The Weave Shed

Beatrice Larkin is a London based woven textile designer. After finishing her MA in Textile Design at The Royal College of Art, Bea has been focussing on starting up her own textile design business.

She has most recently been part of The Craft Councilâ€™s Hot House scheme for emerging makers and a recipient of The Cockpit Arts/Clothworkers Foundation Award 2014.

This year she has exhibited work at The Heals Modern Craft Market and the touring Rising Stars exhibition as well spending six weeks teaching fashion and textiles at The International Institute of Fine Arts, India.

By using traditional Dobby weaving alongside the capabilities of the computerised Jacquard loom Beatrice manipulates her hand drawings, offsetting patterns and scales to meet unexpectedly and blurring lines to create fabrics with a distinctively soft and sympathetic take on geometric textile design. Continue reading →

Aki Inomata: I Wear the Dog’s Hair, and the Dog Wears My Hair

27 August 2014 |

Aki Inomata is a Japanese artist who collected the hair of a dog called Cielo and her own hair over a number of years, spun and wove the fibres and then made clothes out of her hair for the dog and out of the dogâ€™s hair for herself so that they would be â€˜exchanging coatsâ€™.

This is a piece of work,Â she says that “examines the relationship between a human and their pet, and gives form to this concept”.

The work has been presented as a video installation and as two garments at Hagiso gallery Japan. The following images are stills taken from the video and more work can be seen on her website.

Conference: Textiles, Communication & Politics

27 August 2014 |

The Textile Society: 32nd Annual Conference

Dates: 7 Nov – 9 Nov 2014
Venue: Wellcome Centre
Euston Road,
London. NW1 2BE

The Textile Society conference, will take place over the weekend of Rememberance Sunday, in the centenary year of the First World War, and will explore the theme of textiles and politics.

The Saturday will feature a number of papers that explore different aspects of this fascinating topic. Study trips are being planned for the Friday morning and Sunday morning, and a conference dinner on Friday evening. The AGM will take place on Friday afternoon.

Details will be updated on their website as they become available. Notices of updates will be posted on twitter, so follow us to be sure to keep up to date.

Details
The political nature of textiles can be evidenced through cloth past and present, from many different cultures. Through textiles we communicate
personal and social narratives and engender cultural identity. Textiles can be the conduit to bring people together in society, revealing shared values and concerns. Textiles can commemorate events and act as propaganda or social commentary, they can tell our stories and shape our ideas. The history of textiles is highly politicised. Textiles are part of a hierarchical value system where high and low art distinctions are drawn between fine art and craft, where textiles and gender are inextricably linked. Textiles have served the political purpose of institutions and individuals but also challenged them.

The 2014 Textile Society conference explores the theme of Textiles, Communication and Politics from historical and contemporary perspectives. Confirmed speakers include: Textile historians and conservators Jacquie Hyman and Vivian Lochhead, textile practitioners Paddy Hartley (Project FaÃ§ade), Nigel Hurlstone, Claire Barber, Gavin Fry and Lynn Setterington, and fair trade and textile manufacturing specialists Seher Mirza and Labour Behind the Label.

Permutations: Theo Wright

26 August 2014 |

Coventry-based weaver Theo Wright has been awarded funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England for a new project, Permutations.

This Grants for the Arts award will fund the development of new handwoven work for interior display, based on mathematical ideas in the area of combinatorics, looking specifically at the 24 permutations of four symbols.

Theo is best known for his handwoven scarves, some of which (such as the Symmetry scarf pictured) are also inspired by mathematics.
The finished textiles will be exhibited in June 2015 at the New Brewery Arts gallery in Cirencester alongside work by other makers from the Crafts Council Hothouse programme.

Combinatorics is an area of discrete mathematics that, loosely speaking, looks at the counting, ordering and combining of objects, and how sets of objects that meet certain criteria can be analysed and generated. It has applications in many areas, from calculating poker odds to bell ringing, from generating Pascal’s triangle to solving Rubik’s cube.

With a first degree in Computer Science followed by another in Textile Design 30 years later, it is perhaps unsurprising that Theo takes a distinctive systematic approach to his weaving.

SIT Select : The Maker & the Retailer

26 August 2014 |

The Maker and the Retailer

SIT Select will be staging a day of discussions and debate on Wednesday October 15th at Healâ€™s Quarter Cafe in Tottenham Court Road, London.

