Finnish American Rag Rugs - 9780870138645

This is a richly layered and lavishly illustrated study of an important and enduring form of folk art. Building on meticulous research, Yvonne Lockwood vividly describes the astounding complexities in the rag rug making process: assembling, cleaning, cutting, and sorting the rags; preparing the looms; planning the designs; weaving the rugs; and, not least, the importance of possessing the right loom. Readers come close to the Finnish American weavers: to their life stories, values, and aesthetic ideals. The book reveals how rag rugs---once functional necessities---have come to embody the essence of family memories and core values in the Finnish American cultural heritage. Barbro Klein, Professor of Ethnology, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala

Lockwood's Finnish American Rag Rugs is a close study of a Finnish American phenomenon, demonstrating how it functions as a continuous stream of tradition from Finnish immigrants who came as early as the late nineteenth century to their descendants living in the twenty-first century. Lockwood's study of rag rugs challenges scholarly conclusions about assimilation. Through her close study of one form of Finnish American popular and folk culture, she makes a powerful argument that conclusions about Finnish American assimilation and ethnic identity maintenance need to be re-examined, and that personal interviews and long-standing friendships can result in access to significant data that can track ethnic identity. While her book is about Finnish Americans, it provides a paradigm through which to study other ethnic groups. K. Marianne Wargelin, University of Tampere, Finland

This comprehensive "natural history" of a traditional art form honors more than a hundred contemporary Finnish American rag rug weavers and loom builders, whom the author has met and interviewed during more than two decades of research, mostly in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula. As in the classic Finnish American rag rug, Lockwood weaves a colorful yet subdued, artfully lasting, and deeply symbolic tribute that reclaims remnants of past Michigan Traditional Arts Program productions in a fresh composition that will appeal to rag rug artisans, Finns and Finnish Americans, scholars, and a broad public alike. Janet C. Gilmore, Independent Folklorist & Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Finnish American Rag Rugs is a study about rag rug culture and the role of rag weaving in Finnish America. In a larger sense, it is also a study of how a craft can persist over centuries, reinforcing the culture, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and values of an immigrant group that retains a strong sense of its ethnic identity.

Finnish American Rag Rugs provides a history of Finnish immigration to and settlement in Michigan's Upper Peninsula alongside an examination of the tradition of rag weaving in the United States and the Nordic region. Although many other immigrants have a tradition of making rag rugs, Finnish Americans are one of the few groups to have maintained the culture of rag weaving in their adopted country. In the process of studying this one activity of this one population, the author uncovers new information about both the history of a ubiquitous form of fiber art and the beliefs and values of an understudied ethnic group. Illustrated with 200 color photos, Finnish American Rag Rugs is both informative and beautiful.