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Opportunity: Whitchurch Silk Mill | Trainee Weaver

12 August 2023 Company Profile / General / Jobs / News / Reseach
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Whitchurch Silk Mill is looking for a Trainee Weaver who is keen to learn about making silk on their Victorian machinery. As a working museum, they need someone with a practical hands-on approach with a genuine interest in heritage and weaving silk on tappet and dobby looms. During this one-year training post the trainee will learn how to wind, warp and weave and work in this working museum in the heart of the Hampshire countryside.

The Trainee Weaver will receive:
Full time, paid placement
£19,000 pa
Training in the operation of a Grade Two* listed Silk Mill, including winding, warping, weaving and the operation of a visitor attraction
Time to study
Work alongside the Weaver Tacklers, Mill Engineer and the Mill team
Learn about all aspects of silk production on our historic machinery
Develop skills, such as guiding and working in a visitor attraction

To apply, please send a CV and a covering email letter to Sue Tapliss (click on name for address) by Monday 4th September 2023.

Please do not send portfolios / photographs
Closing Date: 5.00pm Monday 4th September 2023

With thanks to Whitchurch Silk Mill for text and image

 

Weave Designer Profile: Fiona J Sperryn

21 June 2023 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile / Workshops
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‘Scapes Series’

Fresh from London Craft Week…

‘The Cornish landscape always evokes an emotional response in me. The sun dazzling off the water, the splash of the sea, the salty breeze on my face, the call of the gulls. In ‘Scapes’, I’m responding to these sensations, escaping into my imagination, conjuring a landscape’.

Fiona J Sperryn’s recent body of work has been developed on the TC2 digital jacquard loom from her original mark-making. The creative journey started with dirty charcoal drawing outdoors, using local materials and responding to the essence of landscapes visited and imagined.

This was followed by photography and scanning, a clean digital translation into the coded files recognised by the loom. Bobbins were wound with multiple strands of colour and the pieces were handwoven,  indigo dip-dyed and painted once off the loom.

The largest hanging in the ‘Scapes’ series measures 76 x 170cm and the smallest pieces 18 x 15cm within 28cm frames made of recycled ‘Polcore’. Continuing Fiona’s  work with colour blending on the loom in this series, strands of yarn of varying thicknesses are used together with subtle grading of tone and colour as each piece progresses.

The artworks are handwoven using mainly industrial ‘deadstock’ yarns, which include tencel, linen, bamboo, rayon, silk and cotton. It is important to Fiona to limit purchase of new yarn and the creation of waste.

The series was recently exhibited as part of London Craft Week with Future Icons Selects at the Oxo Tower Bargehouse alongside 70 artists and makers, including a number of tapestry and hand weavers.

Fiona hand weaves her artwork in a rural studio in Cornwall and is an active member of Design-Nation. She produces woven pieces to commission for artists and designers.

Fiona additionally offers expert tuition in digital jacquard weaving on the TC2 loom in her studio and is a lecturer at Falmouth University.

Contact: Fiona J Sperryn
IG: @fionajsperryn
FB: Fiona J Sperryn Art

With thanks to Fiona for the text and images

Exhibition: The Tangible Project for London Craft Week 2023

2 May 2023 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Weave Designer Profile
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The Tangible Project

Venue: gallery@oxo Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House St, London SE1 9PH
Dates: 10-14 May 2023
Instagram: @the_tangible_project

Three textile artists Amelie Crépy, Jacqueline James and Line Nilsen are creating The Tangible Project with five other very different artists and makers for London Craft Week, 10-14 May 2023.

This exhibition of over 30 new pieces of fine works celebrates the importance of touch through materials and promotes the inherent value of the handmade in art and design. In a world leaning toward digital encounters where so recently society was restricted from physical contact, touch has never mattered more. Hands exploring materials are the lifeblood of artists, a fluid relationship that ignites expression, understanding and a sense of connection.

Amélie Crépy endeavours to use only the purest of materials and as little as possible, often using just one colour. She seeks to replicate synthetic processes and digital techniques with hand-made pigments, inks, dyes and other mediums. Her love for the physicality of woven fabric, combined with her history as a textile print designer, has inspired the development of her current practice and the layered patterns she produces. For The Tangible Project she is focusing specifically on hand made oak gall ink created from crushed up galls found on oak trees which will be transferred onto pure Linen. Her work will be presented as both traditional framed artworks, as well as a large-scale piece hung from the wall. Instagram: @ameliecrepy

Jacqueline James’ current collection for The Tangible Project has been positively influenced by working with artist and textile designer Amélie Crépy during their collaboration to create ‘The Alchemy of Blue’ for Collect Open 2022. She will be combining natural, luxury yarns, including wool, linen, silk and banana fibre, to accomplish interesting surface texture with a sensory tactile quality.