The Maker and the Retailer looks at the vital but thorny issue of combining craft with commerce. The first of the three sessions sees internationally acclaimed ceramicist Peter Ting (whose Flutter design has been used by Oasis Stores for one of their A/W 2014 fashion collections) who will be discussing the role commerce playing in fostering innovative craft and design with textile artist/designer Ptolemy Mann and Healâ€™s Creative Director Carmel Allen.
In the second, Gemma Waggett, RCA graduate and founder of e-store Nothing by Navy, will talk about getting started, her next career steps and reveal her exciting new work.
Finally, Guy Hills, co-founder of Dashing Tweeds, will tell the story of this exciting, innovative and distinctly idiosyncratic textile and menswear company.

Ticket price also includes lunch.
Times: 10.45am â€“ 3pm
Venue: Healâ€™s Quarter Cafe, Tottenham Court Rd, London W1T 7LQ.
Tickets:Â Â£32 and can be purchased via SIT

Exhibition & open studio: Margo Selby

‘All Square’ Textile Exhibition

The exhibition is being held throughout the week of the Whitstable Oyster Festival. The exhibition will be showcasing Margo Selbyâ€™s latest hand-woven pieces. Also on show will be some of their latest jacket and rug designs.

The work of guest artist Tracie Peisley will also be on view. Tracie has applied 30 years of fine art practice to making couture dresses, jackets and shirts. Describing them as ‘floral armour’, she collages a vibrant combination of vintage and designer fabrics to create art wear.

The private view drinks evening will be held in the exhibition space from 6pm-9pm on Wednesday 30th July. All visitors are welcome.

Dates: Saturday 26th July – Friday 1st August 2014

Times: 10am – 5pm

Address: Bradstowe House, 35 Middle Wall, Whitstable. Kent. CT5 1BJ
Continue reading →

Jessica Leigh Calvert: BCFA FR One Award

Jessica Leigh Calvert was awarded the British Contract Furnishing Association One Award at New Designers in June 2014. She creates handwoven and digital fabrics for interior spaces.

Whilst studying for her BA (Hons) Textile Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design she was fascinated by architectural landscapes and texture where she explores these ideas, combining high contrasts within her work. Jessica’s portfolio features woven fabrics that emulate a glamorous and tactile feel. A sensual colour palette, varied textures and exquisite craftsmanship inform her distinctive style, she also experiments with weaving techniques both modern and traditional. Jessica’s collectionâ€™s are described as subtle, timelessly elegant yet evoke a contemporary edge.

Her final collection for her degree was entitled ‘Textured Disparity’ which takes its name and inspiration from a journey she took across Southern China. Within the collection she wanted to capture the elegance and bold presence of modern buildings and constructions juxtaposing the exquisite rural landscape. The collection is versatile and modern yet elegant; the fabrics emulate a rustic feel whilst adding a flourish of subtle glamourand also have a distance appeal and yet are detailed on closer inspection. The fabrics are an assortment of contrasting textures and patterns in a sophisticated palette with flickers of vibrant colour to fashion a strong statement. The textures and colour palette work effortlessly within an interior space.

The Judges commented that â€˜We felt that Jessicaâ€™s colour was equally matched within an exceptional portfolio. We were impressed by the depth of research and transition of her vision into a commercial product.â€™

Jessica will have a four week internship with the design studio at FR One in Antwerp as the award prize.

Thank you to Jessica Calvert and New Designers for the photos and text.

Call for papers: craft & design enquiry journal

â€˜Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industriesâ€™

The craft + design enquiryÂ Editorial Board welcomes Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton, from Queensland University of Technology, as the Guest Editors of c+de#8 with the theme of â€˜Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industriesâ€™.
Contributors to c+de#8 are invited to submit Expressions of Interest for either the Themed Section or the Open Section by following the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below.

Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015. c+de#8 will be published in mid-2016.

Open Section â€” call for papers
The Guest Editors and the c+de Editorial Board invite submissions to the Open Section exploring any aspect of contemporary craft and design. Expressions of Interest for the Open Section are assessed by the c+de Editorial Board. All invited submissions to the Open Section are peer reviewed and selected for publication in line with c+de procedures for the Themed Section.

Contributors to the Open Section of c+de#8 should follow the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below. Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015.

Themed Section â€” call for papers:
â€˜Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industriesâ€™

Guest Edited by Tiziana Ferrero-Regis , Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. They write:

This special issue of c+de aims to explore questions of design and craft across fashion and industrial design industries in the current global context. In light of de-localisation of manufacturing practices and increasingly complex supply chains, the alternating place and meaning of â€˜skills and craftâ€™ in the context of these vast global industries, and the transformational role and status of the designer in a market that is equally flooded with fast fashion and disposable â€˜on trendâ€™ lifestyle products, we seek to examine how the two worlds of fashion and industrial design intersect in terms of production, craft and design.

Profile: Yangzi Wang