The dream weaver

I’m here to see her studio and to touch her tapestries – more on that later­ – and she has just greeted me at the door with a warm smile. And a bird. In another setting, I might write off a bird lady as, well, weird. But given the ­medium of her artwork – one that has held an air of regality and mysticism since its popularity in 13th-century castles and churches – Ruth Jones as bird charmer seems entirely fitting.

The art of tapestry, which involves weaving silk and wools into a cotton “warp” thread to build intricate images and designs, hails from an era when legacy was proudly protected and castles were big and drafty. While in recent years there has been an inching toward the natural, organic arts – contemporary architecture’s minimalism just begs for softness – there hasn’t been a sudden resurgence in the medieval art of tapestries (though the New York Times recommended them for blocking sound in noisy apartments as recently as 2006). As Jones’s clients demonstrate, however, the centuries-old charm of owning an heirloom tapestry pervades in business circles, appealing to buyers with a desire to connect with their past.

Fans of Jones’s work range from John Chambers, chair and CEO of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO-Q), to lumber executives such as Tim Kerr, formerly of Lignum Forest Products LLP, to lawyers such as Michael Hoogbruin, principal of Michael R. Hoogbruin and Co. Renowned interior designers such as Juli Hodgson and Valerie Potvin have turned to Jones to produce works for both public (Lost Lake Lodge in Whistler and Crofton House School in Vancouver) and private commissions (such as Chambers’s piece, which conceals his flat-screen TV), while both IBM (IBM-N) and BMO-Nesbitt Burns (BMO-T) headquarters boast a Jones piece in their lobbies. For those who can afford it (an average commission runs $30,000; her most expensive is $60,000), it seems there’s a new cachet to holding on to personal, historical moments – and in a more permanent, substantial form.

At Jones’s East 14th Avenue home and studio – which she shares with her husband, Skooker Broome (her grown daughter Alex now lives in L.A.) – there’s little homage to the castle. While she has left out one of her works for me – her now famous Descending From

Though born in Vancouver, the forty-something Jones spent her childhood travelling the world – a result of her dad’s gig as a UN economist. “We’d go to see the head man of the village – whether in Turkey, Egypt, Nepal – and there’d always be a big stack of textiles beside him,” she recalls, “things that were handed down or woven by his grandmother.” Mathematics was her first love back then (surprising until you hear Jones speak of her work – words like “binary” and “coding” are intermingled with descriptions of tapestry “piercing a veil through time and space”), which evolved into a science and anthropology degree at UBC in 1980. But after taking a leave from a master’s degree (“I realized I didn’t want to dig up artifacts; I wanted to make artifacts”), she headed to San Francisco to study painting. Then one day, she walked into a show of contemporary French tapestries – and was hooked.

She headed to France in ’82 to study the art form at the Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif d’Aubusson. Her background as a painter lent itself to the rich and detailed imagery of the medium, and the month she graduated she received a commission from an Irish businessman for $15,000. Twenty-five years later, Jones earns a not-insignificant salary that nears six figures, entirely through the sales of her tapestries and paintings. About half of Jones’s business consists of local commissions, with the rest coming from abroad – private and corporate clients, usually referred through word of mouth or through an interior designer.