfaced. 

Because of their isolation and limited means of communication, but also for reasons of cultural pride, artisans in certain locales developed techniques and decorative elements that became regional trademarks. For example, Acadian communities commonly produced mats with sculpted, raised flowers. A similar phenomenon took place in Charlotte County, NB, where local makers were encouraged to develop designs incorporating local scenery with local colours.

Sometimes life in the country could be quite isolating and with the human need for connection and community, women often gathered for frolics. Perhaps happy to get out of the house, they joined others to work on a mat, which often they tried to finish in a single day; a custom also practiced among quilters. Women who gathered in groups also worked on their own mats, setting the stage for contemporary mat hooking groups and “hook-ins”.

Mats evolved from their beginnings as a functional workhorse, a necessity and a commodity. They were put on bare wooden floors to warm the feet and the home. But those floors were hard to wash, so when travelling peddlers started selling oilcloth flooring, the women readily exchanged their beautiful work for the easy-to-wash floor coverings.

Also, during the Second World War, a dramatic societal shift took place; increasing numbers of women entered the workforce outside the home and with the introduction of oil and central home heating there was a reduced need for mats, except perhaps in front of drafty doors and windows.

With all these changes, the purpose of mats and the approach to them also evolved. In urban settings, more and more people purchased mats to hang on their walls as fine art. Mats began to be made for exhibitions, and in the 1920-1930s, antique dealers started seeking them out as “folk art”, mostly to sell on the American market, in Boston and New York. That practice also held true for organizations or individuals trying to help local mat hookers make a living; the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Grace Helen Mowat in Saint Andrews, The Gagetown Hookers in NB, the Chéticamp Hookers in Cape Breton, all sold their mats on the American market. Ida Boudreau of Memramcook, NB, also sold her mats to tourists. The sole breadwinner in her home after her husband’s death, Boudreau made mat after mat, sometimes two a week, in addition to growing summer savoury to sell to passersby. Luckily, many of her creations were sold to, or ordered by, locals so much of her oeuvre remains in New Brunswick, especially in the southeastern region.

It is true, knowledge regarding the production of floor coverings has never stopped evolving. Sometimes it was shared through higher education. For example, Ivan Crowell, Head of the Handicrafts Division of the Department of Industry and Reconstruction from the mid-1940s, travelled the province collecting information on folk traditions and he incorporated them into what was taught in the various programs. Akin to Marius Barbeau’s work in Quebec, Crowell’s research and application of its results to the curriculum kept the methods and knowhow of these traditions alive.

The most influential female teacher and artist in the Applied Arts program at Mount Allison’s Ladies’ College in Sackville, NB, is without a doubt Elizabeth (Bessie) McLeod (1875–1963). Through her teaching career at Mount Allison and her involvement in craft in the local cultural scene she had immense influence on a generation of students who became practicing craftspeople. McLeod directed the department from 1916 to 1935 but, because she was a woman, was only formally named its head in 1930. Nonetheless, she spearheaded the creation of the Mount Allison Handicrafts Guild and was closely involved in the Sackville Art Association… her ideas had a huge impact on the direction of the program and the development of its curriculum.

Others, like Grace Helen Mowat through the Women’s Art School at the Cooper Union in New York where she studied, brought her business sense and her pride in her region to Saint Andrews where she created Charlotte County Cottage Crafts, thus influencing the design, availability and artistic value of mat hooking.

Mat hooking has been, in turn, a necessity, a decorative art, a folk art and an art in and of itself. Some of these categories still coexist in the collective mind today. As folk art, pieces must have a strong sense of design, but also directly convey the emotions, the memories and the sensibility of the hooker. The makers put themselves in the mat through their artistic intuition; the colours chosen or dyed, and even the materials used (some of the clothing often carried its own particular story). At the height of their popularity among collectors, the quaintness of folk subjects most surely gave the mats the necessary nostalgic appeal which made them more coveted by both tourists and city buyers. By depicting their own lives, subjects they knew, sayings, or even through commemorative dates and names, the makers created a piece of history. In turn, mat hooking is part of the history of the province and of New Brunswick women.

