"'Scrap bag artist' makes attractive hooked rugs" from the August 25, 1964 Door County Advocate
By FRANCES BADTKE
'Scrap bag artist' makes attractive hooked rugs
By FRANCES BADTKE
"Scrap bag artist" and "painting with rags" are two terms that could apply to Mrs. Harvey A. Olson (Linda) of Ellison Bay as she makes her hooked rugs.
Linda Olson has been hooking rugs since 1928 and her first ones were made on a burlap sack with rags from her scrap bag. These early rugs were often made by the light of a kerosene lamp and many hours went into their making.
She has now opened her Farm Studio at her home just north of Ellison Bay on Hwy. 42 where her latest efforts are on display along with paintings done by her son, Eugene H. Olson, a well known artist at Milwaukee.
Linda now uses new materials and woolen yarns, and woolen garments that have been cleaned and torn apart as part of the material for her hooked rugs. She has found that she prefers monks cloth as a backing instead of burlap. Another thing she has discovered is that she gets a smoother edge on a rug by turning under the hem and hooking through it rather than to hook the rug and then turn the hem under later. All rugs are backed with liquid latex to keep them from slipping on waxed floors.
Her rugs are worked on a frame and she uses a hook shaped like a crochet hook but with a round wooden handle to fit the hand. Each loop of the rug is carefully pulled through one of the spaces in the backing material after the pattern has been drawn. Her patterns are original and seldom are two alike as she does not like to hook the same pattern a second time unless it is in a different color scheme.
A great deal of time and planning goes into the design and color of each rug as many of them are made to order for a certain place in a customer's home. A sketch is drawn up with the colors marked in each space before the pattern is drawn on the backing material. Then the right colors and shades are selected, strips are cut to size and the tedious job of hooking begins.
HOOKED RUGS by Linda Olson are on display at her Farm Studio north of Ellison Bay. She has been making rugs since 1928 and designs her own patterns. Completely handmade of woolen materials, like Joseph's Coast, they come in many colors. —Advocate
Her rugs have been featured in full color "in the Sunday edition of the Milwaukee Journal and many of her hooked creations are to be found in the Milwaukee apartment of her son Eugene as well as others.
Among other things she also makes decorative hooked wall hangings and pictures. The current wall hanging, she is working on has a Door county theme with green pine trees on the shores of a blue lake. Fish have been the subject of a wall hanging that she has done in two different color schemes. One was done especially for a customer and matched the decor of her dining room. It takes about 80 to 90 hours to make a wall hanging.
All the loops are not always the same height and some very interesting textures and designs can be made by varying the loop height as it is pulled through the backing. A large (4' x 8') rug on display at her studio is in shades of greens and a modified herringbone design is raised above the rest of the rug.
Other rugs have circles of harmonizing colors, outlined in black and on a gray background; stripes of various shades and tones of red; multicolored triangles on a neutral background, and almost any design that a customer might take a fancy to.
Linda Olson also makes braided gigs and figures out a color scheme for each of these as carefully as those of her hooked rugs.
The Olsons have two sons, Eugene of Milwaukee who is a commercial artist, and Guy A. Olson, who lives at Allison, Iowa. He has one son.
Linda Olson plans to keep her Farm Studio open through September.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Frances Badtke
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/frances-badtke
Other artist profiles
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/artist-profiles