From strings to stitches: The rugs of Jack Ellitt

One of my current projects concerns the work of composer Jack Ellitt, particularly conserving his archive of recordings made in Kincumber (New South Wales) from the 1970s through to his death in 2001. One enjoyable diversion has been looking into his work with textiles - a body of hooked rugs made in the 1960s while he was still living in the United Kingdom before his return to Australia.

For the unfamiliar, Ellitt (b. 1902) was a British-born Australian composer, filmmaker, and pioneering sound artist whose innovative work in experimental music and film remains largely underrecognised. Born Avrom Yitzhak Elitski in Manchester, he moved to Sydney at age three, where he studied violin and bassoon at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music.

In the late 1920s, Ellitt formed a creative partnership with New Zealand-born experimental filmmaker Len Lye, collaborating on films such as Tusalava (1929) and A Colour Box (1935). He was an early adopter of experimental techniques like musique concrète and drawn sound. Ellitt's 1935 essay "On Sound" articulated a vision of using everyday sounds as musical material, anticipating future sound art practices. Compositions such as Journey #1 and Homage to Rachel Carson #2 exemplify his "Sound Constructions"—collages of musical, concrete, and synthetic sounds. 

Ellitt's early years in the UK were spent in Hammersmith before a move to the Sussex countryside. With his wife Doris (formerly nanny to the children of Nancy Nicholson and Robert Graves), Ellitt lived in a cottage called the "Hermitage". From here, he commuted to London to work on productions for the Strand Film Company, worked on his sound constructions and a surprising body of hooked rugs. Made by pulling loops of fabric or yarn through a hardy backing material—burlap, linen, or hessian—using a crochet-like hook, hooked rugs enjoyed a phase of popularity during and post-Second World War in the UK.

We have little detail about Ellitt's rugmaking beyond documentation of 16 rugs made in the UK and accompanying Jack and Doris on their move to Australia in the early 1970s. Luxurious in their colour and abstraction, they're a fascinating insight into Ellitt's capacities as a visual artist. Interestingly, both Ellitt and Lye worked with textiles, albeit decades apart. Lye's similarly obscure work with batik in Hammersmith during the late 1920s and early 1930s included this work dedicated to Ellitt and for decades in Ellitt's possession alongside his own works.

Len Lye, "Jack Ellit" batik, c. 1930s. Len Lye Foundation Collection

Prized by Ellitt (more so than his compositions), there is the suggestion that his rugs were subsequently gifted to an Australian university or museum in the 1990's which I'm presently researching. If any readers are familiar or have any leads, please be in touch.

Thank you to Alan Eggleton for his assistance with research and photography.