Oral History Interview Rose Pero

Teka: As we begin, please tell me something about yourself.

Rose: At the present time?

Teka: Yes.

Rose: I’m retired from the telephone company where I worked for forty years. And I’ve been retired ten years, so I’m active in senior citizen groups and want to go as much as I can.

Teka: I understand that you are a charter member and the present secretary of the Hobby Weavers of the Ohio Valley.

Rose: Yes, I am. And just now I’m getting out notices for our next meeting which will be on May 26 and we have rented a kit, slide kit, from the Hand Weavers Guild of America. It’s on placemats and we expect to learn some more about weaving. We never seem to get all we could know about it.

Teka: When did the Hobby Weavers begin?

Rose: Hobby Weavers began in 1956 and we will celebrate our 30th anniversary in ‘86; we have been active all these years. We’ve always had good programs, outstanding speakers, workshops, trips and travels to various places to meet the weavers in other parts of the country. We were out-of-state members of the Indiana Weavers Guild for a good many years. And every year we were entitled to go to their meetings twice and we met them and exchanged programs with them and they exchanged programs with us.

Teka: I understand that you were a former student of Lou Tate’s.

Rose: Well, let’s begin with my beginning with Lou Tate. My mother, I love her, -- and God bless her, she was my introduction to Lou Tate; she didn’t know Lou Tate, but she had read about her and heard about her. And so one evening after we had finished our dinner, after I had come home from work--it was in the winter time, I know because it was cold and it was dark,-- we went out to Kenwood Hill. We didn’t know the way but we found the road that went up the hill and it was a narrow dirt road, and I don’t know-- if we’d met another car, one of us would have had to back up. But in those days, there wasn’t that much traffic on the Hill. And the road dead-ended at Lou Tate’s road to her cabin.

We stopped when the road ran out and Lou Tate stuck her head out the door and wanted to know what we were doing on the hill and what we wanted. And so shouting across the distance, I said, “We’re looking for the lady who teaches weaving,” and so she invited us in. And that introduction was the beginning of many, many years of pleasure and joy and learning.

Teka: She stuck her head out…

Rose: Well, then we negotiated and I began my lessons with her. And this was the period shortly after her mother’s death. She had not fully moved to the Little Loomhouse herself. She came out there and taught weaving and sometimes stayed overnight, but mostly, she went back to her home on Third Street, and I took some of my early lessons at the Loomhouse and [for] some of them I went into her home on Third Street. The number, I believe, was 1825 or something like that.

Well, it wasn’t too long until Tate, --and you can find people who will call her different names, like Lou Tate, Miss Tate, and just plain Tate. And judging the period of when you started out there, you can associate what name she was being called at that time.

Anyway, I went out there on Saturdays and I know it was cold weather when I started because we would have to start a fire. We had coal stoves. I went out one Saturday and I got there before Tate did and I had to start the fire myself. And put a little paper and a little kindling wood and a few little small pieces of coal on it and got it started and then you put heavier wood and coal in the stove and waited till the heat could penetrate and make it warm for you.

My first piece was rose path and I thanked Tate for all her knowledge about it because she had never signed my first piece of weaving. And the reason she didn’t was to test some of her other weavers, or to test them against me, or me against them, because they had woven coverlets and the worst part of their experience was they didn’t want to sign them because it was too hard to sign. And I came out with my piece signed and she was just as proud as punch of me and I was always proud of having my first piece and I looked for it before you came but I couldn’t find it.

Teka: Oh-h-h. Now when you say you signed it, you mean you had to write your name?

Rose: Well, Tate prepared the draft and it was RNP 1941. And so it was up to me to remember that it was in the early part of ’41.

Tate always was planning ahead. Of course, she had weavers attend during the day. And the day weavers rarely met the night weavers, except like at shows or parties, or something like that.

