American rug beaters-bent willow branches, wire wands, rattan racquets and woven-mesh tubes-so proliferated from the Civil War to World War II that Ivan Karp, a New York City art dealer, is puzzled and fascinated. This is why he organized a recent exhibition of 250 rug beaters, ”Rug Beaters `r` Us,”
at his O.K. Harris gallery in New York.
Karp, who has collected 20,000 uncommon objects-washboards, cigar bands, corkscrews, figural can openers, food choppers, Coca-Cola trays and ”naughty Nelly” bootjacks-rarely buys fewer than 20 of any collectible. Yet, he said recently, he owns only three rug beaters.
Rug beaters multiplied outrageously and in many forms, sizes and materials over the century that American women and their children assiduously whomped rugs in their back yards. Versions were made in wood, metal, leather, fabric-covered wire and rattan.
Some were made in the shape of an arc, a triangle, circles or flowers, while others resembled a three-fingered glove-stretcher, a trivet, a wilted star, a flattened wire whisk or Mickey Mouse`s head. Among the more offbeat was one of fabric-covered wire spotted like an ocelot. Another, with a long, woven-wicker handle, had a donut-shaped, leather-covered whacker.
Where did Karp find enough rug beaters for a gallry exhibition? He borrowed enough to cover three walls from Denis Silva, a computer programmer from Griswold, Conn. Silva assembled his holdings over 15 years, while also acquiring tractors, gas engines and the printed materials that explain how these machines work.
The other rug beaters on view came from Robert Cahn, a private dealer from Carmel, N.Y. His business is known as the Primitive Man.
To Karp, the appeal of rug beaters is twofold.
”When wielded, these wandlike devices have a smacking motion so that you can get gratification from the clout,” he said. ”This should produce, of course, intense satisfaction, seeing the dust flying high from the rug.”
Karp said he is considering abandoning his vacuum cleaner, ”a very advanced German model,” because of this pleasure factor. He plans to transport some of his 50 rugs to his back yard for this exercise and recommends the activity to anyone experiencing repressed rage.
Most of all, the stark simplicity of these designs appeals to Karp. He especially admires rug beaters framed in coiled, braided or woven wire, as well as those shaped like a double trapeze or interlocking hearts. Even the most familiar-the elaborately interlaced rattan paddles and Sears, Roebuck`s Batwing Beater, a metal cloverleaf with a long green handle-are visually compelling. But he is positively undone by the whip-thin arcs the Shakers made by bending branches.
”The willow stuff is the most appealing,” he said. ”It has a kind of haimish quality.”
Those who designed and made rug beaters understood that ”form follows function,” Karp said. ”And they proved it-without extravagance. The action that needs to be achieved is an awfully simple one.
”When you think about the idea of slapping a rug so as to remove dust, you know a simple board or heavy twig from a tree would probably be sufficient. Take a limb from a tree and leave on the splayed leaf parts, having removed the leaves, and you have yourself a fine rug beater. That had to have been the first rug beater.
”You see an astonishing inventiveness, an almost frantic obsession with the idea that there must be another variation made available in this world,” said Karp, explaining why so many varieties of rug beaters were on view. ”And many of these variations seem critically unnecessary. I don`t see, after the five basic designs of the rug beater were achieved in different materials, why more were necessary.
”Essentially, the mechanism of the rug beater is elementary: It should be a long-handled device with a certain pleasurable smacking element. Why then, after three or four basic smacking-type devices were conceived, did designers and inventors persist in trying to find something different or supposedly better? Why would they strain so hard to come up with 250 varieties of this thing?”
Karp answered his own question: ”There could be a fetishistic element in all this. More likely, it`s the creative impulse-the need to design far exceeds the need for utility.”
