Douglas Volk - Sabatos and Hewnoaks

Sabatos and Hewnoaks

Volk and his family started going to Maine for the summers. By the turn of the century, Marion Volk had started to work on traditional area looms to weave textiles and rugs. Rather than using cotton, she became known for her handwoven woolen work, created with her daughter Marion Volk Bridges. As part of a communal effort with residents of Lovell Centre, they made what collectively were known as Sabatos Rugs and Textiles. They hand-dyed the wools with fruit and vegetable dyes, such as the bark of apple trees, yellow oak and maple; goldenrod, barberry, St. John's wort and madder root. Their designs were based on motifs from Native American art. Wendell Volk made a handprinted treatise on the Sabatos work from his hand presses. He also created silkscreen prints for the wool designs. His wife Jessie McCoig Volk also participated in making the handwoven works.

In 1904 the Volks bought a farmhouse and property on Kezar Lake at Lovell Centre in western Maine. They renovated the house and added to it, calling it Hewnoaks. They eventually built four more cottages and an artist's studio for Douglas, with space for their artist friends and craftspeople. Numerous people came to study with them over the years, and they had a wide network of friends among artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Among them were J. Alden Weir, Frank Benson, John Calvin Stevens, Childe Hassam, Steven Douglas, William Merritt Chase, John Scott Bradstreet, Felix Adler, and the Swedish woodcarver Karl A. von Rydingsvärd and his American wife, the former Annie Mary Brown. (In 1906 Von Rydingsärd was awarded the Life Membership prize of the National Society of Craftsmen.)

The Volk family held the large property for 100 years. Jessie McCoig Volk, Wendell's widow, was the last to live there. After her death in 2004, the property was bequeathed to the University of Maine and a portion of the family records to the Smithsonian Institution. University officials arranged for an auction of much of the property's contents and family papers, including art and craft work by the Volks and art which they had collected. In October 2006, the contents grossed more than $700,000 at auction, drawing especially high prices for two paintings by the illustrator Howard Pyle and photographs of Native Americans by the Norwegian Frederick Monsen (1865–1929).