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Dovecot Studio: 21st Century Tapestry | PhD Studentship

20 July 2020 Awards / General / New weave developments / Reseach / Scholarships
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21st Century Tapestry: An investigation of smart materials, technology interplay and heritage craftsmanship.

Supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH), this studentship offers a unique opportunity to contribute new knowledge and insight within traditional tapestry practice as a structure for smart and e-textile development in partnership with Dovecot Studios and researchers from Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) and the University of Edinburgh (UoE).

This project connects Scotland’s world-renowned tapestry studio with pioneering smart textile design researchers from the School of Arts & Creative Industries (ENU), and Edinburgh College of Art (UoE), and draws on established research within the field of craft practice, smart textile design and technology integration with fine art tapestry weaving.

As one of only five tapestry studios in the world, with a legacy of collaboration with world-class artists and architects spanning over a hundred years, the unique knowledge-base, skillset and working environment, and opportunities for public engagement, provide a unique research framework for the studentship.

The PhD project will explore and question how tapestry practice can embrace innovation in smart materials and create a new marketplace and audience for the medium. Specifically, the research will ask, what does a 21st century smart tapestry look like?

How can the integration of technologies be embedded within traditional heritage tapestry practice and exploit new aesthetics? The project will involve practice-based research methodology and experimental prototyping, providing an experimental counterpoint to literature review work. It will also involve working on looms, using electronic components, conductive and state change materials, reflexive analysis of structural and material tapestry components.

Included in the studentship is an 18-month placement at Dovecot, which will allow studio practice and knowledge exchange, workshops and involvement in wider research networks. Continue reading →

Awards : Cockpit Arts | Weavers

8 July 2020 Awards / General / New weave developments / Scholarships
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Cockpit Arts has two Awards open for application for talented makers to join the Cockpit Arts community in September 2020. Each of these Awards will provide a subsidised or free space to a Maker, and this round has two spaces on an open discipline Award.

The Cockpit Arts / The Clothworkers’ Company Awards

This Award aims to assist three graduate weavers to set up in business. Weavers can be working in any form: for example, creating products, visual art, working with mills and making samples for industry.

The Award comprises one year’s business support and subsidised studio space at Cockpit Arts Deptford, including space in a shared studio equipped with Leclerc, Louet, ARM looms and a dye area, thanks to The Clothworkers’ Company. The Award is for one year with further financial support for up to two years on a sliding scale, by selection.

  • Deadline for applications: 5pm, Friday 31 July 2020

The Cockpit Arts / Newby Trust Craft Excellence Awards

This Award aims to support two makers to practice their craft at a key stage in their skill development and support their craft business to achieve financial sustainability. The Newby Trust Craft Excellence Award offers two makers each year a rare and valued opportunity to develop their craft skill and excellence in any discipline, nurturing both ability and talent.

The Award comprises one year’s business support and subsidised studio space at Cockpit Arts.

  • Deadline for applications: 5pm, Friday 31 July 2020

Further details and application forms are available to download from their website – https://cockpitarts.com/awards-bursaries/, or please contact maxine@cockpitarts.com for further information or to express an interest.

Text: Cockpit Arts. Image Poppy Fuller – Abbot

Shane Waltener: Weaving as Performance

7 July 2020 Artist Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / Workshops
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Shane Waltener’s practice is rooted in ideas about ecology, sustainability and reuse. Taking the form of objects, installations and performances, Waltener draws inspiration from a range of craft practices ranging from textile and basketry weaving to needlecraft and ceramics. Weaving however is at the core of his work.

The artist shares anthropologist Tim Ingold’s view that making is a modality of weaving, not the reverse. Making anything, whether a building with bricks and mortar or verbal communication composing words into sentences is a weaving process. If art is a matter of organising chaos into pattern, the artist’s work is essentially that of a weaver.

Waltener champions the idea of weaving as an ‘embodied’ practice, one that engages the whole body. He is a member of Ambient Jam, an improvisation ensemble which explores movement and music with tactile sculptures. Working with them has led Waltener to use methods common to dance and movement practitioners, relying on improvisation as well as acquired routines and skills in order to develop work. The making process is then recorded as a performance score.

