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Crafts Council Hothouse: Heather Shields

18 January 2015 Company Profile / General / New weave developments / News
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hshieldsloomHeather Shields is a woven textile designer based in Glasgow, who has recently been selected on the Crafts Council Hothouse scheme.

This scheme  is a “free programme of professional support for craft makers, delivered by the Crafts Council and partners and run over the course of six months” (ref: crafts council website). 39 Makers have been selected for 2015 including previously featured on The Weaveshed, weavers Rita Parniczky and Nadia Anne Ricketts.

Graduating with a BA (Hons) in Textile Design from Glasgow School of Art, Heather  went on to pursue an internship with Margo Selby to assist in weaving samples for her book “Contemporary Weaving Patterns”.

On returning to Scotland, Heather took up a part time post as weave technician at Glasgow School of Art. A year later she joined Glasgow Clyde College as a weave tutor and began writing the curriculum for their first weave course in partnership with Heriot Watt university.

Alongside her work in education, she developed a new collection of fabrics and was determined to start up her own textile design business. She participated in Nightriders, an 8 week pilot business programme created by service design company, Snook, and began showing her work at local exhibitions. In December 2014 she was selected to join the Craft Council’s Hothouse scheme for emerging makers.

Her designs combine playful colour palettes with bold pattern and quality craftsmanship. A fascination with contrasts, beauty in the unexpected and unusual juxtaposition has always been at the forefront of her design work. She explores these elements through carefully considered yarn choices and specialist construction techniques to create textiles that celebrate the charm of everyday objects. Inspired by childhood puzzles and games, her latest collection of contemporary homeware uses super soft lambswool and a double cloth construction to create luxurious cushions with a strong graphic edge. Heather’s fabrics evoke a sense of fun and are destined to be covetable statement pieces within the home.

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Exhibition: Dash + Miller / Peta Jacobs

19 December 2014 Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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Low res D&M pic 1Counterpoint—design meets art. A showcase of textiles from two perspectives

Exclusive hand-woven textile design samples destined for the catwalk will sit beside mini installations that present space-altering abstract worlds. At first glance they appear poles apart, but both originate from the same source—textiles.

Internationally renowned hand-woven textile designers Dash & Miller will exhibit a compendium of their most current designs, alongside art pieces by Peta Jacobs. This juxtaposition of works will  demonstrates very different interpretations of textile practice and will show at the A&D Gallery, Chiltern Street, W1U 6LY from 13-17 January 2015.

The encounter between high-end design and conceptual art delivers an unexpected linkage that challenges the bounds of textile genres. In their meeting, there are correspondences, such as the use of visual repetition. There are also divergences, particularly in the outcomes.

Each of Dash & Miller’s exclusive miniature textile concepts represents a unique idea of colour, texture and form; artworks usually never seen outside of the industry they inform. Every piece is meticulously woven by hand using both traditional and cutting edge techniques and materials, designed with the sole purpose of feeding ideas to product designers and fabric producers across a vast spectrum of textile related industries.

Peta Jacobs’ artworks invite the viewer to question certainty and perception by presenting shifting views relative to viewpoint. They incorporate vestiges of cloth, along with abstract films, prisms and mirrors. “Peta Jacob’s uses of cloth, mirrors and digital technologies have a magical, alchemic resonance as they enfold and draw us into that borderline space between what we know and what we imagine”, says Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture, University for the Creative Arts.

Counterpoint—design meets art is showing at A&D Gallery, 51 Chiltern Street, London W1U 6LY (nearest tube is Baker Street).

The show runs from Tuesday 13th January until Saturday 17th January.
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Friday: 10.30am to 7.00pm.
Saturday: 10.30 am to 4pm. Continue reading →

Teresa Georgallis & Universal Assembly Unit

18 November 2014 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News
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bondstreetwindowsThis collaborative project brings together a woven textile designer, Theresa Georgallis with a digital media studio, Universal Assembly Unit to explore a new visual language between textiles and 3D interactive environments.

Collaborating for the first time for this installation, the designers worked together to create a digital fabric that responds to sound inputs.

These sounds were collected from New Bond street – both above and below the surface and they are high and low frequency sounds that humans cannot hear. They are more like vibrations.
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Stephanie Rolph: The Peter Collingwood Trust Fund Winner 2014

4 November 2014 Company Profile / Competitions / General / New weave developments / News
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(im)Permanence.

“It is our perception of space that alters the space.
It is consciousness that finds meaning in all spaces.”

