Mary Sheppard Burton - Textile Artist

Mary Sheppard Burton
Textile Artist

2003 Book of the Year Award
Recognizes Excellence and Passion

State College, Pennsylvania, September 2003

Margaret Miller, Executive Director of the Textile Center of Minnesota, has announced this year’s recipient of the Book of the Year Award, a large, sturdy six-pounder in full color that promises what it delivers: textiles to lift the spirit.

A Passion for the Creative Life, Textiles to Lift the Spirit by Mary Sheppard Burton, with Mary Ellen Cooper, editor, and Ed Kirkpatrick, photographer, took top honors Sunday, September 14, 2003 at the annual Awards Ceremony in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Each book nominated was judged in ten categories: pertinence to textile art; breadth of appeal; quality and clarity of writing; quality of illustration and photography; cover design and illustration; overall book design; editing, proofreading; printing, typesetting; quality of binding; and association with Minnesota’s strong textile tradition (six of the creative fiber artists featured in the book are Minnesotans).

The book is a coffee-table-sized 10 1/2 by 11 inches; 404 pages in length; and full color throughout (ISBN#0-9724463-0-3; $49.95 plus $9.95 S&H). A Passion for the Creative Life is, in part, an autobiographical compendium of Mary Sheppard Burton’s life’s work. It looks deeply into the areas of creativity, cross-cultural ancient and modern fiber history, and the creative process and what it means to each artist. These are accompanied by the work of more than 50 of the foremost fiber artists in the world today. Traditional (and not so traditional) rug hookers like Mrs. Burton are featured—along with quilters, weavers, mixed-media artists, a doll maker, and several collectors of Navajo rugs, vintage fabrics, antique garments, laces, and tools.

Author Burton is considered one of the best rug-hooking artists today, yet she treasures her humble beginnings. They have created within her, as she tells it,” an abiding appreciation for the little things in life.” These things often become the monumental themes of her finest works of art—from a tiny teacup to a miniature black and white photo that evolved into the brilliantly colored “Moghul Taj,” that graces the cover of the book.

Her palette, as she describes it, is the best of all colors known to nature: especially the magnificent landscapes, sunlit, and starry skies that frequent her Germantown, Maryland farm—as well as the depths of the waters that flow upon her beloved Eastern Shore.

Introducing the book and its author, Max Allen, Founding Curator of the prestigious Textile Museum of Canada, writes, “Mrs. Burton’s rugs are inventive and thoroughly original, astonishingly beautiful, historically significant, and wonderfully crafted. Her rugs reflect the deep individuality that runs through all significant folk art: using the most ordinary material and simple means, the folk artist produces unique and moving works. Mrs. Burton is a national treasure.”

Accepting the 2003 Book Award, Mrs. Burton issued to the assembled artists, guests, and staff of the Textile Center the same “Call to Creativity” that begins her book—a plea for originality, a deep look inside oneself, a painterly approach to color, and an historical understanding of the roots of all fiber arts.

For instance, she says, “A rug hooker often dyes her own wools, and cuts them into strips by hand, or by machine. The technique actually is quite simple: the rug hooker holds a strip of wool ten to twelve inches long and 3/8ths or more inches wide beneath the rug backing (preferably linen or monks cloth); inserts a special hook through the surface, and pulls up a loop of wool. The height of the loop approximates the width of the strip. The hooker inserts the hook into the next hole, and the next, each time pulling up a loop.”

Translating this process into an exciting book with extraordinary photographs and design is recognized as excellence completely apart from that of the artist-author. Ed Kirkpatrick, also of Germantown, Maryland, the book’s photographer is “quite a special man,” according to Mary Sheppard Burton. “He has an eye for beauty in many things, but he is able to project it in textiles ‘just about as well as anybody else alive.’” His work hangs in places like the World Bank; he teaches photography at the Smithsonian; and has had covers on National Geographic and other books and magazines.

Mary Ellen Cooper, book editor, who lives near State College, Pennsylvania, was the founding editor of Rug Hooking Magazine. As editor, she met many of the finest artists capable of “painting with wool”—among them, Mary S. Burton. They kept in touch, and because she also had a background in book publishing, it seemed natural that Burton approach her to publish this book, and for her to accept (“delightedly”).

There ensued many days and countless nights of research, writing, editing, proofreading and design. These translated into important sections of the book like A Call to Creativity, Searching Through the Threads of Time, Textiles That Lift the Spirit, and I Dream in Color. A complete timeline of fiber through the ages was drafted and added to the nearly fourteen years of research work that Mrs. Burton had already put into the book. The research became a year-long epic of publishing—a labor of love. Cooper says they early determined the book would be made “the way a book should be, and certainly not begging for color.”

When asked if she had been excited about the trip and the Award Ceremony in Minneapolis during which her book was cited “Book of the Year,” Mary Sheppard Burton said what readers will recognize as one of her favorite responses, stated with a smashing smile, signs of humor all over her face, and wild gesticulations of her arms and hands: “Oh, yes. It’s so wonderful, it makes my eyeballs wiggle.”

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