Exemplifying this way of working is his recent work with The Building Action Group (BAG) during his residency at Academie Minerva in Groningen, The Netherlands; the third and final project in a programme following Hella Jongerius and Anotonio José Guzman. In response to the earthquakes caused by gas mining in the province of Groningen, that led to more than 100 collapsed buildings, 400 more being condemned and some 100,000 people being displaced since the early 1990s, the artist proposed to weave a house entirely from locally sourced soil and plant material. Continue reading →

Online Exhibition: Complexity 2020 | Innovations in Weaving

29 June 2020 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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Complexity 2020 | Innovations in Weaving

Complex Weavers is an international organisation of weavers dedicated to expanding the boundaries of handweaving. The group encourages members to develop their own creative style, and to inspire others through research, documentation, and innovative ideas.

Its members challenge their skills and imagination by sharing information and innovations with fellow weavers worldwide – both directly and through study groups, Seminars, Complex Weavers Journal, and biennial juried exhibition Complexity.

Every two years members are invited to submit new work for jurying, and the final selections are formally exhibited to the public as Complexity. This year the physical exhibition planned for Knoxville, Tennessee, has been replaced with a virtual exhibition, which has the added benefit of being accessible to a world-wide audience.

The show presents recent textile creations that bear within them some form of complexity, whether they have been woven on a dobby, treadle, table or Jacquard loom. All were made by hand and designed by humans, and all exhibit technical excellence. Complexity 2020 opens at midday on 29 June 2020. Continue reading →

Cockpit Arts: Festival of Making

19 June 2020 Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / Workshops
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Cockpit Arts will be hosting their annual Festival of Making event from Friday June 19th – June 21st 2020. Running over three days, this free virtual celebration will feature 65 events run by over 80 of London’s leading makers. The festival is taking place across Zoom, Instagram and Facebook.

Featuring a range of workshops, panel discussions, live demos and studio tours, all led by some of London’s most exciting makers. Three woven textile artist and designers will be delivering the following exciting events across the weekend:

Friday June 21st  at 7pm Nadia-Anne Ricketts, an award winning woven textile designer, invites you to ‘Tune In’ to a live virtual immersive, meditation sound bath experience, where you’ll be taken on an inward exploratory journey to the field of infinite creative possibilities, by playing the sound vibrations of the gong woven into the frequencies of crystal bowls

Saturday, 20th June at 12pm. Vicky Cowin invites you to virtually visit her Deptford studio. You will see  Vicky’s loom and hear about her experience as one of several Cockpit makers supported by a Clothworkers’ Company Award.

Sunday, 21st June at 12pm. Weaver Kendall Clarke, working from home in a temporary studio, will show you how you can discover local colour from your doorstep in this introduction to natural dyes from summer plants, weeds and leaves. Continue reading →

Company Profile: Pink House by Rebecca Cole

21 May 2020 Company Profile / General / New weave developments
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Pink House by Rebecca Cole collection is championing the traditions of Aso-oke hand weaving in the Yoruba region of Nigeria to the Interior Design Industry. The influx of cheap, imported textiles and mass-produced European style clothing has drastically diminished the artisan weaving industry in Nigeria leaving fewer weaving communities able to make a living from their craft.

By taking an innovative approach to using the beautiful striped and patterned woven strips, as a form of passementerie for interior design, textile designer Rebecca Cole has identified a way to support the traditions of weaving that she first encountered in the 1990’s.

Whilst on an introductory visit to her husband’s family in Nigeria “I fell in love with not only the magic of Nigeria but also the sense of heritage and family contained in the textiles that had been created and safeguarded by my mother-in-law from every family event. There is family history attached to each piece of As0-oke she has kept.”

The traditions of Yoruba weaving date back to the 10th and 12th Century in Nigeria. The Aso-oke cloth is traditionally woven by men in the Southwestern region of Nigeria on horizontal looms. As early as the 17th Century, Aso-oke cloth was recorded as a valuable trading commodity with the British. Continue reading →

Awards: Cockpit Arts | Currently on hold – see below for details

18 March 2020 Awards / General / New weave developments
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Cockpit Arts currently has four Awards open for application for talented makers to join the Cockpit Arts community. Each of these Awards will provide a subsidised or free space to a Maker, and this round has two open discipline Awards so it really is open to everyone. Currently these awards are on hold due to Covid 19 – they will reopen once the situation has changed but please continue to register your interest by emailing Maxine Clark maxine@cockpitarts.com

There are no age limits or educational requirements (except for the Clothworkers’ Award) they just want to see craft skill and a real drive to turn their passion into their professional business.

This Award round equates to approximately £19,000 worth of generous support from our funders and Cockpit are ready to match that and invest in 8 new Makers to join their community. Alongside the free or subsidised space they will receive a workshop programme tailored to Awardees and be assigned one of their in-house business coaches for regular 1 to 1 coaching.

