About: Philippa Brock

The Weave Shed is a website for Weave Designers & Artists with a portfolio practice, payee, mills, independent, designer makers, tapestry, artists, educators and students. The initial website design and setting up of the of the site was funded by The Worshipful Company of Weavers

The Weave Shed is edited by Philippa Brock.

The contents, site look and navigation of the site were initially compiled, collated and edited by Philippa Brock with initial support from Eleanor Pritchard. Website design and build by Colin Buttimer.

The Weave Shed is a resource site, providing a portal to available weave resources on one site alongside an active blog featuring weave-related stories, news, up and coming events and featured weavers. We’re a community site and encourage all users to participate in its growth. The information here is from the professional UK & global weave community and the editor.

The Weave Shed is also the official website of Philippa Brock

The Weave Shed is put together gratis, we suggest if you have found it useful or would like to post a job advert, then a donation through paypal is always welcome to keep the site going. Please contact here for details.

We welcome all relevant input from users: for feedback, suggestions, information to be added or updated for the resources pages and for weave-related blog features. All contributors to resources pages will be acknowledged on the site and links to their own online resources added where possible. We also have future plans to develop pages for weave-related historical & cultural studies, a newsletter and we welcome any suggestions.


About us

Editor: Philippa M. Brock. MA (RCA)

Philippa is an international woven textile researcher and designer/artist/curator with a portfolio practice, and was the Woven Textile Pathway Leader (0.6) at Central Saint Martins, UAL for 22 years until May 2023 . She was a lead researcher with the Textile Futures Research Centre. She graduated from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London and gained her MA at the Royal College of Art, and was awarded the prestigious Worshipful Company of Weavers Silver Medal in 2014.

For the past 3 years she has been a sustainability Academic Mentor for SMEs sponsored by BFTT, including Tibor, Dash and Miller and Kirsty McDougall

Her main textile practice lies in sustainable and digital woven jacquard; known for her textiles which explore 2D – 3D self folding/assembly concepts where the textiles self form as they come off the loom and have innovative 3D surface effects. These are exhibited internationally in galleries and also used within industry. She is a known digital power industrial loom ‘disrupter’, pushing the boundaries of the technology as well as researching and exploring innovative warp, yarn and weave structure use and their interaction. These woven textiles have continued to be developed since 1994 – date. Philippa works closely with Gainsborough Weaving Company, where as a trained power loom operator she is able to weave the fabrics personally at the mill.

From April 2022 – Jan 2023 she co curated, and was also a resident of The Experimental Weave Lab with Elizabeth Ashdown. The Experimental Weave Lab was The City of London first nine month contemporary weaving season, the Lab was a residency programme with both full time and one month residencies where designers/artisit had the space to develop their own work experimentally and culminated in an exhibition of all works produced throughout the season. Each resident received a stipend to enable them to progress their work. The programme also included outreach work in Tower Hamlets/City of London young people and  was part of London Craft Week and London open house festival.

In 2016/17 she curated the 3 month season ‘Weaving Futures’ at London Transport Museum with Samuel Plant Dempsey. An innovative approach to curation, inviting a different significant artist/designer resident each week to work to the same brief about data in transport systems and explored process – all the work was made during the exhibition. There was live TC2 jacquard weaving of the art works throughout the exhibition. The works and process documentation of this season are now in the Central Saint Martins,  Museum and Textile Study Collection

Her other work ranges from researching, designing and developing e- woven/Smart textiles through to designing trend packages (including the Taiwan Textile Federation) and curating, including concepts, colours and innovative trend swatches and also designing and making woven textile design swatches sold to the textile industries internationally.

Additionally Brock works as a researcher and to commission, this includes one off experimental works and has included being selected as one of the researchers on The Nobel Textile Project, working with a science Nobel Laureate in a textile public communication sci/art project , developed sustainable woven jacquard denim concepts for the VF corporation, sustainability summit, worked with many yarn companies developing concept samples for trade fair stands. She was also a lead member of the Textile support committee for the St. Pauls Cathedral design and replacement vestment project, to produce over a 100 new garments and knowledge exchange lead

Pieces of her work from her Self Assembly series for the science/art project: Nobel Textiles  projects have been acquired by the Crafts Council for their permanent collection, and her work can be found in private textile collections.

Her first solo exhibition was at Montreal Centre for Textiles, Canada for which she developed her 3D,  X Form series which explored inherently smart yarns which were both fluorescent and phosphorescent. She exhibited in Chelsea Design week at The Guy Goodfellows showroom in their Makers Tales series, exhibiting new 3D multilayer wovens and other fabrics. She exhibits globally, including the Fashion Gallery, Hong Kong, Textile Month, Shenzhen Modern Design Museum & China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou, China.

Philippa’s research/design practice pushes the boundaries of what is possible within the field of digital 3D woven jacquard textiles. It involves exploring the full potential of the industrial power loom weaving method, creating sustainable on loom finishing effects, relying at times on serendipity to advance new ideas. Initial prototyping is developed on hand looms. The process is also reliant on both old and new yarn developments and exploring unusual combinations of woven structure interactions.

She has set up a future textiles and materials studio – Studio Houndstooth with Jo Pierce. This studio develops concepts and ideas and works to commission, set up The Houndstooth Project – an egalitarian project for everyone, which is ongoing . They are also develop social engagement methods and approaches through various on going projects, currently on their Wallpaper Wall: Inside |Outside project, exhibiting with a local community group at the Canary Wharf Community Gallery.

Please contact here

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Eleanor Pritchard

Eleanor Pritchard assisted in setting up the website. She designs and produces dobby woven fabrics. Techniques such as double-cloths and colour and weave effects are used to achieve gently patterned fabrics, with a palette which draws on mid century English painting – soft chalky colours with unexpected accents.

Eleanor is particularly interested in traditional British fabrics and textile crafts such as Welsh double-cloths and tweeds, and much of her work is a reinterpretation of these traditions for a contemporary context. She produces an annual mill-woven blanket collection, which is sold throughout the world. UK outlets include Margaret Howell, Liberty and Fortnum & Mason.

In addition to her mill-woven range, Eleanor has also undertaken a wide range of commission-based projects. Recent projects have included a large-scale stitch and paper installation for museumaker at Orleans House; a collaborative paper and light installation for Canary Wharf; hand-woven vestment fabrics for Ely Cathedral; atrium screens for the National Trust Central Office, and woven lengths for Christian Lacroix Couture.

Alongside her own practice, Eleanor was also an associate lecturer in weave on the BA Textiles course at Central Saint Martins.

Colin Buttimer

Colin graduated from Middlesex University in Fine Art in 1995. His early work included slow-motion video projections and digital photography, and his practice has since evolved to include writing, music criticism and web-based media. He has written about improvised, experimental and electronic music for The Wire, Jazzwise, Grooves, Signal to Noise and e/i , and online for the BBC, milkfactory, Perfect Sound Forever, Absorb and All About Jazz. He co-founded Hard Format, an online archive that celebrates cd, cassette and record design in the face of digital distribution. He has also developed a large body of digitally post-processed photography that represents a concerted attempt to wrest the magical from the everyday. A broad range of Colin’s activities are documented on www.eleventhvolume.com. He is Web Manager for Central Saint Martins and works as a freelance web consultant/designer/writer. He can be contacted via eleventhvolume (at) gmail.com.

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