The Heritage Rug Hooking Guild Exhibits

The Bicentennial exhibit

In June 1984, the Heritage Rug Hooking Guild produced their first exhibit as part of New Brunswick’s Bicentennial celebrations. It was shown at the Centennial building in Fredericton, NB. This event was very timely, honouring the past and preserving it for the future. Members answered questions and gave demonstrations of the craft on site. It was the first time mat hooking had received so much attention in the community.

Rugs Come Alive in ‘95

This year marked the start of an important endeavour for the Heritage Rug Hooking Guild. This exhibition is where the idea to create the Abigail Smith mat replica was born. But the exhibit contained many more mats indeed. About 60 pieces were presented by Guild members varying in techniques from very fine shading and hooking to stylized primitive designs and showcased the Guild’s diversity and openness to various styles and techniques.

The Guild also produced an exhibit called Art to Walk On in 2003 and continues annual exhibits often hosted by Government House in Fredericton, NB, including one small exhibit within an exhibit for Canada’s 150th anniversary.

Erin McKenna is an accomplished mat hooker and curator from New Brunswick. Her passion for the craft has brought her to teach it, share it and show it. A member of the Nova Scotia Rug Hooking Guild, ATHA and the National Guild of Pearl K. McGown Rug Hookrafters, Inc. and a hooker with the Sussex Tea Room Hookers, she has curated three seminal mat shows in the Maritimes. She is on the board as Director at Large for New Brunswick at the Hooked Rug Museum of North America (HRMNA).

In 2014, McKenna curated an exhibit celebrating the work of Charlotte County Cottage Craft’s Grace Helen Mowat of Saint Andrews to mark the 100th anniversary of Cottage Craft and Mowat’s art at the Saint John Art Centre. Together with Evan and Michelle Ross, the current owners of Cottage Craft Limited in Saint Andrews and HRMNA Museum founders, Suzanne and Hugh Conrad, they retraced some of Nell’s original art designs and found hookers to recreate them for the commemorative exhibit. The hookers came from all over New Brunswick and many of these women either still live in Saint Andrews or had a connection to Cottage Craft. Grace Helen Mowat’s influence on the area is still being felt today. The exhibit is part of the permanent collection being shown at the HRMNA in Hubbards, NS.

In 2017, McKenna curated The Ganong Chocolate Box Exhibit, Celebrating 100 years of Delecto Chocolates. Established in 1873, Ganong has the distinction of being Canada’s oldest independently family owned and operated chocolate company, manufacturing all its products in St. Stephen, NB. When McKenna saw their display of vintage chocolate boxes and streetcar advertisements, she was inspired. After getting permission from Ganong to reproduce the artefacts in mat form to mount an exhibit honouring this part of New Brunswick Heritage, McKenna gathered hookers interested in the project. It seems the project took flight as 49 hooked mats of Ganong designs were made for the exhibit by hookers across Canada and part of the United States. The three-year project led to an exhibit coinciding with the celebration of the 150th of Canada’s Confederation as well as with Delecto Chocolates’ 100th anniversary. The show was presented in Saint Andrews, NB and is now part of the permanent collection in the HRMNA’s New Brunswick section. In 2018, McKenna also curated the Northern McGown Teacher’s Workshop Rug Show at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass. U.S.A.

Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo have mounted a number of original exhibits, including a 3D exhibit of hooked mat bird sculptures in 2009 for the World Acadian Congress, Les oiseaux de nos rivages, a large abstract exhibit inspired by group painting workshops, Symphonie en H, presented at the Capitol Theatre and the Centre des arts et de la culture de Dieppe in 2012 and a beautiful cooperation through the NB Tourism, Heritage and Culture’s Génie Arts program where artists worked in schools. Students drew their idea of traditional Acadian tales and Les Hookeuses de Bor’de’lo turned them into mats. The pieces were shown more than once, notably during the 2009 World Acadian Congress in the Acadian Peninsula. Their Hommage à Claude Roussel exhibit was shown in Edmundston as well as at the Musée acadien de l’Université de Moncton.

