Hooked Rug with Horse 1935 - 1942

This hooked rug with a horse was made by Joseph Glover, sometime between 1855 and 1995. I can just picture him, or someone close to him, patiently looping each strand, building up this sturdy, tactile surface. It's a sketch, but it’s a sketch for a rug, so the materiality is already so present. That brown horse standing square in the middle—it's so earnest and present. He stands in front of a strange gray fence with what might be puddles beneath, all framed by a formal border. It’s a cozy scene, the kind you might find in folk art, but with a certain compositional formality. There is so much intimacy in the craft of making a rug like this. I can see the influence of other rug makers, each loop a quiet conversation across time. Each imperfect loop and quirky color choice becomes an expression, a kind of embodied mark-making. It's a reminder that art can be found in the everyday, in the labor of our hands.