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Launch: Textile Technologies Project

ttp2logoThis launch will inform companies on how the project will enable them to access the key industry emerging technologies housed within the centre in Carmarthen. The event on 25th February 2014 will be of interest to any business wishing to work on Research and Development, new product development, knowledge transfer, and collaborative projects.

• Printed, knitted and woven textile design-CAD development
• Development of woven Jacquard fabrics-jacquard loom
• Gerber Technology for pattern digitising, manipulation, grading and marker making
• Virtual sampling-CAD printed and woven designs
• Scotweave CAD design development
• Product development and prototyping
• Research and testing of fabrics for potential laser or ultrasonic joining
• Laser cutting, laser etching, and hydro cutting
Digital fabric printing
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SIT Designing Craft Crafting Design: Symposium

select logo 2014 FINAL50mmSIT Designing Craft Crafting Design symposium brings together some of the most illustrious names in the fields of contemporary craft and design in a day of discussion and debate examining what the terms ‘craft’ and ‘design’ mean to us in the 21st Century. The symposium aims to be a day of debate and enquiry.

Programme:
Is the division between between Craft and Design relevant today? 10- 11.30 am
The panel
Mary Greensted, Chair of the Gloucester Guild of Craftsmen, Grant Gibson, Editor of Crafts and designers Nick Munro and Simon Pengelly – will discuss this  issue in a thought provoking debate chaired by design writer and SIT blogger Charlotte Abrahams

Wallace Sewell UpholsteryDoes craft have to be man made? 12.00 – 12.45 pm
The panel
Ceramicist Michael Eden, Harriet Wallace-Jones, one half of innovative industrial textile studio Wallace Sewell and maker Susan Early and textile printer Stephen Lewis put their cases in front of chair John Brewer, chair of the Cheltenham Design Festival and Course Leader, BA Graphic Design at the University of Gloucester

Maker Talks 2.00 – 4.00pm
Wallpaper artist Tracy Kendall, textile designer Fay McCaul and design-maker Sebastian Cox shed light on their inspirations and working methods in a series of individual talks.

When: Saturday, May 17th 2014
Time: 9:30 am – 5.00pm
Where: Stroud College, Stratford Rd, Stroud GL5 4AH
Price: Tickets cost £85 Concessions (students/unemployed) £35 inclusive of coffee/tea and organic lunch.
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Glithero: Woven Song

woven_songs-1169_4Woven Song is a work about making woven textiles from organ music punch cards. Commissioned by the Zuiderzee Museum in the Netherlands, the project bridges the worlds of two craftsmen, a weaver and an organ maker, who in each case use a system of punched cards to inform the behaviour of a machine, a loom or an organ. Glithero worked alongside life-long weaver Wil van den Broek and master organ maker Leon van Leeuwen to understand the techniques of their crafts and learn if it would be possible to translate one coded art form into the other, to in effect, weave music.

The project forms a self-contained exhibition that presents the material outcomes – fabrics and artefacts, and a two screen video projection that documents the story of the project. On one side that of the organ maker and the other the weaver, who’s stories run concurrently. The dancing hands of the craftsmen form a graceful choreography that echo from one screen to the other, focusing on the uncanny resemblances betweens the crafts and the craftsmen’s stories, at times synchronising, overlapping, diverging, and mirroring.

woven_songs-1169_3The use of parallel stories draws attention to common themes, traits, challenges about the preservation of wisdom and heritage. By means of collaboration, Glithero encourage the craftsmen to look upon themselves, their working lives and their legacy from a new vantage point, and by leading them both away from the conventions of their crafts they create new outcomes that are challenging and miraculous. The exhibition not only comprises the final products of this quest, but also the very elements of the quest itself.

Glithero are British designer Tim Simpson and Dutch designer Sarah van Gameren, who met and studied at the Royal College of Art. From their studio in London they create product, furniture, and time-based installations that give birth to unique and wonderful products. The work is presented in a broad spectrum of media, but follows a consistent conceptual path; to capture and present the beauty in the moment things are made.
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New weave company: Chalk

Squircle-Outline-Sage-Cushion-50cm-x-50cmChalk launched its first range of woven products in July 2013, at Harrogate’s Home and Gift fair and was awarded “Best New Product” at the show.

Chalk’s founders are Kerry Stokes, an experienced freelance woven textile designer in furnishing and fashion fabrics and Richard Bush who previously ran an interior furnishing business.

Kerry Stokes commented that “We’re delighted at the positive response Chalk has received so far. We’ve loved the whole process from the initial inspiration through to the final photo shoots. It’s immensely complicated and fascinating”

Chalk made  contact with prospective stockists and buyers at the fair, and is now becoming an established company within the home market in the UK.