Her latest work will feature custom dyed and handwoven textiles for both the floor and the wall. Several new designs are motivated by her fascination with sacred geometry. Jacqueline is further exploring the use of natural dyes and is excited to share her new colour palette. Instagram @Jacqueline_james_rugs

Line Nilsen who will be showing a range of handwoven artworks – contemporary crafted paintings with strong ties to traditional textile making. Continuing on from past work, she is exploring hand cut floats and textured surfaces in her recent body of work. Building on ikat dye techniques, Line has developed her own way of achieving a softer brush stroke effect in her work. Her pieces are hand dyed and painted in multiple stages to get the desired look. All her weaves are made on a 16-shaft mechanical dobby loom. Line is using her love of craft and materials to connect the viewer to her native Norway.

Instagram: @linenilsentextiles

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Theo Rooden: Visual Artist

27 October 2022 Artist Profile / Company Profile / General / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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Visual artist Theo Rooden (The Netherlands, 1969) loves to take advantage of weaving techniques to build his geometric abstract compositions. In many of his works he challenges the flatness of the fabric with optical effects.

With his self-imposed rules he searches for interesting rhythms and patterns. Possibilities and constraints of the loom and yarn are a source of inspiration. Rooden prefers to make series of works to explore in detail the consequences of algorithms and its variants. When translating a design into a woven fabric, the self-imposed rules need to be bent opening a space for unexpected and interesting results. Intuition regarding colours and composition shape final choices.

Being trained as an Industrial Design Engineer, his path led him more and more to being autonomous to create beautiful things, first in graphic design, later as a visual artist. With a lifelong fascination for patterns he started weaving in 2018. As a fast learner he was able to balance his already developed personal style with the principles of weaving. In 2021 he acquired a damask handloom.

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Profile: Alice Fox

16 February 2022 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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Sustainability is at the heart of Alice Fox’s practice. The desire to take an ethical approach has driven a shift from using conventional art and textile materials into exploring found objects, gathered materials and natural processes. Alice gathers the materials that are available to her, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using her textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry.

Establishing an allotment garden as a source of materials for her work has provided a space where Alice can experiment, exploring the potential of what grows there, planted and wild, as well as other materials found on the plot. This allowed Alice to really focus on material sourcing and consider self-sufficiency in terms of art materials.

Materials are produced, gathered and processed seasonally and are hard-won: There may only be a small batch of each type of usable material each year. As a result, each bundle of dandelion stems, sweetcorn fibre or hand processed flax is enormously precious by its scarcity and the meaning attached to it through its sourcing and hand-processing. Continue reading →

Identity Launch: ReWeave | Here Design | London Craft Week

6 October 2021 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / Lecture / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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ReWeave: Textile Waste Transformed

ReWeave is a novel approach to exploring how fabric waste can be transformed into design-led woven textiles on an industrial scale to meet the increasing demand for circularity in designing fashion and textiles.

Led by textile designer Kirsty McDougall, ReWeave is a Hastings-based design studio specialising in woven textiles and product, and supported by the BFTT. The project intends to develop a viable business model for a more circular approach to design and fabrication, and to analyse the environmental impact of repurposing fabrics at an industrial scale.

By exploring new models of textile design, ReWeave aspires to serve as a blueprint for ideas about reuse and repurposing for manufacturers and brands, spearheading industry change.

ReWeave will be at the Hoxton Gallery to launch their new identity created by Here and Kirsty will talk about the processes and ideas behind ReWeave and their collaboration.

Event: Sat 9th Oct 2021
Time: 11.30 – 12.30
Venue: Hoxton Gallery, 17 Marlow Workshops, Arnold Circus, Shoreditch. London E2 7JN
What3words: extend.union.motor
Tickets: To book event click here

Instagram:
@re_weave_
@heredesign

With thanks to ReWeave & Here for text and images

Exhibition: Craft by Residency | An immersive showcase for London Craft Week 2021

6 October 2021 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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This London Craft Week (4th-10th October), innovative, pop-up retail solution, Residency, plays home to 14 talented makers who will showcase a plethora of crafts and the processes behind them. Craft by Residency is featuring a vibrant curation from Future Icons, and an exhibition debut from marbling artist and designer, NAT MAKS, the space will be transformed into an interactive and immersive showcase that celebrates the technical skill and technique as much as the finished product.

