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Profile: Michaela Johnston | Circular Willow

15 February 2022 Artist Profile / General / New weave developments / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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Michaela Johnston works and studies between her rural home in West Wales and London. Her approach to woven textiles is very process based, looking at each element of production and exploring the routes that can be taken using sustainable practices and circular materials. She designs for purpose and thoroughly considers how her textiles will fit into society and how it works alongside the values she has developed as a designer throughout her Textile Design BA.

Michaela is excited by the possibilities of designing with the future in mind and while doing so exploring the processes of the past. Her journey now continues onto the Material Futures MA at Central Saint Martins, UAL, where she hopes to explore further with a broader spectrum of design approaches and the integration of science and technology.

Her graduate project, Circular Willow incorporates all the values she has built up through her BA focusing on designing for purpose, using local production methods and materials. Circular Willow began with the waste bark from a local basket weaver during lockdown that she took through a variety of experimental processes to become a useable yarn, able to hold colour from food waste and plants.

From this she designed multifunctional pocket aprons using layered weaving techniques which incorporated her willow yarn to enable craftspeople to be more mobile while working. The pockets are made from bast fibres, linen, hemp and willow yarn, and dyed with onion, iron, nettle, logwood, and turmeric.

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Job: The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd. Production Assistant Role

10 January 2022 General / Jobs
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The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd. Production Assistant Role
Full time role 35 hours per week to commence in February 2022
Salary £18,000 per annum

The Bristol Weaving Mill  (BWM) are looking for an organised and proactive weaving mill Production Assistant with advanced knowledge of woven textiles, and meticulous attention to detail. Reporting directly to the Production Manager this role requires a confident and skilled hand-weaver with an interest in industrial manufacturing and sustainable textiles. The successful applicant will have excellent communication skills, be self-motivated and hard-working, able to follow instruction and work well in a dynamic small team.

Bristol Weaving Mill work across both fashion and interiors, designing, developing and manufacturing woven products and fabric for a variety of outcomes. End uses include but are not limited to, Ready to Wear and Couture Menswear and Womenswear fabrics, finished shawls and scarfs, interior drapery, tapestry panels, upholstery fabric and finished interior soft accessories and products such as throws, blankets and cushions. From their largest commercial client to their smallest personal project, each of their client relationships is based on offering a service catered to their individual needs. Continue reading →

Job: The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd. Sales & Design Manager | Maternity Cover Role

10 January 2022 General / Jobs
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The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd. Sales & Design Manager | Maternity Cover Role

Role to commence in March 2022 under a fixed-term contract, 35 hours per week.

Salary £21,000 per annum.

The Bristol Weaving Mill (BWM)  are looking for a creative and technically confident woven textile designer with product development and sales experience, and the ability to manage project timelines with meticulous attention to detail. The successful applicant will work to nurture and maintain client relationships through pro-active and responsive communication and design work. This role involves overseeing and managing sales, design, and manufacturing schedules for new and on-going projects.

Bristol Weaving Mill work across both fashion and interiors, designing, developing and manufacturing woven products and fabric for a variety of outcomes. End uses include, but are not limited to Ready to Wear and Couture Menswear and Womenswear fabrics, finished shawls and scarfs, interior drapery, tapestry panels, upholstery fabric and finished interior soft accessories and products such as throws, blankets and cushions.

From their largest commercial client to their smallest personal project, each of their client relationships is based on offering a service catered to their individual needs. Most of BWM customers seek not only the small-batch and locally managed production capabilities of the mill but are also looking to BWM to provide input and direction creatively, offering technical advice where necessary.

This job will involve working closely and strategically on sales, building upon the existing client relationships and establishing new ones. In particular, the role will involve management of key client accounts and overseeing commercial design and manufacturing of finished woven products for home interiors.

The successful applicant will need to be an excellent communicator and extremely organised with impeccable attention to detail and quality. As a designer, the ability to assume the aesthetic identity of a wide range of clients is essential. They should be able to handle multiple projects at once, while maintaining excellent communication with customers and colleagues. The ability to self-motivate and work independently as well as in a team is essential. Continue reading →

Happy New Year from The Weave Shed

31 December 2021 General
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Awards: Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST)

21 December 2021 Awards / General / Scholarships
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The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) awards scholarship and apprenticeship funding of up to £18,000 to talented and aspiring craftspeople working in a broad range of skills, from farriery and jewellery design, to silversmithing, dry stone walling, glassblowing cheese maturing, sculpture and more. Their next application round is open 10 January – 14 February 2022 and they are looking for more talented applicants.

QEST celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2020 and since 1990 has awarded over £5million to 650 individuals working in over 130 different crafts.They define craft broadly and welcome applications from all areas including rural skills, contemporary craft, conservation, luthiery and much more. A directory of all their alumni can be seen on their website, along with more details on how to apply  (They have two application rounds each year – in January and July). Continue reading →

Publication: Textile Design Theory in the Making | Elaine Igoe

1 December 2021 General / Publication
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Textile Design Theory in The Making
Textile design inhabits a liminal space spanning art, design and craft. This book explores how textile design bridges the decorative and the functional, and takes us from handcrafting to industrial manufacture. In doing so, it distinguishes textiles as a distinctive design discipline, against the backdrop of today’s emerging design issues.

With commentaries from a range of international design scholars, the book demonstrates how design theory is now being employed in diverse scenarios to encourage innovation beyond the field of design itself. Positioning textiles within contemporary design research, Textile Design Theory in the Making reveals how the theory and practice of textile design exist in a synergistic, creative relationship.

Drawing on qualitative research methods, including auto-ethnography and feminist critique, the book provides a theoretical underpinning for textile designers working in interdisciplinary scenarios, uniting theory and texts from the fields of anthropology, philosophy, literature and material design.

