Country Home magazine, October 1995
Painting With Wool

A painter shifts from oil to fibers, capturing ragged images from the world around her and breathing life into a lost art.

By Selby Frame

Artist Jacqueline Hansen's life story is detailed in every room of her home. Her earliest yearnings she poured into paintings of ships bound for adventure. During the busy years of child rearing, she stenciled furniture.

But it was only after her four children were grown that she found her calling among scraps of fabric. "The minute I took up rug hooking, I knew it was painting with wool," she says. "I just loved the feel of it in my hands."

Now with nearly 400 rug designs, she is gaining renown as one of New England's most prolific designers. She teaches rug hooking at her 1840 home in Scarborough, Maine, and at workshops around the country.

But she may best be known as the person who revived the Waldoboro technique, a sculpted style that originated three centuries ago in the Maine fishing community of Waldoboro. Without her passionate preservation, it might have been lost forever.

Fascinated by history
She became intrigued with early hooked rugs while attending auctions with her husband, Walter. "I kept running across old Waldoboro rugs," she says, "and many of them fetched thousands of dollars. I was fascinated with the history and thought I'd like to bring that back."

But there were no guides. The technique had vanished with its creators. Jacqueline had to go to Waldoboro - a coastal village roughly 100 miles north of Portland - to trace the history of the rugs.

She learned of German settlers who arrived in the 1600s with colorful, sculpted rugs in floral designs. In Maine, these pioneer women hooked rugs from worn clothing and feed sacks, "hoving," or raising, the piles of patterns reminiscent of their European rugs. They became known as Waldoboro designs and were made well into the 19th century.

Jacqueline got in touch with the Waldoboro technique literally, by fondling old rugs in museums and at auctions. "It was trial and error," she says. "I could feel how high they did the loops, the outlines. And I studied the colors. They often chose apricot, for instance, to highlight red flowers."

Many hooked rugs bear the emotional imprint of the people who made them, their secrets embedded in the subject matter or the choice of fabrics. Jacqueline's affection for Scarborough Marsh, a vast estuary bordering her home, is evident in her landscapes. Many of her rugs and pillows show coastal scenes populated with snowy egrets, great blue herons, and sandpipers.

Gentle therapy
In Jacqueline's studio, the morning quiet is interrupted when Maggie McGrath, a rug-hooking student from Saco, Maine, drops by with two pillows. They are her first, and she has brought them to her teacher for approval.

"Oh, Maggie, they came out fine," says Jacqueline. "You're starting to see the world with an artist's eye."

Maggie took up rug hooking after a long illness. She credits the craft with speeding her recovery." It relaxes you," she says, pulling a stray thread from a pillow. "You could play golf, but what do you have in the end? This is doing something for yourself."

"I'm cheaper than a psychologist," quips Jacqueline. "But the key is, rug hooking takes your mind off yourself. It's almost like you're doing a puzzle. You want to get one more row in. It's quarter past eleven and I'm still saying, 'One more row.' You become completely absorbed."

Jacqueline flips through a colorful album showing all of her rugs. Some are adaptations of antiques; others are her own invention. There are Orientals, houses and gardens, abstracts, landscapes, portraits, dogs, cats, and seashells. Many designs were inspired by students asking for patterns they couldn't find in books.

"It's hard to believe this is all mine," she says. "I feel like I've done something. But you know, they just kind of happened."

They happened one row at a time.

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