DISSECTING AN ANTIQUE RUG (long)

That rug would happen to be the design I'm presently working on.   When finding antique rugs I'm always wondering why the rug hooker designed a rug and what it meant to them.  The 1870 Horse original is no exception and is shown below.

The central figure is the horse, of course.  But is the rug celebrating the life of the horse or the life of the owner/rider?  The heart below the horse makes love an obvious emotional connection.  Do the unoccupied shoes represent the rider/owner?  The two dog motifs were probably companions to the horse as well.  

The circle to the left, and behind the horse could very well be an orb floating into the heavens where there is a star waiting to carry it to heaven.  Am I really reaching here, lol.  Yeah, probably, but there's more reaching ahead...

Regarding the motif above the horse's back, I did an AI search on the design and here is what I gleaned from that search:  'cross step design showing 4 cardinal directions indicating balance in nature'.  Hmm, heavy stuff but I still don't know if the rug was celebrating the life of the horse or the human.

Okay, so moving clockwise there are two figures.  The top one looks almost like a naive primitive humanoid shape and are those wings where arms would be?  And the motif below that one ~ is that a stylized human or a 3 leaf clover?  Also, that darker color hooked in the area to the left of that clover, is that a riding boot or just color change due to running out of the wool color?  So many unanswered questions as the hooker is not here to tell me.

Now to the purpose of this lengthy and probably boring post ~ I love questions and comments, I love my  followers and wish I had more 😉.  While I'm honored to have followers who do not hook, I sometimes forget to write so they understand the mind of a rug hooker.  Case in point, someone recently asked me "what the motif was on the side of the horse".  I interpreted that as she wanted to know what the odd shape on the right side of the horse was (what I thought was a clover or person).  

Nope, she meant the pink oar shaped area hooked in pink 'on the side of the horse'. 

While it could be interpreted as a semantics issue, it really was more of I didn't know what she didn't know.  (HA!  make sense out of that sentence won't you?)  Then I explained how rug hookers, particularly those from long ago who didn't have a wool stash like we crazy women have, would  use what they had.  If they ran out that textile or color mid motif, they filled in with whatever was available.

Other examples of rug hookers "using what they have" are these few rug examples where different colors were used to fill in spots on the animal.

Even modern hookers will mimic that look in their design to give it an aged look of making do and using what is available even if they do have enough of the same wool.

Years ago the common person would use up and hand-down clothing to the younger siblings.  Am sure you've heard the saying which I hooked a few years ago "Use it up, Wear it out, Make it Do or Do without".

And their colors were limited because they would often use bits and pieces of fabric to make quilts for warmth.  Colors were usually drab from army uniforms, cotton stockings, long johns, etc.  If they wanted color they would do natural dying.  The pink in the horse rug was more than likely dyed with pokeberries and she used what she had to put some color in her rug.  Click on the pokeberry link to check out the natural dying site.

Sorry for such a long post but perhaps it will be interesting to some poor soul who pushed thru reading it.  Happy hooking everyone.

Saundra

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