Mike Jones
Mike Jones Handcrafted Rugs – Unique handcrafted 100% wool rugs designed and woven by artist Mike Jones in the Pacific Northwest. As a child Mike was always interested in the structure of things: how things fit together and how it made something work. In high school he spent more time finding out how life worked than reading and doing what he was supposed to have been doing. After high school during the height of the Vietnam War, Mike was busy playing a tuba in the US Army Band in Germany for three years. After that musical experience he finally started college in earnest, but really didn’t get into it until he picked up roots and moved to Oregon following a passion.
While attending the University of Oregon Mike earned money working for a loom factory building small, portable looms. Mike became interested in what these small things could do, so he took a class from the owner of the factory. He ended up buying one of those looms within a week and going like a house a fire. He followed this passion for about five years moving from portable looms to
large room-sized, tied to the wall, huge copper wire as weft, looms.
Knowing he had to be practical he matriculated with a teaching degree in English. he ended up in Berlin translating for the American sculptor George Baker and working in his studio as his assistant for a year. Following that year, Mike was supposed to take an apprenticeship with Peter Collingwood in Colchester, England. It was all set up, but, again, practicality reared its head, and they returned to Eugene, where he went to work for a Canadian sculptor Elza Mayhew, who was making a huge piece for the Charlottetown Bay in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. After finishing that sculpture Mike went to work at Roosevelt Jr. High School, in Eugene, Oregon, teaching German, Weaving, and Grammar! He loved it all. He built sets for the productions, made miles of place mats, and sang a lot of German rhyming sentences!
He moved away from making rugs and focused on teaching over the next few years; he moved to North Carolina, Indiana, California…but always came back home to Eugene. Mike retired from teaching high school English at South Eugene
High School in 1999. Rather than sit and read, he started a handcrafted furniture business: he built chairs, ottoman, desks, but mostly Morris Chairs.
When they moved from the house that had a workshop to their present house, he discovered a niche where a small loom would fit. During the spring he bought a Gilmore loom from a student, then wove two rugs quickly, sold the loom and bought a bigger one, then a bigger one, until he finally bought a room-sized Glimakra, a Swedish counter marche loom that fits his needs perfectly. He has been working on it since.
