October 1-25, 2014
Hooked Rugs by local artist Jill Kupeski

In its earliest years, rug hooking was a craft of poverty. The vogue for floor coverings in the United States came about after 1830 when factories produced machine-made carpets for the rich. Poor women began looking through their scrap bags for materials to employ in creating their own home-made floor coverings.

Antique hooked rugs were created on burlap after 1850 because burlap from old grain and feed bags could be found for free. Every and any scrap of fiber that was no longer usable as clothing was put into rugs. The modern preference for using only cut wool strips in hooked rugs originated with Pearl McGown in the 1930s, her interest helped saved the craft from disappearing in the United States by formalizing study and practice.

Rug hooking today has evolved into two genres, which primarily fall into groups based upon the width of the wool strip employed to create a rug: fine hooking and primitive hooking. Fine hooking, in general, uses narrow strips of wool. Designs of the fine-cut hooking genre use more fine shading accomplished by over-dyeing wool in gradated color swatches. Primitive (or wide-cut) hooking uses thicker wool strips. The wide-cut hooking accomplishes shading and highlights using textures in wool, such as plaids, checks, herringbones, etc. Wide-cut designs are generally less detailed and mimic the naivety of rug hookers of the past.

Jill Kupeski began rug hooking as a young bride in Burlington Vermont. Following in the footsteps of both her mother and grandmother she became an accredited Pearl K. McGown Teacher. Rug hooking has provided Jill with a unique artistic outlet and a vast network of artists/craftspeople across the country and the world. She has lived in the Shenandoah Valley for 30 years with her husband, Mark and her two children Lindsay and Matthew. She is an accredited teacher of the Pearl K. McGown Rughookrafters School, a member of the National Guild of Pearl K. McGown Rughookrafters, Inc., a member of the Association of Traditional Hooking Artists (ATHA) and a member of the With Hands and Hearts Antietam Fiber Artists Guild in Boonsboro, Maryland.

Beginner Rug Hooking Classes available in the "Posey Hollow Wool Studio" after the first of the year, for more information email Jill at jakupeski@gmail.com