In 2019, sixteen members of the group created forty-eight hooked pieces for the Moncton Museum’s Resurgo Place on the theme Cultivating Your Inner Garden. The idea was for each artist to create a suite of three pieces that represented what made them grow, inspired them and kept them going as a person and upon which they could build on in the future. The result was forty-eight mats all with a different interpretation of the theme in a variety of shapes and sizes, including two large sculptural pieces. Resurgo Place’s staff and Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo members provided interpretation for the exhibit, children’s workshops, training for the staff as well as interactive components: the N B Mat Registry’s interviews on video as well as a communal hooked mat for visitors to try their hand at hooking with members of the group coming to hook over the four-month exhibit.

In 2014, Joy Trites, founder of the textile group at the Lutes Mountain Heritage Museum, as well as a member of the Moncton Matters and the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia, launched the idea of a mat exhibition focusing on New Brunswick. To celebrate the art of mat hooking, textile artists as well as southeastern New Brunswick hookers were invited to display or create a mat at the museum. The theme of “what they loved about New Brunswick”, over thirty mats were shown and they accomplished exactly what mat hooking does best; they told a story. Rural aspects of the province were represented through buildings, scenery and plants; its stories, real and imagined; its industries, pastimes, families, friendships and traditions, as well as its sense of humour. The exhibition later traveled to the Hooked Rug Museum of North America (HRMNA), Hubbards, NS, where it was shown to a whole new audience of tourists and locals from around Nova Scotia and the Maritimes.

In 2017, to commemorate the upcoming 200th anniversary of the historic Church of Saint-Henri-de-Barachois, Rémi Lévesque launched a project that would grow much bigger than anticipated.

This church is among the oldest Acadian buildings on its original site. No longer used for religious services, it was transformed into a concert hall, the Viola-Léger room, and an exhibition space, the Léon-Léger room. During the concert season, people started bringing their own cushions to make the seats of the sturdy hardwood pews more comfortable. Partnering with Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo and Charlottetown’s Island Matters Rug Hookers, Lévesque and the church committee endeavoured to start installing beautiful, hooked cushions for the comfort of the audience members. The idea was to eventually have enough cushions for every seat, or 200 cushions for the 200th anniversary. The cushions would be donations to the Church and would become part of what would turn out to be the biggest permanent collection of its kind in Canada.

After many months of visiting mat hooking groups, schools, and events, the organizers saw the number of hookers registering to make a mat grow exponentially. As of 2020, the Church boasts a varied collection of contemporary hooked cushions from every Canadian province and territory, as well as from England, Japan, Scotland, Australia and Gambia. The organizing committee also worked on the USA50 collection to represent American states (as of 2024, all 50 States are signed up) which was unveiled on 4 July 2021.

Since mat hooking was mostly women’s business, it isn’t surprising to see how much they influenced their contemporaries, either through their hooking, their small businesses or teaching. In three regions of New Brunswick, at least one woman played a significant role in encouraging mat hooking: in the northeast, Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard in the 1920s to 1950s; in the southeast, Gabrielle Savoie-Robichaud in the 1960s and 1970s; and in the southwest, Grace Helen Mowat from 1914 to 1960. To date (2021), there is insufficient information about mat hooking in the northwestern part of the province to make this determination.

Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard (1871-1959)

Born in Pictou, NS, Marie-Louise (Minnie) Allard Blanchard moved with her family to Pokemouche, NB, when she was a toddler. In 1894, she left a teaching position to marry Joseph L. Blanchard in Caraquet, NB. In 1919, after the births of her six children, she set out to promote and produce traditional textile arts in her region. She set up a local craft business where she sold hand-made textiles as well as hooked mats. First set up in one of the fish processing buildings that had belonged to the recently bankrupt William Fruing Company, she later moved the shop into her husband’s general store. There, she employed twelve local women and taught them the necessary techniques of hooking and weaving. Many of the designs were original and the makers hooked them in wool, silk or cotton according to the client’s request.

In addition to selling about a hundred mats a year, Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard travelled to talks and demonstrations. She showed her work in exhibitions in Canada and the United States and received numerous prizes. The General Motors collection even boasts one of her mats! In 1935, Allard Blanchard was named a Life Member of the New Brunswick Women’s Institutes for her accomplishments and contributions to the Institute. Her influence on mat hooking can still be felt today.

Her craft centre became the first museum in the community and inspired the Musée acadien de Caraquet which opened in 1967 and houses a permanent exhibition devoted to Allard Blanchard’s accomplishments.

Gabrielle Savoie-Robichaud (1932-2022)

Over the years, Gabrielle (Gaby) Savoie-Robichaud influenced more than one generation to pick up the ancestral technique of mat hooking. After having studied at the Université de Moncton and in France, she started to meld visual arts and fine crafts in her textile art. From 1969 to 1972, she ran gallery Au Clapet in Barachois, NB, on the second floor of her artist brother Roméo Savoie’s barn. There she sold hooked mats, among other things, and her own mats can now be found in Canada and in France.

It is likely that she learned to hook from Yvonne Dupuis who even hooked mats for Savoie-Robichaud following her sketches. In those days, mat hooking was on the verge of disappearing, so she began to teach, sharing her knowledge and techniques with many students including some of the men in the village. For seven years, Savoie-Robichaud offered workshops and encouraged participants to create their own designs.

Her influence had a domino effect; it led to the creation of the Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo group, then to Danielle Ouellet teaching in Grande-Digue, and to Marielle Poirier starting the Hookeuses de Grande-Digue group.

Grace Helen Mowat (1875–1964)

Born at Beech Hill, NB, Grace Helen (Nell) Mowat, or the Countess of Charlotte, as Bliss Carman would name her, studied at the Women’s Art School of the Cooper Union in New York where she learned that art should pay. Returning to New Brunswick in 1913 to care for her aging father, she set out, at the same time, to build a cottage industry using local imagery, wool and workforce. Through her business, Charlotte County Cottage Crafts, she, and a few hundred mostly women workers, told the story of the region and its people. In terms of mat hooking, Mowat started by designing a small number of mats herself, as she was aware that good design was important in attracting customers. She would later encourage the skilled women who were hooking for her to come up with their own designs but that they would hook nothing they didn’t know. She preferred they hooked subjects that most interested them and she would help them along if one element proved too hard to draw. Her attention to detail, design elements and craftsmanship made the business of Cottage Crafts what it was.

In terms of processing wool, Mowat started with small batches of hand-spun and naturally-dyed yarns. When the demand became too high, she would pick up raw fleece from neighbouring areas, scour, wash, rinse and dye it at the farm, then send it to a carding and spinning mill. The knitting, hooking and weaving yarns would be washed again before being used and all mats were hooked using wool yarn.

In the parlour of her farmhouse that had direct access to the street, Mowat sold and exhibited handmade woollen products and helped the local economy. She employed hundreds of farm women (as well as a few men) and gave them a creative outlet in addition to much-needed cash.

Nominated by Sir James Dunn and Lord Beaverbrook, she received an honorary doctorate from UNB in 1951. Mowat wasn’t a conventional woman for her time; she lobbied governments to support varied local agricultural industries, bought and drove a car, and never married. She was an artist, a formidable force in the community who initiated projects as well as an inspiration for many.

Dr. Elizabeth McLeod 1875 – 1963

Dr. Elizabeth McLeod, 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 reality that she helped develop in her role as a professor and artist; inspiring students themselves to become artists, teachers and arts professionals.

She brought students into biology labs to look for inspiration in the shapes of nature and had them create designs for mats in postcard format as assignments. These mat designs were hooked in the local communities – Memramcook, Port Elgin, Aulac. She closely monitored the process to ensure that the materials were dyed to match the designs. Though we do not know if she hooked mats, this initiative would not only have influenced her students but the women in the community that hooked for her.