Anyone who has had the great good luck to travel Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail must be aware of the local craft tradition of small hooked “mats”—wall hangings, coasters, and tapestries—that appear for sale in just about every craft shop on the French western coast of the island. Usually they are images of birds or flowers in traditional, comfortable Victorian designs. They are eye-catching, beautiful, and extraordinary in so many ways. Daniel Doucet has written a biography and catalog of the work of one of the most prolific and artistic of these wool workers, a local, shy, extremely talented woman named Élizabeth LeFort (1914-2005). At the same time, he explores some of the issues important to folklorists, particularly the tension between folk and popular arts.
Throughout the late nineteenth century there was a social movement of encouraging and marketing folk arts among the impoverished people of the Maritimes (as well as in Scandinavia, northern England and Scotland, and Appalachia), in hopes that craft sales to tourists would help to offset some of the grinding poverty and uncertainties of livelihood from the fisheries. The idea was to build upon extant skills—especially women’s traditional textile skills of rug hooking, sewing, and knitting—and, by introducing more sophisticated designs and marketing schemes, to help isolated families and communities. The Grenfel Missions in Newfoundland and Labrador is a prime example; the Mennonite shops called Ten Thousand Villages is a contemporary example.
The delicate version of hooking that defines the arts of the French Coast of Cape Breton was certainly begun as a self-help program, but seems to have been based on a French embroidery technique from the eighteenth century called tambour work. In this embroidery technique, an even-weave fabric with a design drawn upon it is stretched across a drum-like frame (hence the name tambour), much like a contemporary embroidery hoop, and then fine colored woolen or silk yarn is carefully pulled through from the back using a tambour hook, a wooden-handled crochet hook (still available in high-end needlework supply houses). A crochet hook will also work, as will a nail with its point filed to create a hook. The yarn loops must be densely packed together (12-14 per inch) and must be even in height. Colors can be carefully manipulated to shade into one another, in tapestry-like chiaroscuro. This is the craft that Élizabeth LeFort not only mastered, but also developed in ways not seen before in the community. She had a brilliant eye for color, dyeing her own colors, and both the skill and the focus (and, as Doucet points out, the time and the support) to work rapidly and accurately.
Doucet is an historian and priest from Cape Breton, and a childhood friend of LeFort. His biography of her is also a biography of the region, and a catalog of her work. LeFort’s life—that of a quiet woman whose career was championed by a forceful manager-husband—is treated very gently by the author. Ken Hansford directed Élizabeth’s art beyond traditional motifs to include reproductions of famous paintings (she was particularly fond of religious subjects), calendar art, photos from Arizona Highways, portraits of astronauts and politicians, and scenes from Canadian history. Not all of these experiments were aesthetically successful, but none could deny the technical expertise with which they were produced. Doucet is careful to consider this juncture of popular notions of art and traditional craft. LeFort’s husband made decisions for her on her themes and subjects, vigorously marketed them, and provided the resources and time for her to make art. He introduced popular subjects into his wife’s work, while LeFort maintained her focus on the technical expertise of the craft. She continued a strong reference to the tradition while creating objects that appealed to the popular market. After Hansford’s death, she continued to make art, but of her own choosing and at a slower rate—and her own aesthetic choices were to my eye, somewhat more graceful, if not more traditional.
The catalog of LeFort’s work is beautiful and breathtaking in its scope and skill. More than 300 tapestries are listed and photographed for the catalog. Her list of achievements is extraordinary for a quiet folk artist—including investiture in the Order of Canada, as well as meeting Prime Ministers, Archbishops, and the Queen. Nonetheless, Doucet suggests that she remained a modest and devout woman, unaffected by her artistic fame, who, after her husband died, lived a quiet happy life at home, surrounded by close friends and sustained both by her art and her religious faith.
The very short afterword by Patricia Pollett McClelland is a fine commentary on the folk art of rug hooking and LeFort’s place in Canadian arts. It is well worth folklorists’ attention.
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[Review length: 780 words • Review posted on September 14, 2011]