Collinses creative Kirkman cottage

The Garden District home of Amzi and Bill Collins. (Rita LeBleu/American Press)

Amzi Collins knows how to hook rugs and listeners.

“I started hooking after my divorce,” Amzi said. It was like therapy for me.”

Her husband, Mike, grins when she uses this common shorthand for rug hooking. Amzi’s late mother, Ruby Turnbull gave classes. Her father, Eric, hooked rugs until his eyesight forced him to give it up at the age of 95. The Collins home at 1500 Kirkman is full of the family’s work, which is more art than something anyone would want the bottom of any shoe to see.

Amzi has purchased beautiful quality wool rugs for the floors, some from Central School. Rugs made by her, her mom or her dad, are stacked against the wall, including a Christmas-themed rug with the words, Peace on Earth and Good Wool Toward Men. Rugs are hung on walls. A few smaller ones are rolled into a basket. Hooked textiles cover chairs, chests and tables. A schnauzer rug hangs below the mantle over the fireplace opening. A sun and moon rug hangs over the mantle. 

“Yeah, we’re rug poor,” offered Mike.

Creating a rug is time consuming and the materials, like most things, keep rising in cost. Hand-hooked 100-percent wool rugs can go for about $250 per square feet, according to Amzi. However, she has trouble parting with her work. 

“The wide cuts go faster,” Amzi says, lifting up a handful of different colored strips. It can take a year or more to work on a rug. I have tired of working on one, put it up and got it out and finished it a year or more later. The closer you get to finishing, the faster your work.”

Her favorite rug is whatever one she happens to be working on at the time. 

“Asking me to name my favorite rug is like asking a mother to name her favorite child,” Amzi said.

She frets about the possibility of her rugs going to the wrong home. 

The rug collection isn’t the only thing about Amzi and Mike’s house that makes it a standout. This is a whimsical and creative home full of color, texture and comfort. 

Mike’s passion for bass fishing is represented. Amzi’s sister’s cross-stitch is featured. Amzi has shutters from the old Majestic Hotel. Original and commissioned stained glass windows add to the kaleidoscope of colors.  After Amzi moved in, one of the original stained glass windows was returned to her. The person who had it thought it should be in its own house. 

Flowers past and present shown here is one of Amzi’s pieces, which is displayed on an easel in the dining area and one of her mother’s fiber art pieces. (Rita LeBleu/American Press)

Flowers past and present shown here is one of Amzi’s pieces, which is displayed on an easel in the dining area and one of her mother’s fiber art pieces. (Rita LeBleu/American Press)

Two fully dressed mannequins, Flame and Babe, stand at the dining room windows of the Collins home, as if waiting to be seated for a meal. 

In a previous life, they modeled Nomex attire when that became the standard at Citgo, thus the name Flame. A neighbor called out to Amzi and the undressed “Babe” she was pulling from her trunk when she brought the mannequin home for the first time. The name stuck.  

“We have a lot of fun dressing them up for Halloween and other occasions and posing with them for photos,” Amzi said.

An old, antique trunk in the Collins home came from the Locke home on Griffith Street. 

“I really thought I had a treasure when I found that,” she said. 

The pelican motif is repeated throughout the home, including a lamp base fashioned of vintage jewelry that was supposed to look like a pelican but “looks more like a gaudy buzzard,” Amzi said.

Amzi fell in love with her Kirkman cottage instantly. 

“June Nortman was my real estate agent,” Amzi said. “All I saw was the big oak tree, the wood floors and the stained glass.”

Amzi has researched her home’s history. It was built in the 1900s and was the home of the I.A. Glusman family. Glusman was a Jewish immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1915 from the Ukraine when he was 10. He had $8 after he arrived. He worked hard, learned English, learned about the hat trade and ended up opening The Lake Charles Hat Company. His story is the story of the American Dream, according to an American Press article written in 1975 by Carolyn Moffet. 

 The article begins with this sentence: “You could say this story is about a dying industry….”

The same might be said of rug hooking in the Lake Charles area. The fiber arts in this home are a rare treasure. These rugs — along with cross stitch from a sister, artwork, the quirky mannequin couple, vintage collectibles and other whimsical delights – make this house home sweet home to talented Amzi and her laid-back bass-fishing hubby, Mike.