This Bryan Lawson quote inspired Stephanie Rolph’s research project: (im)Permanence. The project was part of her final year BA (Hons) Textile Design course at CSM, which was an investigation into the potential for creating rigid, self-supporting woven materials. The materials she  developed were designed to form a modular furniture system.

Her studio practice focuses on the role of textiles within spaces, both architecturally and as products and objects, looking not just at the appearance of textiles but at the form and physical properties. She aims to challenge preconceived ideas on what woven fabrics can be and how they can be used, believing that unusual applications of fabrics can help to redefine the textiles themselves.

Interior textiles are often generally drapes, rugs and upholstery fabrics. There is general feeling that fabrics within space are decorative: a cushion on a wooden chair or the drapes to accent a room. Often then, the textile is an after thought; some consider them less important because of this. Her project set out to see if she could disturb this relationship, creating woven structures that existed both as ornament and have function within a space.
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Beatwoven: Nadia-Anne Ricketts

19 October 2014 Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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As a part of The Southbank’s summer festival The Festival of Love and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s (LPO) year long festival, Rachmaninoff: Inside Out, Nadia-Anne Ricketts was commissioned to create a textile art piece for the Royal Festival Hall interpreting Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. This was used within David Lean’s award winning 1945 love film Brief Encounter, which was screened at the Hall in August, and was accompanied by a newly commissioned orchestral soundtrack played by the LPO itself.

She has also designed  a small capsule collection  of woven textiles with three design variations, which show how one song can be translated into a handful of designs, either literally or abstract. These are currently available to purchase at The Southbank Centre.

At her London design studio, BeatWoven, Ricketts has designed a bespoke audio software program that translates any played music into visual patterns, especially for weaving. “Similar to that of a very granulated, broken down sound wave, it inspects and discovers the patterns happening within the sound wave.”

For the commissioned piece, she started by playing the Rachmaninoff concerto over and over through the software to analyse and become familiar with the patterns. Though the basic colour palette was determined by the interior design of the Royal Festival Hall, where it will be installed, Ricketts also uses her previous performing experience to connect with the music, juxtaposed with extensive research for each song, including the artist, genre, era and story behind its composition, to ultimately choose colour combinations and yarns. “When designing my musical textile pieces I feel that I am expressing my passion for music in a visual way, rather than as a dance performance. The designing and making process becomes my visual music performance”.
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The New Creative Markets Programme: Cockpit Arts

13 October 2014 General / New weave developments / News
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Cockpit Arts is an award winning social enterprise and the UK’s only creative-business incubator for designer-makers. Since they first started in 1986 they have helped thousands of talented craftspeople to grow their businesses, many of whom have gone on to achieve national and international success.

The New Creative Markets Programme at Cockpit Arts is a professional development programme designed to help designer-makers increase the sales of their work, consider and reach new markets, and achieve greater sustainability. This exciting new programme offers 12 hours of tailored support to give you the confidence and skills needed to develop or diversify your business, and get paid what you’re worth.

Cockpit Arts  work closely with participants to address their most pressing professional needs, and participants will have a diagnostic with a Cockpit Arts Business Coach to help  create individuals own programme. In addition to six essential workshops, we offer a mix of workshops and one-to-one support participants can pick and choose from to improve market understanding and your sales. With our growing pool of experts these sessions will help partcipants expand their market through new routes or products, and underpin this with the essentials.

Essentials include: selling and negotiation, crafting your writing, press & PR, brand development, pricing for the market, and increasing efficiency. Pick and choose from: market development for the retail or art market, exporting, product range development, digital presence, tax for creatives, contracts & intellectual property. Plus the opportunity for one-to-one support from Cockpit Arts’ Business Coaches, talks from industry specialists and networking with other artists/programme participants.
Please note the final programme is shaped based on the needs of the selected participants. Workshops will run approximately bi-monthly from January to June 2015.
Project part-financed by the European Union

This is a call for designer-makers. Apply for a FREE place on this programme to help increase sales and achieve greater sustainability. Deadline 15th October 2014.
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Book: Woven Textiles – A Designer’s Guide

29 September 2014 General / New weave developments / Publication
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Woven TextilesWoven Textiles - A Designer’s Guide by Sharon Kearley

Weaving is an age-old craft but it has boundless potential. The beauty and joy of weaving a finished piece of cloth can be enhanced by creating your own designs and using the latest ideas and techniques.

This new book explains to the novice how to start weaving textiles, but also develops techniques for the more experienced so they can learn to appreciate colour, patterns and structures, and thereby design their own richly-textured cloth.

