Painters in Wool
The Mossellers have brought an an¬
cient craft from mountain cabins to
the mansions of the mighty.
By ANNIE EEE SINGLETARY
The Mossellers of Try on, N. C. don’t
mind confessing that they are rug ad¬
dicts. “We're hooked,” they say.
Mrs. Lillian Mills Mosseller and her
son, Ronald, both studied painting be¬
fore they began to see the possibilities
in hooked rugs. Now they call them¬
selves “painters in wool.”
To prove it, one has only to look
on the floors and walls of some of the
South’s finest homes. The Governors
Mansion of North Carolina has two of
the rugs with a third one in the making.
The state flower, the dogwood, is grow¬
ing on it right before your eyes in
the converted old post-office building
Ronold Mosseller is about the only man in the
country who con weave humor into a rug.
Mrs. Lillion Mills Mosseller volunteered to {poke
some new designs for the mountain women, and
launched a new career.
that the Mossellers use a- a studio.
The Governor’s Mansion of Virginia
had a Mosseller mg in the dining room
e%’en before North Carolina had one.
The Klcbergs have one at the great
King Ranch in Texas; it has panels
with cattle, brand symbol, flora, and
fauna typical of the ranch worked into
the design. A plantation home in
Georgia also has its custom-made rug
depicting a variety of its plant and
animal life.
Two Ford family homes also have
Mosseller rugs, as well as many homes
in Charlotte and Tryon. Owners of
Tryon estates favor horses and dogs,
so these (sketched from life by Ron¬
ald) adorn their rugs. One of them pic¬
tures the owner himself in a humorous
pose with hunting hat cocked over one
eye. Ronald is said to be just about the
only man in the country' who can weave
humor into a rug.
Gift for F.D.R.
There is also a Mosseller rug in the
Little White House at Warm Springs,
Ga., which was commissioned as a gift
for the late President Roosevelt. Valued
at $500 when it was made, it is now-
appraised at $3,500 and when it
needed re-conditioning, it was sent
back to Tryon in an armored truck.
“It has the Great Seal of the United
States, the NRA insignia, and almost
everything else we could think of
worked into it,” Lillian Mosseller said,
with a twinkle in her blue eyes.
In the same week, in 1965, the
Mossellers w'ere in New York to set
up a one-man exhibition of Ronald’s
work; went by Washington to see the
three rooms in the Smithsonian’s First
Ladies Hall for which they made the
rugs; and stopped by Richmond to
deliver personally the rug for the Gov¬
ernor’s Mansion.
The exhibit was unique in that it
matched Ronnie’s rugs with work of
the famous artists from which each was
copied in wool. Many of the most fa¬
mous pieces done by the Mossellers arc
used as wall hangings'rather than rugs.
In this room of the Governor's Mansion in Ra¬
leigh, the molded design of the ceiling is dupli¬
cated in the rug by Mills-Mosseller done in
shades of green. Corner medallions depict, in
pastel colors, important events in North Caro¬
lina history.
“Le Fiacre” and “Hambletonian" are
among them.
Dry Their Own
The Mosseller rugs are in the Lin¬
coln, Grant and McKinley rooms at
the Smithsonian. “All the finest rugs
of the Lincoln period seemed to be
on the old river boats, so we tried to
capture the mood of some of them
without actually copying them,” Mrs.
Mosseller said. “We had to match our
designs to the wallpaper so sent a
sample design to the curator first. One
of the designs had 500 different shades
in it with eggplant finally predominat¬
ing.” Because they can’t find the subtle
shading they desire in yams they buy,
the Mossellers always dye their own.
“We have developed a brush stroke
technique in blending wools; we do
with wool what the artist does with
paints. We therefore consider what we
do as works of art rather than just
rugs.”
Mrs. Mosseller, who maintained a
studio at Carnegie Hall in New York
until recently, is from an old Carolina
family for which Mills Springs near
Asheville was named. The first one of
them, Ambrose Mills, received a grant
of 90,000 acres from King George I1L.
Another was hanged for siding with
the Tories later on.
She lived for a while at -the ances-
13
the STATE, March t, 1968