All of the Awards are for at least 12 months, with the Clothworkers’ Award offering up to three years of support on a sliding scale.

Awards at Cockpit Arts open for application.

We are delighted to announce that there are  Cockpit Arts Awards now open for applications. All Awards comprise business support provided by Cockpit Arts as well as subsidised studio space for one year.

The Cockpit Arts / The Clothworkers’ Company Awards
Open to graduates within the last five years, these awards aim to assist weavers to set up in business. Weavers can be working in any form, for example, creating products; visual art; working with mills and making samples for industry.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Tuesday 14 April 2020

The Cockpit Arts / Clear Insurance Award
Aims to support professional makers who have been in business for less than three years and aspire to develop their craft business in any craft discipline.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Friday 17 April 2020

The Cockpit Arts / Newby Trust Craft Excellence Awards
Aims to support two makers to practice their individual craft at a key stage in their skill development, to grow as an independent maker and to support their craft business to achieve financial sustainability.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Thursday 14 May 2020

Further details and application forms are available to download from their website – https://cockpitarts.com/awards-bursaries/, or please contact maxine@cockpitarts.com for further information or to express an interest.

Image: Jacob Monk

Profile: Alicia Rowbotham

9 February 2020 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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Alicia Rowbotham, a recent graduate of the BA (Hons) Textile Design course at Central Saint Martins is a designer amongst a growing group of emerging talent exploring the relevance of fast fashion against the environmental destruction it ensues.

Working within the fashion industry as a stylist for a leading online fashion retailer throughout her degree gave her great insight into the destructive cycle of fast fashion and disposable products. This provoked her to create the collection ‘Waste not, want not’.  The collection aims to emphasise and encourage collaboration between manufacturers and designers to harness the potential of textile mill waste and utilise this resource for the benefit of both the industry and the designer.

The collection consists of handwoven body adornments and fashion accessories made entirely from textile industry waste including reams of beautiful waste silk, miscellaneous fibres and ‘deadstock’ materials from textile mills in the UK.

The collection was shortlisted for the LVMH x MAISON/0 Green Trail awards 2019 as well as The Mills Fabrica sustainability prize 2019. The collection was then shown as part of the London Design festival exhibition ‘Designing in Turbulent Times’ amongst other provoking Central Saint Martin’s graduate projects. Rowbotham finished 2019 being featured as ‘one to watch’ in the winter issue of textile publication, Cover magazine.

Starting the new year, pieces from the ‘Waste not, Want not’ collection were showcased as part of the innovation hub in the Sustainable Angles 9th Future Fabrics Expo; the world’s largest showcase of sustainable materials for the future fashion industry.

Rowbotham continues to pursue her fascination for a more circular fashion and textile industry through the aid of craft and design working in collaboration with Evan James Design to create interior accessories for the Surface Design Show 2020. Continue reading →

Profile: Orkney Cloth Company

7 February 2020 Company Profile / General / New weave developments / Workshops
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Orkney Cloth Company
Orkney had a rich heritage of textile weaving which had been lost for over 30 years, and the Orkney Cloth Company is hoping to revive it once again.

Weaving in Orkney completely disappeared in the mid-1970s, when the two mills, Argarden and Sclaters closed. Orkney’s cloth was once more renown than Harris Tweed, well regarded for its softness and lightness, and sold all over the world. Unlike Harris Tweed, without a well known tradition of weaving, Orkney tweed weavers were able to create new and contemporary designs, using bold accent colours.

However, by the mid-1970’s the industry had moved on, with the arrival of ready to wear garments and synthetic materials. Their reluctance to invest in wider looms meant that Harris Tweed had the competitive advantage, and both mills closed down.

The Orkney Cloth Company was started by India Johnson, who aims to revive the industry once again. After arriving in Orkney on a graduate weaving placement with ScotGrad and Orkney Creative Hub in October 2018, she began teaching hand weaving.

Continue reading →

Exhibition: Ruth Holt

7 February 2020 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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Ruth Holt is based in  a studio in Halesworth, Suffolk.  Since 2012 she has exhibited regularly with Suffolk Craft Society and other galleries including the Scottish Gallery and Shipyard Gallery in Wivenhoe.

Ruth designed and then commissioned Whitchurch Silk Mill, a traditional Victorian Mill,  to weave cloth for a limited edition of scarves for the Society of Apothecaries (a City Livery Company). Continue reading →

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