It is truly an honour to be invited to write the inaugural blog on the website of the New Brunswick Mat Registry to coincide with the launch, on June 14, 2025, of its virtual exhibition, Hands, Heart and Mind—The Art of Hooked Mats in New Brunswick. It features over 600 mats, 25 years old and older, dating back to the 1800s, which were documented at 28 registration events held in 14 communities across the province.
In 2010, when I was writing a weekly Art Talk column for the Moncton Times & Transcript, Judy Morison, Dorchester, the registry’s co-chair inquired if I would be interested in covering their second registration day event so I could see how the process worked.
I had a moment of hesitation. My mandate was to review exhibitions at local art galleries, which did include contemporary hooked rugs, but registering historical hooked mats to develop a database didn’t seem to quite fit with what I did. Little did I know then that when I said “yes”, I was going to be writing about what would become by far the biggest exhibition I was ever likely to cover.
Although I am not a hooker—at least not yet—I was literally “hooked” after I attended the registration. I was intrigued to meet people who were proudly bringing in hooked mats created by their mothers, grandmothers, and even great-grandmothers, and seeing the stories the mats told.
I was impressed by the professionalism with which the Registry’s committee members, guided by Doris Norman, Fredericton, a rug-hooking expert who had been involved with the project since its inception in 2005, documented the mats. They measured and examined the mats with magnifying glasses; interviewed the owners and recorded the stories behind them; photographed them; meticulously documented pages of information and carefully attached a registration number to the mat’s underside before returning it to the owner.
In the ensuing years, I have become a rug hooking “groupie,” writing more articles for the newspaper and for Rug Hooking Magazine. In 2017 I followed the Registry’s events to the New Brunswick Provincial Museum in Saint John, with which it had formed a partnership in 2015. Here I was treated to a sneak peek of “Tell Me a Story”, a series of 16 bilingual videos the registry created, featuring interviews with New Brunswick’s talented hookers, and to the learning modules that support the English and French social studies curricula, designed to introduce students to this exciting material culture, which are available on the website.
In 2023 I attended a hook-in in Rothesay where a diptych, commissioned by the NBMR, and designed and created by The Carnegie Rug Hookers (Saint John) and Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo (South-east NB) was unveiled. This piece, which will become part of the permanent collection of the New Brunswick Museum, was created in gratitude to the Sheila Hugh McKay Foundation, whose grant has made the development of this website possible.
With its launch the project has realized the dream of the founders. It has transcended attics, living rooms, museum glass cases, and gallery walls, and emerged as an outstanding virtual exhibition with the potential to be viewed by anyone, anywhere in the world, who is interested, not only in the art of rug hooking and how it has evolved, but also in the importance of material culture.
The exhibition shines a unique light on our geography and our evolving social and economic history, while demonstrating how our province’s two main linguistic groups, English and French, share a common history with more similarities than differences.
The launch of Hands, Hearts and Minds marks a truly monumental accomplishment. I stand in awe of the vision and dedication of the NBMR co-chairs Judy Morison and Marielle Poirier, Grande Digue, and the entire steering committee, who never became discouraged despite obstacles, including Covid lockdowns.
Through it all they poured their energy into the project and turned the dream of documenting New Brunswick’s hooked mats that began 20 years ago into the reality that you are about to explore.
While others may have agreed that New Brunswick’s hooked mats should be documented for posterity, these visionary hookers said we will document them. And they did!
Margaret Patricia Eaton
Moncton, NB
May 5, 2025
