Silk Stocking Mats: Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission

Beginning in 1928, the Grenfell Mission sent out a call to socialites: When your stockings run, let them run to Labrador! The creative recycling of tattered stockings is just one of many innovations that made Grenfell hooked mats highly collectible folk art. In Silk Stocking Mats, Paula Laverty chronicles the development of a local craft into an internationally acclaimed art form.
For generations Newfoundland women had augmented their family's unreliable fishing income with a matting season in February and March. Through the Grenfell Mission's Industrial Department, set up in 1906 to help develop cottage industries, the mat industry became an increasingly important source of income, reaching peak production in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The mats became renowned for their exquisite design, meticulous craftsmanship, and distinctive images chronicling life in the north.
Silk Stocking Mats draws on personal interviews with older women who recall creating the mats, hundreds of archival documents, and careful examination of countless Grenfell hooked mats. Laverty's book is beautifully illustrated with photographs and descriptions, including rare and unusual mat designs.