BannerChalk currently offer a range of woven soft furnishing products, including blankets, throws and cushions, all woven and made in the UK. The products are woven in merino lambswool and are partly inspired by the Sussex land, seascapes and architecture, where their business is based. There are six designs in various colourways, squircle outline, full squircle, beacon, prism, fern and reeds.
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Deirdre Wood: Peter Collingwood Trust Award Winner 2013

interlocking rings_ Dierdre Wood LRUK weaver Deirdre Wood is this year’s winner of the Peter Collingwood Trust Prize for the most innovative loom based textile. Founded in memory of one of Britain’s most celebrated weavers, this national award was given in recognition of Deirdre’s unique and inventive circular weaving technique that she uses to create woven rings and discs.

Deirdre, who has lived and worked in Winchester for almost thirty years, works as a hand-weaver and dyer creating abstract architectural tapestries using silk, linen, cotton and wool. The new approach to weaving she has devised uses the contrasting properties of linen and silk to create rings and discs. Although the cloth is woven straight, it becomes dramatically curved when cut from the loom and treated by finishing processes.

Strip woven fabric has long been a fascination for Deirdre and on winning the Clothworker’s Travel Award from the Royal Society of Arts, while a student in 1996, she travelled to Mali, West Africa, to study Bogolanfini and indigo textiles produced by the Bamana and Dogon tribespeople. These cloths are strip-woven on simple back-strap looms.

Earlier this year Deirdre was one of three textile artists selected to represent the UK at the 14th Triennial of Tapestry in Poland. After her woven rings were exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts, London, they travelled to Poland where they are now displayed at the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, until Nov. 3rd 2013. Deidre Wood website
Deirdre Wood portrait LR

Exhibitions: Modern Makers & Model:Making – Ptolemy Mann

Ptolemy Mann

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Ptolemy Mann
will  be showing as part of the exhibition Modern Makers at Chatsworth House this September. Curated by Sarah Griffin and presented by Sothebys, it’s a selling exhibition of contemporary applied art across several disciplines. Exhibitors were invited to make work in direct response to the house and its collection in some shape or form. After several visits Ptolemy created an installation of nine 250 x 70cm artworks called Chromatogenous  (meaning ‘to generate colour’). Dates: 18th September – 23rd December 2013

Each artwork represents a single colour (from left to right; Ultramarine : Aquamarine : Indigo) that is in some way significant within the house and textile archive at Chatsworth.

Each piece is an exploration of deep emotive colour and will be shown in sequence on a long wall within the New Gallery. More details can be seen here.

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Publication: Digital Jacquard Design – Julie Holyoke

Digital Jacquard Design AW 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Jacquard Design. For centuries, the creation of Jacquard cloth required the collaborative efforts of teams of designers and technicians working on vastly complex equipment. In the past three decades, developments in loom technology and CAD systems have made it possible for a single individual to design and produce this most challenging class of textiles.

Digital Jacquard Design presents a comprehensive introduction to the creation of weave patterning in the era of digitally piloted looms. It offers both aesthetic and technical training for students of figured weaving, covering the Jacquard medium in fantastic breadth and depth.

The book is an essential guide for all who create figured textiles with modern materials and tools, and provides the reader with a ‘digital’ key to access and employ the great textile traditions of the past.

Digital Jacquard Design examines the design process from end to end, progressing from visual analysis, sample analysis and weave-drafting methods, to figuring techniques and the selection and building of weaves. It provides a guide to converting traditional drafts to digital polychrome format, a design terminology and a weave glossary. The book concludes with a rich set of case studies to demonstrate ingenious and effective weave and design solutions.

Publication date Oct 10th 2013

Julie Holyoke  is a textile designer for hand loom and industrial production; she teaches CAD textile design in Italy at the Lisio Foundation and abroad.

Text: Bloomsbury Publishing

Workshop: Bhakti Ziek. Multi – weft weave structures for jacquard

Blue_Song_2_DetailBhakti Ziek, co-author of The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop©*, will conduct a six day masterclass in Scotland on multi-weft weave structures using the colourbothy studio Thread Controller 1 (TC1). This class will be limited in size so structures can be studied in depth and everyone will have time weaving on the TC1.

While jacquard weavings can exhibit imagery and great detail using one warp and one weft, such as traditional damasks, using multiple wefts and/or multiple warp systems allows a visual appearance of many colors across one horizontal line of the cloth. Ziek will take students through a study of taqueté and samitum (both weft-faced structures), lampas, weft-backed structures, and double cloth (using more than two wefts).

