Rural vs Urban

Peddlers

Acadian Rug Hooking Culture

Tourism Impact and Shops

Modern-Day Shops

Hooking for Others

The worlds of craft and economy are often intertwined, and mat hooking is not exempt from those connections.

New Brunswick women are resourceful. Around the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20th century, they produced mats to sell. They sold directly from their own homes to travelling salesmen or arranged to sell at someone’s house that had ready access to a road with many passing tourists—Marie à Charles from La Hêtrière (Memramcook), NB, was one such location. They also sold their work through cooperatives run by women like Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard in Caraquet, NB, and Grace Helen Mowat, founder of Charlotte County Cottage Craft in Saint Andrews, NB.

In the 1930s, in a frenzied rush of hooked mat buying, American antique dealers searched the Canadian East Coast and bought all the mats they could to sell on the American market. For this reason, many Canadian mats are now being identified as American, their motifs and the hooking culture being similar between New England and north of the border. Within this region official boundaries did not matter as much, and the populations were quite similar: Indigenous peoples, Acadian and English all occupied this territory. The story of the Abigail Smith mat is a great illustration of this border confusion.

Where in 1885, The Moncton Daily Times noted that Alma women hooked rugs, there was some debate as to whether this endeavour would prove to be fruitful financially, later years showed it would.

Sale prices varied greatly depending on the location, financial situation, clientele and level of organization. In 1940, a magazine ad lists mats for sale from $0.75 to $2.75. But during interviews for the Mat Registry over the years, and in the Archives du Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson (CEAAC) de l’Université de Moncton, and its Histoires matérielles files, conducted in the 1970s-1980s, women reported having sold their mats for 5 cents at the beginning of the 20^th century when others wouldn’t accept less than $100 in the second half of the 20^th century. Today, hooked mats are sold at a rate established by the maker, and value might be based per square inch, on technique or other considerations such as original design and professional artist fees.

In most rural regions, the little cash they had led people to resort to their own devices, thus creating something out of almost nothing: beautiful mats out of old rags.

Mat making in both rural and urban settings gave women a way to express their creativity. Colour, texture and form gave them all the tools they needed. They could create geometrics or “hit and miss” designs with scrap material. Similar skills were used to create quilts with cotton, with wool scraps and the heavier scrap material being used for mats.

Often mat making was a social event where friends visited and worked together, the women hooking and the men and children cutting the strips.

Conversely, when factory-made carpets were first produced domestically in the 1820s, they were still beyond the means of all but the wealthy who, often, resided in urban areas.

On the contrast between city and country folk, Miss Lillian Burke, who was instrumental in activating the rug hooking industry in Cheticamp, Cape Breton, said about choosing colours for mats to sell: “Now you have snow and ice and cold, and, of course, when you come in the house from the outside in the winter, you want to see cheerful, warming colors like red. But city people live differently. They have more warmth, and, besides, some of them live in mild climates, so they don’t want colors that may be all right here. They want soft, mellow tones…”

Hookers in New Brunswick also exchanged their mats for new products. During New Brunswick Mat Registry interviews throughout the province, older mat hookers referred to the annual spring visit in the 1920s and 1930s of the peddlers, many of whom were identified as “Jewish”. Mats were bartered in exchange for new pots or even pieces of oil cloth. Smooth and flat, this floor covering was put down right onto the bare wood floors, making them far easier to keep clean.

Although mats from different Acadian and English settler societies share many traits due to the closeness of cultures and regions, one can see differences in mats made in New Brunswick’s Acadian communities. Rare are the mats made only with new yarn. In Canada as a whole, hookers use a lot of mixed and recycled materials, and Acadians in particular used “défaisures” or “clothing taken-apart”: wool from old knitted garments that was unravelled, cut, carded and mixed with new wool and spun into yarn to be hooked into mats. Acadian women were also known for their sculpted flowers. 

Tourism played an important role in rural economies, where cottage industries could thrive, and small roadside stands provided a modest source of income, sometimes the only cash income, for households in the community. It is clear that the tourism industry represented a good part of sales of mats, whether it was dealers coming to the area to buy mats and resell them to Americans back in the United States, or tourists who purchased mats themselves when visiting the region.

Historically, hooked mats were available at a number of locations. Just after the First World War, mats were available at Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard’s establishment in Caraquet, NB, and at Grace Helen Mowat’s Charlotte County Cottage Craft shop, in Saint Andrews, NB. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the Beauséjour Tea Room, Aulac, NB, showed mats for sale and as decoration on the walls. In the 1940s and 1950s, mats were sold at E. Madge Smith’s studio/shop in Fredericton, NB, and later in the 1960s and 1970s, the Gagetown Hookers sold their creations at The Little Red School House in Whites Cove, NB, and Gabrielle Savoie Robichaud’s gallery “Le Clapet” in Barachois, NB, also featured local hooked mats for sale. Today, hooked mats are much less part of the fine crafts tourism industry, though some artists do hook to sell in shops, but the practice is much less common than in the past.

Today, many shops offer patterns, hooking materials and tools to the modern hooker. Online shopping and easy travel give hookers plenty of options. In New Brunswick, small businesses offer dyed yarn or cloth, produce hand-turned hooks and printed patterns on linen or burlap to sell at hook-ins (large gatherings of hookers who come together to share art, food and tips).

Mat hooking is not often a solo affair: throughout the 20^th century, women (and men) have hooked for others. Grace Helen Mowat had her “100-mile factory” of women hooking from their homes for her business, Charlotte County Cottage Craft; Dr. Bessie McLeod .  and her Applied Arts students at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB, designed some mats to be hooked there and in nearby Memramcook, NB; in Caraquet, NB, Elmire Dugas Daigle hooked for Marie-Louise Allard Blanchard, and even artist Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Fredericton, NB, had local women like a certain Mrs. J. Pye Weed White hooking for her to sell mats at Madge Smith’s handicraft shop. Later, Yvonne Dupuis of Memramcook, NB, hooked mats for artists Gabrielle Savoie Robichaud and Francis Coutellier. Hookers and designers often worked as a team. Lydia and Raymond Scott show how important both the hooker and the designer are in the process of making a mat.

In the Sussex area, Howard Bowden drew the designs for his mother who hooked them.