And I traveled a lot with Tate. She took programs out in the state. She went to Fort Knox during the war and got the soldiers interested in weaving. And then she also let the young people from the Great Lakes Naval Training come to Kentucky during the Derby and gave them the use of what we call the Top house. It was fixed more for a residence than the rest of the cabins, except the Little Loomhouse. Tate lived there and fixed her quarters down there. But the young people came and they had a great time using that Top house, free of charge, I’m sure. And they went to the Derby and had a great experience here in Kentucky.

Also during the period of the war she gave a party one weekend and we went up and down the ridges in the hill and collected the metal that had been disposed of and thrown along [the ridges] and we picked that all up and turned it in for the scrap metal and so we had a great time doing it; it was fun and it was a just a real pleasure to take part in that.

Then we went out in the state and we went to a place called Lake Cumberland and I don’t know if it’s still there or not. It was planned to be a bird refuge. Weavers from Louisville who went down. Weavers from all around the area came and we had a meeting there. I know we were there more than once; it was down near Richmond. I remember so well, because Tate got up and went to church with me and she always saw that I got to church on Sunday, no matter what. Well, we went in church, they took up the tithes (?) shortly after we got there and I said, “Well, Tate, we got there on time anyway because we didn’t miss the collection.”

Another time I can remember that we went to Natural Bridge and we stayed overnight there. Weavers came, and also we had more or less of a state weaver’s meeting. Tate had tried to organize a state weavers guild, but because of distance and so forth and problems of other issues, I think, it did not develop as Tate had hoped it would.

Another time I can remember that we went to Chicago on a train. The train that we went up there on was cold, miserable as it could be. The walls in the train sweated and we almost got wet inside of the train. But this was to attend a meeting of the Colonial Coverlet Guild. They were very well organized and had annual shows of coverlets. They had a banquet and everything that went with it in this meeting, they had it. Lou Tate, and her brother, Wood, and I went and we met a friend of Tate’s at --her name was Daniels, her last name; can’t think of her first one. She was a teacher at Hull House; it was a settlement school. She saw that we got to eat at a Chinese restaurant and we learned to use chop sticks, so that was something I remember so well from that trip.

Then another time there was a guild at Fort Wayne, Indiana that met in a museum there. And it was a coverlet exhibit and those people brought coverlets, I believe they crawled out of the walls, because there were coverlets and coverlets, and coverlets. And you name it, we saw it, and it was just a delightful meeting. One thing was to see so many beautiful, well preserved, old coverlets, And the other was to meet the many interesting people and their enthusiasm for weaving and for meeting Lou Tate and getting acquainted with her knowledge.

Teka; And sharing knowledge, didn’t they share knowledge?

Rose: Sharing, yes, that’s always been one of Tate’s worries to share what she knew.

Teka: And then the other people would…

Rose: I can recall when we went to the Louisville Public Library on York Street and began a file of people’s names and addresses. This was to help Tate to distribute her publication, The Kentucky Weaver which was a monthly publication. And Lou Tate and Wood and I would go to the library and go through books and files and pick up the names of individuals that she was particularly interested in. And we did that months and months and months. That was one of the assignments that I worked on.

Then all this time different weavers all over the country heard of Lou Tate and they would have a particular group of drafts that they could not work out and they would bring them to Tate and [with] her extremely good knowledge of drafts, and so forth, she would figure them out and give them to the weavers, set up looms and we would be what she called guinea pigs on doing the pieces. She would use the color, texture, and just every phase of weaving in working out these drafts.

One particular one which is so familiar to us because the Hobby Weavers of the Ohio Valley have had numerous programs and projects on this. Ada Dietz and her friend, Ruth Foster, were from California. Ada was a teacher; a mathematics teacher and she brought what she called algebraic expressions where an algebra equation was--like A plus B squared-- was figured and a thread represented each of those equations as it was written out. When Ada and Ruth came from California, they had a little trailer, a pull along. And they called it, Tag Along. And she carried a loom in that trailer and worked on weaving as they came across country. So she had her idea and gave it to Tate and Tate expanded it and finally made a publication called Algebraic Expressions [in Hand woven Textiles]. We who were weavers out there at that time did the guinea pig weaving on that. And like I say, there were many other weavers who brought their drafts, their ideas, and so forth, to Tate and she would expand them and we would do the experimental weaving on them.