As well as practical information on how to get started, Woven Textiles provides:

  • Information on yarns and fibres, and how they can be combined
  • Step-by-step instructions on learning to weave.
  • Guide to weave structures and patterns.
  • Colour, pattern and structure explained.
  • Finishing techniques.
  • Examples of finished pieces by leading weave designers

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Texprint Winners: Paris

22 September 2014 Competitions / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News
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2014-09-17 18.30.46-7On 17 September 2014, Nino Cerruti presented prestigious prizes to the exceptional British-trained textile design graduates selected to exhibit under the auspices of Texprint at Indigo/Première Vision.

Nino Cerruti said, “The world is full of crazy artists – but we are industrial designers. We must be artists and designers.

The creative and imagination skills need to translate back into clothing and real applications. It is so pleasing to see that the next generation of designers selected to exhibit at Texprint 2014 understand the commercial imperatives that underpin successful design.”

Eminent representatives from the worlds of fashion, interiors, specialist textiles and retailing selected four highly talented graduates from British universities for prizes in the Colour, Pattern, Space and Body categories. 24 designers were in contention for the Texprint prizes, as well as The Woolmark Company Texprint Award and, new for 2014, the Miroglio Texprint Award for Digital Innovation. lululemon athletica had already announced the names of 2 winners. The winning designers each received £1000.00

Barbara Kennington, Chairman, Texprint said: “This exciting new edition of the Texprint showcase at Indigo/PV offers both fashion and interiors industries the opportunity to view the collections of rigorously selected ‘best of the best’ graduate textile designers, all trained in Britain. Their work is unique, exclusive, totally fresh; as designers each is highly talented, professional, and ready to take the textile industry by storm!”Nino Cerruti (Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti) and Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton of menswear brand Agi & Sam judge The Woolmark Company Texprint Award (2)

TEXPRINT® AWARDS 2014
The Texprint prizes were awarded as follows:Space: Georgia Fisher
Georgia Fisher completed an MA in Textiles: Weave at the Royal College of Art, having previously gained a BA in weave at Central St Martins. She was awarded bursaries in 2013 and 2014 from The Worshipful Company of Weavers and won the 2014 Jaeger competition. She gained work experience with The Jackson. Continue reading →

Exhibition: Common Threads

16 September 2014 Company Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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British Council, Common Thread exhibition, photograph by simon mills high 8 The Anou Residencies
In a new British Council residency programme, UK-based designer Sabrina Kraus López  lived with Anou artisans in the Atlas Mountains, collaborating on new designs and approaches based on the Amazigh’s traditional weaving techniques.

Over a one-month period Sabrina worked with six artisans to create the Common Thread collection, a series of bespoke hand woven rugs inspired by the Berber’s heritage, surroundings and personal stories.

Through exchanging stories and knowledge, six-limited edition contemporary rugs have been created that each celebrate and draw inspiration from the artisan’s own culture and personal background.

These rugs also form the basis of an exhibition specially curated by Faculty (Moira Lascelles and Kieren Jones) at Designjunction during the London Design Festival 2014. The exhibition will tell the story of the residency and the rugs and will include a film by Simon Mills and a publication designed by Laura Gordon.
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Texprint Weavers: Indigo, Paris

15 September 2014 Competitions / Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News
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Texprint2013-logo-with382strapline_2spotcolTexprint interviews, mentors and promotes the UK’s most talented textile design graduates with the support of industry professionals worldwide.

Those selected are introduced to buyers, press and sponsors at the Texprint London event, and at Europe and Asia’s leading yarn and textile exhibitions.

Texprint is entirely funded by the generous sponsorship of industry and by British charitable foundations.  Their sponsors believe wholeheartedly in supporting textile design talent and in encouraging design innovation and excellence. Source: Texprint website

The following 2014 weave graduates were selected, initially exhibited their work in July in London and will each have a stand to show their designs  within ‘Texprint Village’ Hall 5 at Indigo trade Fair, Hall 5, Stand 5Y60, Première Vision Pluriel, Parc d’Expositions de Paris-Nord. Sept 16th – 18th 2015.

The winners of the awards will be announced in Paris on 17th Sept 2014 and the awards will be presented by Nino Cerruti, Designer and Head of the Biella based Textile Mill, Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti.

Texprint Weavers

ZanaAjvaziB-1Zana Ajvazi

Zanas’ work is described as contemporary woven textiles that mediate between concepts of social and digital impact, to facilitate innovative design for the body.

Zana is inspired by research into material innovation, and the crossovers between textiles and other disciplines, including science and socio-economics; also the intricacy and interplay of different cultures, materials and traditional weaving techniques. Zana graduated from Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London – BA (Hons) Textile Design. Zana has been selected for an internship in Como, Italy.

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