Helen Taylor Condon
Braided Rug Maker
Parishville, NY 13672
Helen’s grandmother, Sarah Campbell, came to the United States from Nova Scotia in 1910. She met and married, Grant Samuel Taylor, who drove a trolley car on the busy streets of Boston.
They moved to Southaven, NY, on Long Island where Grant was hired to work on the Carmen River Duck Farm as a carpenter for Sarah’s brother-in-law. Although housing was included in one of the seven homes on the large farm, the pay was small and Sarah was forced to learn homemaking skills as a young woman. Her soap, bread, doughnuts and especially her pies were famous. She made clothes for her children and doll clothes for her grandchildren from printed flour sacks. The most significant skill she developed during these early married years was making braided rugs from discarded clothing.
Helen was very close to her grandmother and from the age of five to sixteen years old she spent her summers on the duck farm taking the ferry from New London, Connecticut to Orient Point, New York the day school let out and returning the day before school started in the fall. She spent hours with her grandmother in those early years of 1940 and in the evenings they made braided rugs together. Rolls of colored wool, stored in the attic were a wonderful sight and Helen loved to go up into the unfinished room to find the right color for the next row of a specific rug. Sarah’s friends brought old coats and jackets to the little farm house and she and Helen took the garments apart and ripped the fabric into strips to be used later. The wool was washed in a wringer washer and rinsed in a deep porcelain sink in the kitchen. Sarah told Helen what was appropriate to use for rugs. “Use the backs and fronts or all that you please, but never the elbows or the knees.” Those were the days when clothing was worn, passed down to the next youngest in the family, and finally thrown away when it had patches on top of patches.
In 1986, using a substantial grant from ANCA (Adirondack North Country Association), Helen opened a rug braiding business in the town of Parishville, NY. She restored the second floor of the 1905 Victorian building that housed a restaurant on the first floor. The four, immense rooms served as workroom, showroom, office, and storeroom. The building was 28 X 100 feet and decorated with Victorian pressed-tin walls and ceilings. Light flooded in from the tall windows and Helen’s knowledge of glazing windows was put to the test. Here she taught many women the art of rug braiding and sold kits to make rugs depicting the colors of the Adirondacks in its varied seasons. She has taught for Jefferson and St. Lawrence Cornell Cooperative Extension Services, at the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, Sagamore Institute, Old Forge Art Center, her Parishville studio, and for Adult Education Classes in Parishville and Cambridge, Mass. She also has students in Liverpool, England and Oslo, Norway.
She has given away as many rolls of twine, needles, and instruction booklets as she has sold, to people interested in the art who don’t have the money to buy them. Her mission is to recycle, reuse, and keep the art of rug braiding alive. Woolen mills are closing and the manufacturing of fleece and other fabrics made from oil is growing. Discarded wool clothing is becoming scarce. Her mission is to teach the art of rug braiding to as many people who are interested. During her demonstrations many people tell her, ‘my grandmother used to make rugs like these’. She encourages them to take up the art.
Helen has earned her MFA in Creative Writing from UNCW and has written a book called The BigRug. The memoir is about the loss of her husband of thirty-three years and how the skill of rug braiding and the making of a 15X18 foot rug helped her to overcome that loss. In 2004 she was awarded the TAUNY Heritage Award for community service and bringing the art of rug braiding to life.