Christmas in the Country

Dimensions: 41" x 31"
Materials: #5-cut wool on rug warp
Designed and hooked by Jeanne Benjamin, Brookfield, Massachusetts, 1998.
Featured in: Celebration IX

"I like to challenge myself and not always do what appears to be the obvious," explains Jeanne Benjamin of her entry for A Celebration of Hand-Hooked Rugs IX. The fourth and final design in her New England series on the seasons, Christmas in the Country, uses nontraditional colors in a traditional holiday scene. A previous rug called Church Supper, the summer design in the series, appeared in Celebration V. Each of the four pictorials features a different quilt border that frames the central scene and ties together the elements of the rug. Hooking this border was Jeanne's favorite part of Christmas in the Country.

Jeanne dyes all the wool for her rugs, plus about 50 yards each week for her rug hooking business, New Earth Designs, so she had plenty of opportunity to plan the colors that make this rug special. She decided to omit the usual holiday red and white. Instead, she used mauve and green for the border, and substituted the palest of pinks and mauve for the white, with shades of cranberry and purple for the red. "These choices helped provide the Victorian look and feel of this rug," Jeanne explains. The combination works so well, in fact, that "many people don't actually notice the lack of white and red until they are told."
- Jeanne Benjamin, Celebration Hall of Fame 2018
(Note: This rug description was taken as an excerpt from the published Celebration entry.)