Teka: I would like to ask you, how did Dietz and the other woman, [Foster], find out about Tate? Just through correspondence, or …?

Rose: That I have debated.

Teka: Was the only reason they came across country to meet with Lou Tate?

Rose: To meet with Lou Tate, yes.

Teka: And then they had something attached to their car.

Rose: A little trailer, very small and just one of the original type of little trailers that you just… The did their meals and they slept in it and things like that.

Teka: But they had a little loom in it, too. Was it a Lou Tate little loom? Do you think?

Rose: I couldn’t say for sure, but very likely it was a little loom, table loom type.

Teka: And so they came out here to meet her.

Rose: Yes.

Teka: And as a result of that was the publication.

Rose: The publication and then I was fortunate-- and I haven’t heard from Ada for so long and somewhere or another I came across her address. And I sent her a card and she immediately wrote back and we exchanged our memories and then I didn’t hear from her and I got worried about her and I called Ruth Foster and found out from her that Ada had died. And so, because, I guess, I expressed such an interest in algebraic expressions, I got a box full of Ada’s weaving, made from her idea and I felt extremely honored that I could be the recipient of something like that and that’s how the Hobby Weavers of the Ohio Valley have worked so much just recently on Algebraic Expressions.

We’ve had exhibits, we’ve sent one around the country and we have sent a set of samples to Hand Weavers Guild of America and we have made a slide collection so that if the actual samples ever were dispersed or disposed of and I hope they’ll never be disposed of; I hope somebody will take them and cherish them, we will have a slide collection in our library.

Teka: How long ago was it that you received all these.

Rose: Ada died in 1980 so it was at the time that she died when I received the samples.

Teka: When Lou Tate was doing these publications, who helped her write them and type them and…?

Rose: Various ones. I didn’t do much typing, but sometimes I would some of those drawings on the mimeograph, and various ones, but Tate did most of it herself, typing, did the drawings. She had little machines to collate them and we did anything we could do, we did.

Teka: And then she used the names that you all were collecting in the library…

Rose: To advertise her book and to get subscribers.

And so, besides our working so closely with weaving we did a lot of just plain old, we called it, dirty work. We washed windows, we scrubbed floors, we cleaned out the lids from drainage ditches, and I helped plant rose bushes. You name it, we did it. And this brings up this University of the Loomhouse Lunatics graduate school. I don’t know whether to read all this or not.

Teka: It’s a diploma.

Rose: And was a degree awarded: A Master of all work, together with all rights, work, responsibilities, privileges, and honors which are pertained thereto in recognition of satisfactory fulfillment of work pertaining to the Little Loomhouse. Dated this second day of June, Nineteen fifty-six.

And signed by Lou Tate, Director of the Little Loomhouse, and Sam Kendrick, Chairman of the Executive Board. Quite an honor!

Teka: In addition to the diploma, here is also a photograph which was taken.

Rose: This is a picture of the class and…

Teka: Tell me the names of the class members, starting at the top, working from the left to the right.

Rose: Well, this man is Dan Peterson and this is Lou Tate. And this is-- Holsman was his last name. Down here, we have Mrs. Holsman, Sue Kendrick, Peggy Lumpkin, Rose Pero, and Doris Tipton. There is one lady on this picture, the extreme left hand side and I do not recall her name at this time.

