In an age of planned obsolescence and mass production it is perhaps difficult to remember a time, not so long ago, when every spare scrap of cloth and thread of wool was scrupulously saved and creatively cycled. The economic structure of cottage industry made this absolutely necessary for survival and the uses recycled materials were put to produced some fascinating results. Ragweaving is one that emerged as a significant form over two hundred years ago.
One of the first recorded uses of rag weaving was the production of bed sheets and coverlets (tatter weaving). These were produced in the rural areas of Sweden, as the house inventories compiled in the last decades of the eighteenth century can show. As with patchwork pieces, rags could provide an inexpensive source of material from which to make additional layers of warmth to guard against the fierce winters.
Rag weaving was first used as a floor covering in the form of mats and was combined with straw and bulrush. In Scandinavia such mats, of a simple striped design, became increasingly used from the beginning of the nineteenth century but were only brought out for uses on special occasions such as saints’ days. As the century progressed their popularity increased and by the 1850s they had become the accepted form of floor covering in most Scandinavian homes. These rag rugs often took the form of long striped runners placed one on top of the other in a criss-cross fashion, building up layers until nothing of the original floor covering could be seen.