Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission

Book excerpt: Strongly influenced by the arts and crafts movement, the New England artist Jessie Luther began her crafts career as director of the Labor Museum at Hull House, Chicago, at the invitation of the social reformer Jane Addams. In 1906, she was recruited by Dr Wilfred Grenfell, the medical missionary, to teach weaving to women at St Anthony, a small community at the northern tip of Newfoundland, and for four years she painstakingly laid the groundwork for a variety of craft industries. Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission is an annotated edition of a travel journal that Luther wrote from 1906 to 1910.