Last summer I was in Wisconsin, and I found one of these…and I thought, ‘what the hell is this?’ I was very intrigued because one part slides back and forth and it has a nice little point on it, and a little spiral at the end, but I was totally out of my realm. So I looked it up. It turns out that this is a blue nose rug hooker [for making rugs].

So this is a complicated rug hooker from 1926, but the box said that it was the ‘simplest and quickest method for making a hooked rug–even a child could do it’.

This belongs in The Museum of Play Tools for the Wealthy

Exhibited by Michael Bennett

Transcript edited by Susan Golland