The Garrett Bluenose Patterns: Celebrating Nova Scotia’s Rug Hooking Heritage

A colourful, photo-filled history of Nova Scotia’s iconic Bluenose hooked-rug patterns, featuring step-by-step instructions for aspiring rug-hookers.

In 1892, John E. Garrett (1865 -- 1937) and his father, Frank, began to design and sell printed burlap patterns out of their home in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. John’s three sons, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur, later joined Garrett’s, and by 1926, their patterns came to be known as ＂Bluenose,＂ for the famous Nova Scotia schooner. Over the next eighty years, Garrett’s would produce hundreds of designs. John and his son Frank, who had studied commercial art in New York, produced bold, artistic new designs -- florals and scrolls, geometrics, pictorials, animals, and whimsical patterns -- that stood out from the rigid, Victorian-style patterns of the past. Catalogue and mail-order sales soared, and soon Garrett’s became the world’s largest producer of rug-hooking patterns.

An absolute treasure trove of Nova Scotia’s history, The Garrett Bluenose Patterns is accented with hundreds of vibrant photographs, including preserved stencils and burlap patterns as well as finished rugs, celebrating the meticulous, beautiful Bluenose designs that have been hooked into colourful finished rugs worldwide for over a century. Also included are practical tips and how-tos for the budding rug hooker on everything from creating thematic pictorial scenes to modern geometrics, as well as a glossary of common rug-hooking terms.