Ruth Jones: The Dream Weaver

Ruth Jones has a bird on her shoulder.

I’m here to see her studio and to touch her tapestries – more on that later­ – and she has just greeted me at the door with a warm smile. And a bird. In another setting, I might write off a bird lady as, well, weird. But given the ­medium of her artwork – one that has held an air of regality and mysticism since its popularity in 13th-century castles and churches – Ruth Jones as bird charmer seems entirely fitting.

The art of tapestry, which involves weaving silk and wools into a cotton “warp” thread to build intricate images and designs, hails from an era when legacy was proudly protected and castles were big and drafty. While in recent years there has been an inching toward the natural, organic arts – contemporary architecture’s minimalism just begs for softness – there hasn’t been a sudden resurgence in the medieval art of tapestries (though the New York Times recommended them for blocking sound in noisy apartments as recently as 2006). As Jones’s clients demonstrate, however, the centuries-old charm of owning an heirloom tapestry pervades in business circles, appealing to buyers with a desire to connect with their past.

of Jones’s work range from John Chambers, chair and CEO of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO-Q), to lumber executives such as Tim Kerr, formerly of Lignum Forest Products LLP, to lawyers such as Michael Hoogbruin, principal of Michael R. Hoogbruin and Co. Renowned interior designers such as Juli Hodgson and Valerie Potvin have turned to Jones to produce works for both public (Lost Lake Lodge in Whistler and Crofton House School in Vancouver) and private commissions (such as Chambers’s piece, which conceals his flat-screen TV), while both IBM (IBM-N) and BMO-Nesbitt Burns (BMO-T) headquarters boast a Jones piece in their lobbies. For those who can afford it (an average commission runs $30,000; her most expensive is $60,000), it seems there’s a new cachet to holding on to personal, historical moments – and in a more permanent, substantial form.

At Jones’s East 14th Avenue home and studio – which she shares with her husband, Skooker Broome (her grown daughter Alex now lives in L.A.) – there’s little homage to the castle. While she has left out one of her works for me – her now famous Descending From the Profit, a breathtakingly detailed tapestry depicting a Christ figure, whose loincloth is made from lumberjack fabric, floating over the Golden Spruce – her home is a modest, century-old east-side Vancouver semi, adorned with other artists’ works. We wind past a First Nations child’s canoe, propped high in the entranceway, back to a kitchen filled with tropical plants where Jones is brewing a spicy, peppercorn-laced Punjabi chai. Salvador the lovebird gets tucked back into his outdoor cage.

Though born in Vancouver, the forty-something Jones spent her childhood travelling the world – a result of her dad’s gig as a UN economist. “We’d go to see the head man of the village – whether in Turkey, Egypt, Nepal – and there’d always be a big stack of textiles beside him,” she recalls, “things that were handed down or woven by his grandmother.” Mathematics was her first love back then (surprising until you hear Jones speak of her work – words like “binary” and “coding” are intermingled with descriptions of tapestry “piercing a veil through time and space”), which evolved into a science and anthropology degree at UBC in 1980. But after taking a leave from a master’s degree (“I realized I didn’t want to dig up artifacts; I wanted to make artifacts”), she headed to San Francisco to study painting. Then one day, she walked into a show of contemporary French tapestries – and was hooked.

She headed to France in ’82 to study the art form at the Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif d’Aubusson. Her background as a painter lent itself to the rich and detailed imagery of the medium, and the month she graduated she received a commission from an Irish businessman for $15,000. Twenty-five years later, Jones earns a not-insignificant salary that nears six figures, entirely through the sales of her tapestries and paintings. About half of Jones’s business consists of local commissions, with the rest coming from abroad – private and corporate clients, usually referred through word of mouth or through an interior designer.[pagebreak]=

Jones’s work has covered subjects ranging from the spiritual (such as Descending From the Profit, which author John Vaillant hung over his desk for inspiration as he wrote The Golden Spruce) to the personal (John Chambers’s commission, High Above the Valley, is a pastoral setting of summer in the alpine, dedicated to his wife’s love of alpine flowers). In the Aubusson tradition of tapestry, the work is constructed on a massive loom – but upside down and backwards. “It’s a blind process, which is very different for this age,” she explains. “I can’t drift off. It’s like skiing moguls: if you take your mind off for a second, you’re gone.”

Weaving at a rate of two months for every square metre, Jones is able to produce only two or three tapestries a year – balancing a waiting list of clients and bringing in part-time help as needed to assist in less complicated weaving and setup. She works without an agent, preferring to do her own deals, and says her golden rule is to get five letters out a week – whether to prospective clients who have expressed interest in the past, juried art programs or to other sources who might get word out about her work.

One such referral was Alan Manzie, now vice-president of Haywood Securities Inc. in Vancouver, who became a client of Ruth Jones’s in 1995 when he oversaw the purchase of four of her tapestries by Burns Fry’s Vancouver office. At the time, he was regional manager for the stock brokerage firm (now BMO Nesbitt Burns) and managed its move into the HSBC Building. David Thom from IBI Group was the architect for the project (and also the owner of a Jones tapestry), and he suggested that Jones’s work would make for a dramatic entrance into the building – if in a more unusual place. “They’re on the floor,” explains Manzie. “The whole floor was a cream-coloured limestone with four inserts cut into it in our lobby. When the elevators open, you see Ruth’s floor – it’s really dramatic.” The tactile nature of Jones’s work appealed to the ­clients. “They’re not like a normal carpet – they’re almost an inch deep,” explains Manzie. “When you walk on them, they feel lush, expensive.”

Jones’s designs for the Burns Fry office were based on the work of another artist that all of the partners enjoyed, a piece featuring an abstract butterfly pattern. For Jones there’s as much art in negotiating the final design of the tapestry as there is in the work itself. She first studies the site where the tapestry will hang – even if it means getting in there while the building is under construction – assessing the light, the mood of the space. Working with the client, she sketches images and develops ideas and concepts. A painting evolves from this work and, finally, the tapestry.

One client, for example, was inspired by the loss and love of her father. He had handed down a carved wooden lion in his collection of family treasures, and Jones used this object to create a tapestry in which a proud lion forms the dominant picture, with other family symbols (Garry oak groves, a star, a compass and a martlet bird) making up the ground. Clients are also an integral part of the colour-selection process: Jones will bring out samples of wools and silks, and they’ll touch what’s to become woven in the art, giving their approval on this final detail.

Jones’s process follows the ancient model of patron and artist working ­together. “I have such strong ideas of my own, but this is an exercise of me listening to them,” she says. It’s the patron’s desire for a legacy that has kept tapestry relevant, she insists. “It’s like this need, a need for a legacy, a statement, a bold ‘Who am I?’ ” She smiles. “And it’s fun to do! It’s fun to make art a different way in this age.”

Ask Jones what she thinks has made her work such a draw for her Fortune 500 clients, and she explains that while Canadian tax law means that corporations can claim art as an asset – thus writing off the purchase – there’s something else at hand when a company chooses to invest in this ancient art form. “As our work and home lives get busier,” she says, “we’re naturally attracted to things that can’t be rushed. Tapestry, centuries after its heyday, is still about human touch, human thought and creative spirit that isn’t generated by a machine.”

Her work on the wall signifies both the time it took to create it and its timelessness as an art form. It presents a statement beyond the artistic beauty of the work; it speaks to the strength and endurance of its purchaser too. “It’s a great time to hang tapestry in your office or home and say, ‘I’m slowing the world down,’ ” she says. “Feel calm in the presence of this company because we’re going to be here forever – we’ve got staying power. That’s exactly what a tapestry is.”