Marble wallpaper artist, NAT MAKS, founded by Natascha Maksimovic, will be unveiling her new Marble Tapestry. Made using wallpaper offcuts, Maksimovic breathes new life into her designs to create a spectacular wall hanging. Maksimovic will also be showcasing her recently launched Metamorphosis collection, a range of 3D fashion garments formed from marbled paper that pay homage to the ancient craft of Suminagashi.

On the Marble Tapestry, NAT MAKS says: “Taking my responsibility further as a print maker, I have found it impossible to throw away my marbled wallpaper off-cuts. In order to celebrate these pieces and reduce my production waste, I have created these curated Tapestry wall pieces. Each one is unique and celebrates the hidden pieces of my art that would usually have been discarded.”

Following acclaimed showcases at the Burlington Arcade and Oxo Tower Wharf, Future Icons presents the work of 13 of its makers spanning a range of disciplines from ceramics to embroidery, to intricate metal and enamel projects to a range of textile and leather based artworks. Continue reading →

New Loom Developments: vLoom Jacquard & The Oxford Frame Loom

18 June 2021 Company Profile / General / New weave developments
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This post features two new weaving loom developments. The vLoom is a prototype and The Oxford Frame Loom  is available now

vLoom

Miles Visman is a computer programmer by profession, creating games for consoles, PCs and mobiles. He learnt how to code in the late 1980s while doing a Fine Art degree which led to programming computers to generate visuals for pop videos and interactive installations. In the last ten years he has been teaching himself to weave and he codes algorithms to create both the patterns and weave structures which he then hand weaves.

Six years ago he attended a Jacquard weaving course, run by Julie Holyoke and Eva Basile, at Lisio Foundation in Florence and learning how traditional Jacquard looms work and their part in the development of computers. Subsequently he visited the TextileLab in the Netherlands where under the guidance of Stef Miero he learnt how to produce textiles on their state of the art computer controlled looms.
Inspired by these experiences he developed an obsession to build his own Jacquard loom. With the wide availability of laser cutting and 3d printing combined with the whole electronic maker world of Arduinos etc it is much easier to build prototypes. (And over the years there have been quite a few!) In the last twelve months he has found a design that works and has steadily built up a loom capable of controlling 176 individual warps. Alongside which he has developed software available on his website  to both generate new patterns and that can also be used to fill those patterns with weave structures. Continue reading →

Job Opportunity: BFTT | ReWeave R&D Project Lead

18 May 2021 Company Profile / General / Jobs / New weave developments / News / Reseach
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ReWeave R&D Project Lead  is an exciting opportunity for a Postgraduate or Post-Doctoral Researcher (or equivalent demonstrable industry/research experience) to work as the Research & Development (R&D) Project Lead to facilitate a collaborative project with ReWeave – a woven textile studio based in London and Hastings that has been awarded funding within the BFTT R&D SME Support Programme.

The aim of the project is to develop R&D around sustainable woven textile design and manufacture using industry waste fabrics.

The role involves working collaboratively with Academic Mentors from the Centre for Circular Design and Textile Futures Research Community at University of the Arts London and the Company Lead at the Reweave Ltd.

You can find more information about the role here.

Instagram:@re_weave_

With thanks to BFTT and Kirsty McDougall for text & images

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Textile Innovation from Sudō Reiko: Talk & Conversation

24 April 2021 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / Lecture / New weave developments / Weave Designer Profile
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Textile Innovation from Sudō Reiko: Talk & Conversation
Online Event
Date: Tuesday 27 April 2021, 12:00-13:00 BST
Booking Essential; Admission Free. Click here for link

Join Japan House for a special online talk with pioneering textile designer Sudō Reiko whose innovative works are featured in Japan House London’s exhibition MAKING NUNO Japanese Textile Innovation from Sudō Reiko.

As the Design Director of leading textile design firm Nuno and a member of the Japan Design Committee, Sudō Reiko is renowned for pushing boundaries of textile production and championing new methods of sustainable manufacturing.

During this talk she gives a special insight into the creative processes, craftmanship, techniques, and materials that are woven into her wide range of innovative textiles.

Following her talk, Sudō is joined by Anne Marr, Programme Director for Jewellery, Textiles and Materials at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in a conversation chaired by Japan House London’s Programming Director Simon Wright.

There is an opportunity for registered guests to ask questions to the speakers during this live online event.

The exhibition MAKING NUNO Japanese Textile Innovation from Sudō Reiko opens in the Japan House London Gallery on 17 May, subject to UK government guidelines. See previous post on The Weave Shed

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