Now open: “Rugs All Marked Out” at the Maine State Museum

A new exhibit entitled "Rugs All Marked Out" is now open at the Maine State Museum. This exhibit features some of the metal stencil plates which were created by Edward Sands Frost of Biddeford, Maine, around 1870, and used for the next 30 years by E. S. Frost and Company to produce printed patterns on burlap, ready to be worked into hooked rugs. Also included in the exhibit are a few of the printed patterns themselves, along with several completed or partially worked rugs made using Frost stencils. The exhibit traces the 135-year history of the metal stencil plates, which were used to produce the first commercially manufactured hooked rug patterns.

Traveling around northern New England as a tin peddler in the years after his service in the Civil War, Edward Sands Frost (1843-1894) of Biddeford, Maine, was invited into many a rural home, and noted the great diversity of quality in the designs which farm women drew onto burlap and hooked into rugs for their homes. In 1868, Frost’s wife began to work on a rug, and he became interested enough in the process to try working the wool himself.  While working on the rug, Frost decided that he could improve upon the design, and drew a pattern on burlap. His design proved to be popular with friends and customers, and as he recounted in an 1888 interview in the Biddeford Times, “I began, Yankee-like, to study some way to do them quicker. Then the first idea of stenciling presented itself to me.”

Using sheet metal that he had stored in his barn, Frost began working to create rug-sized stencils. After some experimenting and much physical labor, Frost produced a full-sized stencil cut from a sheet of zinc and used it to print a black outline pattern on burlap. These outline patterns proved to be a successful addition to his peddling business, but demand soon led him to consider producing colored patterns, too. In 1870 Frost sold his peddling business and went into the business of producing colored rug patterns. The business grew rapidly, from just Frost himself to ten employees. Frost continued printing patterns on burlap until poor health forced him to sell the business in November of 1876. At that time, he moved from Biddeford to Pasadena, California, where he died eighteen years later. By the time of the sale, the metal stencil plates numbered approximately 750, used to produce about 180 different patterns, including animal, floral, geometric, and “Turkish” designs.

During the first half of the 1870s, the business was listed in the Maine Register under the name Ed. S. Frost, producing “Stamped Rug Patterns.” After the business was purchased by James A. Strout of Biddeford in 1876, the listing changed to E.S. Frost & Company, known as “Rug Pattern Manufacturers.” E.S Frost & Co. was listed as being in business until about 1905.

Over the years, the stencils went from owner to owner, finally ending up in the collections of Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum of Dearborn, Michigan, where they were used as a part of that museum’s craft program. In the early 2000s, the Henry Ford reevaluated their holdings and as a result the collection of stencils, minus a “small portion of the collection, was offered to the Maine State Museum which the MSM readily accepted. They were transported to Maine in June of 2003. Since that time, all 742 of the transferred stencils have been accessioned, numbered, photographed, and entered into the State Museum’s collection database. The sets make up 113 different patterns, but actually account for even more, since some patterns utilized the border of one design and the center section of another. Unfortunately, only a very small portion of the entire collection can be displayed in the exhibit at the State Museum, but hopefully it is enough to give visitors a concept of their size and complexity, and the range of patterns that Frost designed and produced.

It is hoped that this small exhibit at Maine’s State Museum, which will remain on display through 2006, will not only give hooked rug enthusiasts an opportunity to learn a bit more of the history of the first commercially-produced hooked rug patterns in the United States, but will also increase their awareness of and appreciation for the Frost hooked rugs and printed burlaps that are still out there, waiting to be re-discovered and treasured.

Source of text includes Maine Antique Digest