Ye "Susan Burr" Hooked Rug Machine
Tool · checked at the source
- Made by
- The Holley Associates
- Date
- c. 1920s–1930s
- Place
- Torrington, Connecticut
- Held by
- Tuft the World (own collection)
- Materials
- wood, steel, brass
- Themes
- Hand-tufting tools & the gun, Tools & equipment
Cite this source
Research notes
Boxed hand rug machine with printed instructions. Two wooden handles slide against each other: a steel needle in one, a gauge in the other that holds each loop while the needle withdraws ("push down the gauge to hold the loop while the needle is withdrawn… alternately inserting the needle and the gauge"). The box carries a poem ending "Susan Burr, in the days gone by, / Fashioned rugs such as you or I / With the self-same needle / In the self-same way." Research notes: no record of a real Susan Burr exists (an invented grandmother, like Betty Crocker); the mechanism copies Ebenezer Ross's 1891 patent (US 463,548), which expired in 1908; Torrington was a needle-making town. Greer Heritage Museum acc. 2002.1.1&2 dates the type to the 1920s. The second moving part is the ancestor of the looper/scissor in a modern tufting gun.