Students can work with one image developed in all these structures, allowing a great comparison of visual nuances, or use different images for each structure. Or they can choose to focus on just some of the structures that are most relevant to their own needs. The class is small so personal attention will be paid to the individual and their needs. Continue reading →

Amateur weaver required for TV production company

Ricochet (The Weave Shed)(1)Independent TV production company Ricochet has recently been commissioned to make a new series for one of the UK’s Major Broadcasters celebrating traditional and contemporary crafts.

They are currently on the lookout for the country’s most gifted amateur craftspeople to take part in a unique programme that will hone their skills and hopefully support them to become masters of their crafts. The crafts they aim to feature include; Pottery, Blacksmithing, Stonemasonry, Weaving, Glass and Cabinet making.

These craftspeople will be mentored by some of the UK’s top professionals from a variety of disciplines as apprentices on an intensive training scheme. At the end of each training period the apprentices will have the opportunity to create a final piece which will be judged by the leading craftsmen and women in these fields. One apprentice will be claimed the best and will hopefully get the opportunity to turn their passion into a career.

If in the instance your skills are too professional, please do think of any emerging and enthusiastic individuals breaking into the world of textiles.

To find out more information regarding this series, please contact Adam on 01273 224 837 / crafts@ricochet.co.uk

Texprint Weavers 2013

The 2013 Texprint Weavers exhibited their work last week at Texprint London for a first view for press, sponsors, industry and supporters. The Designers will all be showing at Indigo/Premièr Vision, Paris from 17th – 19th Sept 2013.

The following five weave designers showed their work at the Texprint London.

Elizabeth Ashdown
Inspired by military and tudor embroidery and interlocking wires found in mechanical parts, Elizabeth Ashdowns’ woven and stitched textile collection incorporates a range of luxurious and unusual materials.

‘Stitched Connections’ is a collection of statement passmenterie trimmings that utilise  a fresh and contemporary colour palette to present a quirky and highly individual approach to an age-old craft.  She also designs a range of woven and switched textiles for both fashion and interiors

Website: http://www.elizabethashdown.co.uk/
Contact: Info@elizabethashdown.co.uk
Elizabeth graduated from Central Saint Martins, UAL. Ribbon images by the designer

 

Signe Rand Ebbesen
The inspiration for Signe’s graduate collection of woven fabrics is the colour shifts, the unpredictable structures, the glitter and the semi-translucent layering of minerals and crystals. She has sought to create textiles that change colour and pattern depending on the angle of light, movement and the draping.

The characteristics and aesthetics of treatments normally added to fabrics after production, like embroidery, foiling, embossing and waxing have been engineered into the weaving, to give a luxurious detailing.

Signe has used natural fibres like cashmere, silk and linen to give the fabrics good draping properties and woven synthetic materials like nylon and polyurethane on the top of the cloth to give a sculptural and unexpected surface. ”
Website: http://www.signerandebbesen.com/
Email: signe@signerandebbesen.com
Signe.ebbesen@network.rca.ac.uk
Signe graduated from The Royal College of Art.

 

 

Ffion Griffith
‘Unravelling the Welsh blanket’

With the aim of reviving and preserving Welsh weaving methods this collection reinterprets traditional techniques in an original way.

Studying historical textiles inspired the creative reinvigoration of Welsh double-cloth, honeycomb textures and classic striped designs. Correspondence with mill-owners set the challenge of adhering to the industry’s unchanged manufacturing capacities.

Championing the luxurious qualities of natural fibres influenced the choice of lambswool to create blankets of irresistible tactility. British woven Axeminster carpet is a celebration of a collaboration between traditional manufacturing and contemporary ideas. A range of digitally printed cotton furnishing velvet offers a combination of practicality and eye-catching design, which demonstrates the versatility of pattern application.

Focused on celebrating the wealth of Wales’ traditional manufacturing skills, the presentation of new captivating designs entrenched in historic poignancy will raise the profile of Wales’ woollen industry.

Blog: http://ffiongriffith.blogspot.co.uk/
Email: ffion_g@hotmail.co.uk
Ffion graduated from Cheslsea College of Arts and Design, UAL

Cherica Haye
Chericas collection is inspired by Savile Row opulence juxtaposed with crowd protest photography and group animal migration. She explores traditional/luxe yarns alongside less conventional materials such as horsehair and plastic.

Email: cherica.haye@network.rca.ac.uk
chericahaye.tumblr.com

Cherica graduated from the Royal College of Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taslima Sultana
Taslima Sultana designsTaslima’s work is inspired by the way insects and plants use their natural designs to attract and protect. From the use of colour, texture and pattern she has produced a vibrant textural collection designed for luxury interior accessories.

Email: tsultana@live.co.uk
Website: www.taslimasultana.co.uk
Taslima graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, UAL

 

 

 

 

 

 

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