Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission

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.

While her journal concentrates on her efforts to teach weaving, carving, metal work, pottery, carpentry, basket weaving, and her best known accomplishment, the hooked mats that have become famous for their strong designs and meticulous craftsmanship, she also describes the local people and customs of St Anthony and life in the household of the Grenfell workers. After she left Newfoundland, Luther became one of the pioneers of occupational therapy in the United States, spending the rest of her professional life as director of occupational therapy at the Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

Edited by Ronald Rompkey, author of the most authoritative biography of Grenfell, Luther's journal provides an unusually intimate account of Wilfred Grenfell during these four years B his idiosyncracies, his attempts to meet the needs of the community, his rescue from a floating ice pan, his marriage B and brings to life the Newfoundlanders with whom she worked.