Wednesday 9 May 2018

Canada Steamship Lines Crafts

New member Lynda Johnston brought in an interesting mat.  It features a simple yet effective image of a Quebec-style cabin & winter scene, all hooked (or punched?) in yarn.



The label on the reverse shows:



(ok, close....it's not exactly "woven", but it is hand done!)


Here's the info she provided:  
I bought this piece in an antique store in Arcadia, Florida yesterday because I liked it, it was $10, and because of the label on the back.I did some internet surfing and came across this interesting piece of history in an excerpt from “In Good Hands: The Women of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild”, By Ellen Easton. It covers the role of the Guild and the promotion of handcrafts in Canada from about 1880-1940 and gives a history of the Guild, which was started in 1905 by two wealthy Montreal women, Alice Peck and May Phillips who appreciated and wanted to promote the rural handcrafts of the Quebec region.The artistic rugs, spinning, weaving and dyeing they admired in rural Quebec became the inspiration for the two women in Montreal to found the Guild. By providing sales opportunities at small outlets, they hoped to revive rural homecrafts, and provide an income for needy farm women. They valued the decorative arts, particularly of French-Canadian rural home arts. The good design, natural colors, fine workmanship and originality were too significant to ignore.It shows how the Guild consciously fostered an inclusive national feeling by exhibiting and selling crafts of all Canadians on an equal footing. It also draws a much broader perspective of women’s roles in shaping our culture than has been the norm in Canadian art history.About the tag:In September 1929, Quebec’s Department of Agriculture and the Canadian Steamship Lines organized a large handcrafts festival, at the Manoir Richelieu Hotel, which was expected to become an annual late-season feature of the Murray Bay season and gave the area a reputation for fine homegoods as tourism in the area prospered.The Steamship Line and the Manoir Richelieu also promoted the crafts on their menus. The Rug Hooking one is attached and to see more go to this link on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/…/7-Vintage-Canada-Steams…/162835112417Hope you found this as interesting as I did!
(As an aside, our very own Joyce Jones recalls visiting the Saguenay/Murray Bay area with her mother, and said they bought some pottery pieces on that trip!)

Here's another photo of a similar mat Lynda found online:



Menus on board the ships apparently featured different crafts, and here's the one for rug hooking (sorry it's a bit blurry!):





1 comment:

  1. Wonderful article! I have just come across a similar rug, but with a much larger Quebec winter scene, in my late Mother's possessions. It's quite lovely!!

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