Rag Rugs and Book Paintings
Rag rug designed by Winifred Nicholson
The rag rug, common in rural and other British homes of the past, was made from fabric remnants or old clothing, usually by working-class women and farmers’ wives; adding warmth and colour to cold floors, they were comforting, but ephemeral. Worn-out cloth was collected over months, cut into small strips, and then pushed or pulled through a piece of hessian that was stretched over a wooden frame, using a hooked tool. It was slow and time-consuming work, often taken on during winter, and usually only one piece was produced each year. The new rug would replace the oldest, which would be relegated to an inconspicuous place in the house. Typically, men made the wooden frames and tools, which were sometimes fashioned from from pegs, knives or forks, while the women provided the designs and wove them. Also known by other names, among them ‘clippy’, ‘proggy’, ‘bodged’ or ‘pegged’ rugs, they were primarily functional and were often the only form of floor covering their makers could afford, but many of them had rugged charm and cheerful innocence. Over time, however, they became associated with poverty, and growing affluence meant that new rugs were rarely made, except as a hobby, and old ones were thrown away.
The artist Winifred Nicholson and her husband Ben took an interest in rag rugs when they moved to Cumbria in the 1920s, and they collected a few local examples. Some of them, as well as later pieces and a handful of their paintings, have recently been gathered together in a satisfying exhibition at MIMA in Middlesbrough. Winifred (who is usually referred to by her first name to avoid confusion with Ben) was first drawn to rag rugs when she saw a neighbour, Margaret Warwick, working on one, but it was only in the 1960s, after a friend asked her to try to bring freshness to the tradition, that she set up the rug-ragging collective that was the source of most of the pieces at MIMA. Besides the more predictable patterns and natural scenes produced by local makers, Winifred encouraged family and friends to come up with their own designs: expressiveness, colour, and individuality were welcomed, so unexpected subjects, such as tigers, butterflies, witches, and footballers, began to turn up on the rugs. It wasn’t a profitable venture, although prices were generally modest and sales were consistent; some pieces were sold in craft galleries, but just as often they were purchased by friends and acquaintances of Winifred, who bought a large number of them herself and gave them away as presents. Forming a close relationship with the local community, Winifred was deeply committed to it; a few of her gentle portraits of neighbours and family are also in the exhibition.
Rag rugs, made from materials that have been salvaged and repurposed, often embody informality, intimacy, and imagination, and the same characteristics are to be found in the small pictures by the Scottish painter Andrew Cranston that are rendered directly onto the covers of old and recycled hardback books, which are essentially pieces of cloth stretched over cardboard, not unlike conventional painting supports. Their scale and past history help to intensify the effect of the images, even though their subjects are only occasionally related to those of the books; Cranston’s larger paintings, in contrast, are lighter and more diffuse. Painting everything from intimiste pictures set in his Glasgow flat to spacious scenes of mountains, countryside and the sea, his pictures, mainly of places and of the people in them, are filled with feelings and memories.
Cranston’s images are usually tranquil and reassuring, but they’re also surprisingly complex; always willing to talk or write eloquently about what he is doing, he has said that ‘painting is an act of remembering and forgetting, covering and uncovering, tracing and retracing, getting lost and finding a way’. He works on several of the books at a time, with sometimes as many as forty or fifty on the go; some are completed quickly, but others can take years before they reach their final form, as each image is richly layered, both visually and emotionally. He frequently depicts domestic interior spaces, in which animals or ordinary objects such as windows, furniture, and ornaments may be suggestive of something uncomfortable or uncanny; a debt to Bonnard and Vuillard is obvious and unhidden. They share a sense of timelessness and of internalised space; the outer world tends to be excluded, with figures, often wraith-like, merging with their surroundings. There is kindly mystery in Cranston’s book paintings, which are forthcoming and unpretentious; their fragmented narratives and stories dissolve into dreamlike visions.
For further exploration:
‘Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs’ at MIMA: https://mima.art/exhibition/winifred-nicholson-cumbrian-rag-rugs/
A review of ‘Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs’: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-textile-artists-who-cut-a-rug-in-cumbria/
Andrew Cranston at the Hepworth Wakefield: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/andrew-cranston/
A conversation with Andrew Cranston: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/03/21/painting-backward-a-conversation-with-andrew-cranston/
Current listening: https://www.mixcloud.com/nilsoliver5/nils-frahm-xmas-mix-2018/
Image on index page: Andrew Cranston, ‘Cat on Cheeseboard’, courtesy the artist and Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Andrew Cranston ‘A snake came to my coffee table on a hot, hot day to drink there’, courtesy the artist and Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh