Artist/Maker
Mary Schwall
American, 1859 - 1949
Title
The Loom Room, Grenfell Mission, Labrador
Date1913-1915
MediumSilver Gelatin Print
Dimensions6 1/4 × 8 in. (15.9 × 20.3 cm)
Object number2000.100.2788
Institutional Credit LineCourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum
DescriptionThe Loom Room, Grenfell Mission, Labrador - In the summer of 1913 at the age of 54, Mary travelled with her sister Sally as a volunteer to the Grenfell Mission in St. Anthony in the (then) British colony of Newfoundland. The sisters returned in the summer of 1915. While Sally worked as a housekeeper, Mary assisted in the weaving workshop. An evangelical mission, Grenfell provided medical care to migratory deep-sea fishermen and local Anglo-American populations residing in the rural areas along Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula and the Labrador coast. The Mission operated hospitals and a hospital ship; nursing stations; industrial workshops focused on craft production; agricultural and animal husbandry programs and gardens; a children’s home; day, boarding and summer schools; lending libraries; a clothing exchange; cooperative stores; and a seaman’s institute.
At Grenfell Mission, Mary served as Director of the Loom Room under Jessie Luther. The Loom Room provided a centralized location for weaving, gave local populations alternative economic opportunities, and nurtured skills, artistry, and industriousness. Luther had introduced a significant craft program at the Mission, harnessing existing mat-hooking practices popular with local British, Irish, and Scottish settler communities. Mission craft workshops – often associated with the Arts & Crafts movement – were popular between 1880 and 1940 and cut two ways: they created economic opportunities for under-resourced communities but also enforced paternalism and altered authentic cultural practices. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these goods went to the makers. The rest supported the Mission. Industriousness was positioned as a method to combat period prejudices about the poor that believed laziness and intemperance were innate to poverty. At Grenfell, Luther provided standardized materials (like dyed silk stockings) and introduced Northern-themed imagery, like polar bears, dogsleds, and local wildlife, to appeal to southern buyers. Local Anglo-American women, girls, and the elderly learned homespun, weaving, hooked rug making, and basketry. Today, Grenfell’s Industries hooked floor mats are particularly prized.
Over two summers in 1913 and 1915, Mary maintained a photographic travelogue that documented her experiences, the landscape, and the people she met in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador. 135 of her photographs are housed in the Memorial University of Newfoundland Special Collections. In addition, NBWM holds at least thirteen original photographs by Mary Schwall. They document Mary’s childhood home in New Bedford, a WWI-era youth knitting class she organized, the sisters’ residence in Pasadena, a coverlet woven by Mary, three interiors of The Loom Room at Grenfell (reproduced here), and five landscapes around Labrador and Newfoundland. These intimate photographs reveal how two New Bedford women maintained their independence, navigated new opportunities, leveraged volunteerism, and – for Mary – found a creative outlet in the practice of weaving and newfound connection to a community, far from home. As she wrote, speaking of Miss Luther, but perhaps also of herself, “[this work] has also given a feeling of interest, self-reliance, and a consciousness of ability to do something worth while in the world. … [and brought] happiness and self-respect to the people of the North.”
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