Remarkable Rugs: The Inspirational Art of Phoebe Hart
Harriet Hart and Caroline Clifton-Mogg
Remarkable Rugs is the book for every tapestry and embroidery lover, featuring as it does the bright and colourful, original and detailed designs that artist Phoebe Hart stitched on canvas, using a mixture of wools to produce rugs and hangings that today are collectors’ items. The word ‘inspirational’ is often too freely used, but Phoebe Hart’s canvas work is just that, each design a master class in composition and crammed full of intricate, detailed borders, lush flowers and fruit, and light-hearted, colour-bright butterflies, birds and fish – rich sources of inspiration for every needlecraft enthusiast. Phoebe Hart (1917–2010) was American by birth, but went to school in England, after which she studied stage design at the Slade under Vladimir Polunin, who had designed sets for Diaghilev, and for whom she painted backdrops for the Ballet Russe. After the war she went to Jamaica where she married, and where, hugely influenced by the vibrancy of Caribbean life, she began to design and make rugs depicting various aspects of the tropical world. Commissions soon poured in for commemorative pieces – a home, a favourite animal, an anniversary, a life – her admirers were legion. A show in London in 1997 cemented her reputation, and this book will bring her artistic genius and flair for design to a whole new generation of needlewomen.
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