I've been trying for the past few weeks to figure out how I should start this post, but I've been having trouble, so I'm just going to come out with it:
I'm making a swatch book about the work of contemporary
weavers.
This came about primarily though a discovery I made at my
university library a few years ago - I found a copy of the Red book by Malin
Selander, a Swedish weaver, who, after lecturing and teaching in America in the
1960s, returned home and spent nearly two decades producing four runs of books
containing real handwoven swatches. It made so much sense - of course you would
have a sample in the book, how else would a fellow craftsperson truly
understand your work from flat, 2 dimensional words and photographs? Weaving
cloth - and then experiencing the finished textile - is such a material,
tactile experience, and the meat of your knowledge comes through direct contact,
through your hands.
So for the last few months I've been reaching out to some
of the many weavers whose work I follow online and asking them if they'd like
to participate by weaving a number of swatches. As these swatches come in over
the next few months, I'll begin photographing and collating them into a
book - a limited number of books
containing real swatches will be made for the participants, and then a small
run of books will be produced that will contain photographs.
Textiles tell so much about us – we make them to cover
ourselves, keep warm, shroud our dead, soak up our tears, and tell others about
who we are and where we are from. With this in mind, I’m curious about the why of modern textiles – what is it that
draws us all to cloth making? This project, which I am calling Modern Swatches, will try
to provide a glimpse into the way contemporary weavers practice and utilize cloth,
and try to articulate this why in a form that needs no clicking or flicking -
in something that you can hold in your hand.
In my next post I'll tell you more about the weavers who
have been incredibly generous in agreeing to make swatches for this project.
The support I've received from them alone is enough to tell me that there is
interest in this sort of project, and so I am thrilled to be able to gather
their cloth together and share with others their textile practices.
Thanks for reading - please let me know your thoughts if
you have any!