Getting up here to Mr. Peterson; he was director and teacher at the Louisville School of Art when it was located on South First Street and we held a good many meetings with them. And out of out association with them was the beginning of the Louisville Craftsman’s Guild [that] came into being. And that is still in existence today. In fact. they meet at the Water Tower monthly. So we have many, many good relationships with the Louisville School of Art and when they had speakers or workshops there we were privileged to attend them. So, not only did we benefit with weaving through our association with Lou Tate, we were introduced to art in other forms of art and craft.

Teka: All the people pictured here worked on keeping the Little Loomhouses in good shape.

Rose: We did something, we either did weaving or--now Sue Kendrick did probably a good deal, or most of, Lou Tate’s typing and she’s told me the last few years that she didn’t get to do much weaving because she was always called on to do the typing that Tate had for her to do. Doris was a daytime weaver; Doris Tipton, and I didn’t meet her for a good many years after I started. I don’t remember how we got together. It was probably through a party or some affair that Tate had planned so…

Teka: I notice you all have on hats.

Rose: Oh, yes, like all graduates, we all had to have a hat. And it was made out of heavy cardboard and paper; research(?) paper and it had gold textured thread, a bunch of it put around that paper fastened down on the cardboard and then this thread was put around that paper and then a tassel was made and it was a graduate’s cap.

Teka: Did Lou Tate make these herself?

Rose: I believe she did.

Teka: I wonder why she didn’t have on a hat.

Rose: Well, she was the teacher. (laughter) As she said, here she was the director of the Little Loomhouse, so…

Teka: She didn’t get to graduate from it.

Rose: No. So..

Teka: Which of the cabins did you all do most of your weaving in?

Rose: Now the actual weaving on the looms, we did in the Top house. The cabin names beginning at the top of the hill were: Top house, the middle cabin was Wisteria, and the Little Loomhouse. I did some weaving in Wisteria. There were floor model looms in that cabin mostly. The real, Lou Tate looms, smaller looms were in Top house. Tate did her experimental weaving on one or two looms she kept down in Little Loomhouse.

But those [other] two cabins were our principal work areas. We also taught the over weavers. Tate left us as teachers of the other weavers; the new ones who came. Doris Tipton and I were associate teachers at Nazareth College, then, it’s Nazareth University now.

We were left in charge of classes that Tate taught in there. Some days she would let us take the class. It was an evening class. And we would go after our day of work at our own jobs and teach this weaving class and a lot of those girls became good weavers. Not through so much of our effort, but because Tate was so dedicated that she wouldn’t let them be anything else but.

And so very often I would come home and Tate would come by my house and pick me up and we would go in together. Sometimes we would go right over from my work, which was downtown, out to Nazareth College.

Teka: I wanted to ask you about going out to Third Street. You said you did do some weaving there.

Rose: Yes, this was during the transition period, I guess you would say. I’m sure, and I think I’ve read this in some of the earlier times of Tate’s that her mother and father were responsible for her buying out on the Hill and converting these cabins into weaving,-- to a weaving center. And, of course, she received publicity about it and that’s how my mother learned about it; the publicity that was they always favored Tate with some sort of article and she got started on the project.

I didn’t go too much into the house on Third Street however, because like I said in the earlier part of the transcript, I went out to the Little Loomhouse on Saturdays and I’m sure I neglected my own home many times. Maybe I should have cut the grass or something like that, but it waited for another day.

Tate used to have get-togethers many times on the Hill. I can’t remember them all, but, here I have evidence. It must have been an award program because this is a cup made by Mary Alice Hadley. On the front it has the Little Loomhouse and on the back it has Lou Tate Award, 1953, Rose Pero. And she had one of these made for almost all of the old weavers who had been out there for so many years and then she had a set of them when she entertained out there. These were the coffee cups or the tea cups or whatever the beverage was and I was so proud that I got to keep mine. She may not have had two of them made. She might have had one and kept it period. But I’m grateful that I got mine. And…

End of Tape One, Side One.

Editor’s Note: There doesn’t seem to be any more interview on side two. There is some noise like bleed-through caused by the age of the tape, but no words that I can distinguish.