Winifred Nicholson's Cumbrian rag rugs
THIS EXHIBITION will floor you with the off-the-wall creativity of a group of Cumbrian rag rug makers led and inspired by the painter Winifred Nicholson. Dissolving any barriers between art and craft, recognising that it's all about imagining and making images, regardless of format, medium, or placement. It's also a special opportunity to see, on the wall, some of her best paintings that are not often on public view.
Another wall, named after the Roman Emperor Hadrian, passes nearby; always something of a watershed, close to the border between Scotland and England. No surprise that Winifred chose to settle along it at Banks, south of Bewcastle. It feels like a "thin", otherworldly, liminal place, ideal for seers and visionaries.
Potted Flowers, Prismatic No 2. Courtesy Jovan Nicholson
A countrywoman at heart, she was most at home with outside people who valued the deep peace and insight that comes from both observing the changing seasons, and being part of them.
Earlier, as Ben Nicholson's first wife, and then as a single mother of three living in Paris in the 1930s, understanding and absorbing the essentials of abstraction, she became a master of the fundamentals of colour, movement and form. And then, whilst respecting its principles, such that a painting by Mondrian had pride of place in her home, rejecting the reductionism of pure abstraction, which can risk feeling lifeless.
As Wordsworth observed, "We murder to dissect" losing sight of the essential interconnection of all of nature, and the inherent beauty and vitality intrinsic to wholeness. I think Winifred's great gift was to enable her subjects to sing; the colours and creations of nature, especially flowers, landscapes, water and sky.
Sheep Winifred Nicholson. Courtesy Jovan Nicholson
Great art energises, revealing and connecting us to qualities of joy and truth beyond words. A favourite subject is a jug of flowers on a window ledge in the foreground with open country and sky beyond.
In Potted Flowers, Prismatic No 2, (1978) the transition from inner to outer space is seamless. The material form of the flower-pot glows and dissolves, on the verge of being drawn out and up into the white light of the celestial beyond.
Winifred's paintings are windows into another world. She is our guide. They're selfless, not even signed. In an equally open-hearted way she inspired creative enthusiasm, industry, and variety amongst local people, friends and family. Together they spent long winter evenings sitting by the fireside, gossiping, whilst cutting up strips of cloth, recycling old material, before hooking, prodding and working their magic to produce...a rug! And then what? Why, lay it down on the floor, and walk all over it! Preferably barefoot. Not just because boots are muddy, but to feel comforted, to sink into and be embraced. Look at it too, of course.
Ben and Winifred's interest in abstraction and its associated geometries work well on a rug. Recipe: Choose up to eight creatures of varying shapes and colours. Method: devise a series of squares, alternating one square with a creature and another simply coloured or patterned. Results: Animal Squares (1925), designed by Ben Nicholson, and made by Mary Bewick; or a more recent version from the 1960s, designed by Winifred, and made by Florence Williams.
Next: listen, for every rug has a story to tell. Tales of farm animals that played such an important part in their everyday life and living, like Galloway Bull or Sheep, both by Mary Bewick and dating from the 1960s. They stand centre stage, four square, dominating the landscape around them as if to say "Tread on me if you dare!".
There are favourite pets too, but also wild creatures that share the countryside around, as well as more exotic foreigners. I especially like Janet Heap's Tiger, invoking memories of intrepid expeditions into wild jungles in some distant corner of Empire. Somehow it manages to be dangerous, exotic, appealing, and anarchic, rippling across the floor, its tail refusing to be contained within any square border panels.
Researched and curated by Jovan Nicholson, one of her grandsons, this exhibition is complemented by his beautiful book Winifred Nicholson Cumbrian Rag Rugs. It tells the stories behind the rugs, their makers and designers. Inspiring too, with a powerful message for modern times in Rachael Matthew's Preface: "Whatever culture or motherland you come from, Jovan is leading us on a path home through Hooky Rag Rugging."
What one earth does she mean? Simply that these rugs, and their slow making connect us back to the satisfactions of working with family and neighbours to create warm, friendly homes using our hands, recycling old material. It's that easy… . and that revolutionary.
At Tullie House, Carlisle until June 15, 2026.
www.tullie.org.uk/events/winifred-nicholson-cumbrian-rag-rugs/
Winifred Nicholson and Cumbrian Rag Rugs. £22.50. Paul Holberton Publishing.
