‘Nature is an active
component of art, not a setting for it’ – Ben Tufnell
Pictured here are the results my weaving endeavours with Jess last weekend. Both of us scouted around to find
a site at Stave Hill for making a loom - see loom weaving and willow heddles post. We decided on the location above as both of us were interested in how the loom would intersect with the existing path and in the time it took to set up the warp and weave the
fabric, we trod our own desire line at one end of
the loom.
We took pictures of each other as we weaved and thought it would be a good idea to swap each others snaps and both write
about the process here. This is my version of events, the next post will be
Jess’s account, my first guest writer on the blog.
Having been much inspired by Eric
Boudry’s Book of Looms and the description in it of a two-bar loom dating back as
early as 6000 B.C., I suggested not using our specially made willow heddle for
this job; a ridiculous idea in many ways after all our talk about these handmade heddles - see previous post. We used gardening
twine for the warp and reeds for the weft.
This type of loom requires a shed
stick and heddle rod placed between a breast and warp beam; in our case two
trees. The action of creating shed and counter shed to allow the weaving of the weft
is performed by each of us standing on either side of the warp, alternatively pushing
and pulling the shed stick and heddle rod. Five hours later, and after much
exertion, we produced almost two meters of fabric which we are
completely thrilled about. The physicality of the whole process (stretching the
warp, repeatedly pushing the reeds through it, manipulating the heddle and shed
stick) reminded me of Ron Arad’s following definition of design as ‘an act of
one imposing one’s will onto materials to perform a function’.
I don’t really agree with this
however. It seems unfair on the materials, and the whole process was more of a dance than a battle of will. I like to think of art or design as
a collaboration between the materials and the maker. Using materials readily
available onsite (apart from the gardening twine of course) as well as the setting for the
piece, I think we did achieve this.
Over to you Jess…
Over to you Jess…
photos: Jessica Smulders-Cohen |
Idk why you made this or how i stumbled upon it but I love it and plan on making f my own mini asap. Thank you
ReplyDeleteme, too!
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