Elaine Igoe is Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Textile Design at the University of Portsmouth, UK

Funded PhD: Royal College of Art Textiles

1 December 2021 Awards / General / New weave developments / Reseach
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Woman stripping bark from a nettle plantA Funded PhD with RCA Textiles, enabled by funding from the late Susi Dunsmore’s foundation.

About the project
The aim of this project is to develop innovative new pathways for the textile-led social development work of Susi Dunsmore. Dunsmore’s textile practice-led approach to community development was holistic in its understanding of the place of the nettle plant in the local environment and culture.

The Nepalese Giant Nettle provides one of the longest bast fibres in the world and is traditionally used in weaving and knitting by the women of communities in the mountainous region of East Nepal. Woven, knitted and other constructed textile products provide supplementary income to subsistence farming. Susi Dunsmore worked with these textile makers and introduced new weave and knit structures, fibre blends and product types to improve income generation through textile making.

Dunsmore’s approach to social impact through co-design integrated an understanding and respect for the lives of the female makers. Her work provides a model for social impact projects through textile making. This research project will simultaneously model and extend Dunsmore’s approach addressing urgent and contemporary production concerns.

Text and image: with thanks RCA

Grants: The Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers | Alison Morton Memorial Awards

1 December 2021 Awards / General / Scholarships
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Grant: Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers
The Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers will be making their biennial grants to weavers during March 2022. Grants of between £500 and £5000 are awarded to younger weavers in the early stages of their careers who show potential and commitment as well as to more experienced weavers for a particular project or for time out to develop their work.

The Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers aims to encourage and support weavers in the United Kingdom to enjoy artistic freedom so that they may contribute to the development of handweaving and the education of future weavers.

Application deadline: 1 March 2022

Further details and an application form is available to download from their website  or by contacting admin@theomoormantrust.org.uk

Alison Morton Memorial Awards
In 2022 the Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers will be making two additional awards in memory of Alison Morton (1946 – 2021). Alison was one of the most dedicated loom weavers of her generation, latterly renowned for her beautiful understated linen cloths and hangings. For the last fourteen years of her life, she was a Trustee of the Theo Moorman Trust for Weavers, a role to which she brought great commitment, as well as invaluable humour and experience.

Weaving residencies at Ruthin Craft Centre 12 – 26 March 2022
Application deadline: 5 January 2022
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Exhibition: Ann Sutton | On From Weaving – A Survey

1 December 2021 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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The New Art Centre is delighted to announce a major survey of pioneering British textile artist Ann Sutton (born 1935).

The exhibition will feature works from every decade of Sutton’s career, from her early days as a student at the Cardiff College of Art, through the 1960s and 1970s when she worked on both two- and three-dimensional textiles, and on to recent painted works, made after Sutton sold her looms in 2010 – a radical act for someone so feted as a textile artist and yet a move entirely in keeping with Sutton’s uncompromising attitude as an artist.

As Richard Howells, Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture at King’s College London, writes, Ann Sutton ‘has always been moving resolutely upstream, against the flow… but doing so with a heady combination of freedom and restraint.’

This survey exhibition is a response to the recent ‘discovery’ of craft as an art form in its own right (and not simply a subset of a wider field of ‘artistic making’) – something that Sutton has fought for from the outset of her career, preferring always to be described as a ‘maker’ rather than a ‘weaver’.

The exhibition will highlight Sutton’s endless experimentation as she pushes the boundaries of what can be ‘woven’ (plastic, linen, cotton and nylon monofilament) and how the necessary geometry of warp and weft can become the starting point for a wider enquiry into systems, pattern, order, balance and harmony. The show will also demonstrate her experimentation with colour, often in contrast to a more formal poetry of monochrome.

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Exhibition: Lenore Tawney | Alison Jacques

26 October 2021 Artist Profile / Exhibitions / General
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LENORE TAWNEY
Part One: 12 October – 6 November 2021
Part Two: 18 November – 8 January 2022

Alison Jacques is delighted to announce two exhibitions of work by pioneering textile artist Lenore Tawney (b. 1907, Lorain, Ohio; d. 2007, New York). Part one, on view during Frieze London, focuses on Tawney’s early work and material
innovations; part two will feature rarely seen late work and an installation from the iconic ‘Cloud’ series. The exhibitions, Tawney’s first in the UK, follow a landmark survey at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin (2019).

In 1957, Tawney lowered her beloved cat Pansy into her Daimler and drove from Chicago to Manhattan. At the age of 50, she was leaving her home of 30 years in the search of ‘a barer life, closer to reality, without all the things that clutter and
fill our lives.’ Tawney may not have earnestly committed herself to her artistic practice until relatively late in life, but this move initiated a total immersion.

‘The truest thing in my life was my work’, she later recalled. ‘I wanted my life to be as true.’

Upon arriving in New York, Tawney settled on Coenties Slip, home to such luminaries as Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin, before moving to the nearby South Street, where she leased three floors of a former sailmaker’s
loft. It was here, free to experiment at unprecedented scale, that a nascent idea crystallised, one that would define Tawney’s work for the coming half decade. ‘The idea of weaving in volume floated up to consciousness this morning’, she wrote in 1958. ‘I awoke nervous and excited all day thinking about it.’

Tawney was born in Lorain, Ohio, in 1907, and raised on the shore of Lake Erie. She spent her formative years as a proofreader for a legal publisher in Chicago, but the imprint of Ohio lingered. Her work – weaving, collage, mail art – is strewn with birds, feathers, stones; she never shook ‘the blue of the water and the sky.’ Finding equal value in Zen Buddhism and such Western thinkers as Erich Neumann and Carl Jung, Tawney lived as a modern-day pantheist, finding within nature an all-encompassing and immanent spirit.

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