Hiroko Takeda

I studied alongside Hiroko Takeda at the Royal College of Art, and so have long admired this seriously clever weaver. After a thorough grounding in Japanese textile traditions, a career as commercial textile designer in Japan then followed, before deciding to come to the UK to undertake an MA in woven textiles at the RCA.

Upon graduation she was unsurprisingly snapped up by the ground breaking Larsen Studio in NYC. After nearly a decade working there, she founded her own studio practice in Brooklyn, and has since worked on many inventive commissions and projects within the domestic and contract furnishings field. Recently she designed the panel drapery for ski resort in France.  Other exciting projects include creating work for the Christian Dior boutique in Milan, Beverly Hills and Shanghai for the VIP room wall.

Hiroko has an absolutely innate sensitivity to yarn and finish, and it never ceases to amaze me how she can take recognisable weave structures into such new territory. And I can't describe how much I covet the wrap in the picture above.......

Do check out this interview for more insight as well as her beautiful website.

Jane Harper

Jane Harper is the 2012 recipient of the Peter Collingwood Charitable Trust Award for innovation in weaving. The award aims to recognize excellence for a loom-based textile and I know that this years winner would certainly have piqued Peters curiosity. Jane has created some highly complex multi-layered constructions which have become truly 3-dimensional once off loom. The layers are separated and held proud from the ground cloth with insertions of acrylic sheet.

Jane is recent Textile Design graduate from Central Saint Martins, and this work is from her final degree collection which she entitled Collapsable Constructions. She has now moved back to her home city of Manchester where she aims to use her award towards setting up her own studio. She hopes to develop her structural textiles into functional works that could be used in an interior context. 

Do check out her new website for more images of her degree work.

Ismini Samanidou, Crafts Study Centre

My blogging and exhibition visiting activity has been somewhat curtailed in recent times due to me very happily becoming a Mum. However, at the beginning of September I was delighted to be able to stop at the Craft Study Centre in Farnham en route home from Canterbury, to visit Ismini Samanidou's solo exhibition entitled Topography: recording place - mapping surface. Now extended until the 6th Oct, the show is absolute treat, giving an insight into Ismini's design process as well as presenting intriguing jacquard woven lengths. I always relish the opportunity to see samples, design sketches, mood boards, colour studies, yarn wraps etc, as they demonstrate pure, instinctive exploration that has yet to be synthesized into the 'final' work. The wall of cloud study samples was perhaps my favourite part of the exhibition for this very reason. Structural explorations of diverse surafce qualities in unusual yarns on the dobby handloom made a very welcome compliment to the jacquard woven artworks which I am so familiar with. It was also a delight to see her handmade fan reeds which were made whilst on a British Council residency in Bangladesh. These were used to weave some exquisite fabrics, which you can see alongside.

So, I urge you in the few days left to catch the exhibition before the work travels to the Center for Craft Creativity and Design in the USA. There is also a beautiful and insightful catalogue to accompany the show.

wisteria, momijigari, siberia and thread installation

'Cloud weavings'

Siberia lengths and cloud weavings

Watercolour and yarn wrap colour study

Hand woven fabric of varying density

woven interpretation of the texture photographs

 

Hand made fan reeds

Hand made fabrics woven with the hand made reeds

CNC routed wood replicating woven surfaces

Sian O'Doherty

 

Sian O'Doherty is one of my very talented graduates from the BA Textiles course I teach on in Coleg Sir Gar. She won the Lucienne Day Award at New Designers this year, and has many other accolades under her belt including the second prize in the Hand & Lock embroidery competition in 2010. Her final year collection was an ambitious exploration into highly complex quadruple cloth structures incorporating hand manipulated floats and an eye-popping colour palette. Some of the woven structures were developed into digital prints for upholstery and covetable cushions covers. This is a weaver to watch: she's going places......

 



 

 

Photographs by Dan Staveley

Helga Matos

'In search of something special'

'Lab One'

'Currents'

 

Designers Block exhibition 2011

Art Deco Collection

   

geometric wire weave

The above article by Denna Jones in the excellent Cover magazine drew Helga Matos to my attention. I love her quirky and bold approach to colour, structure and unconventional yarns choices. She clearly has a wonderful sense of fun and curiosity for constructing cloth which appeals to me no end. I look forward to seeing more of her work....

Ptolemy Mann, Ruthin Craft Centre

There is a truly sumptuous feast for the eyes exhibition at Ruthin Craft Centre which will be closing on the 15th January, so I urge you to go see this wonderful celebration of Ptolemy Mann's work in the primary gallery space whilst you can.

Ptolemy is one of the leading woven textile artists working in the UK at the moment, renowned for her ikat colour satuated artworks which adorn the walls of numerous public and private spaces. In recent times she has developed her signature style into digital prints which have opened up a whole new commercial avenue for her to exploit.  The exhibition presents these digital prints as fabric lengths, garments, furniture upholstery and cushions, alongside her handwoven ikats, and also her rug collaborations with Christopher Farr.  There are also some framed prints of her architectural colour facade designs.

Woven rugs on wall and floor - a collaboration with Christopher Farr

New hand dyed & handwoven ikats stretched over circular frames

I covet this sofa by Kristian Stringer upholstered in jacquard woven ikat effect fabric by Ptolemy



Detail of tufted rug

If you can't manage to visit Ruthin to see the show, you can order a catalogue direct from the gallery.

These pictures are all from Ptolemy's blog 'Significant Colour' which she started writing last year. Its a fantastic blog which I thoroughly recommend subscribing to.  She is generous in sharing her inspirations, preoccupations and thoughts about her all consuming passion for colour in all its guises.

Dani Marti

 Cast concrete Sydney, Australia Westfield, Urban Art Projects, John Wardle Architects & Mark Llewellynn Photography



 Cast concrete Sydney, Australia Westfield, Urban Art Projects, John Wardle Architects & Mark Llewellynn Photography



 Cast concrete
Sydney, Australia 
Westfield, Urban Art Projects, John Wardle Architects & Mark Llewellynn Photography

 

 Cast concrete
Sydney, Australia 
Westfield, Urban Art Projects, John Wardle Architects & Mark Llewellynn Photography



 Cast concrete
Sydney, Australia 
Westfield, Urban Art Projects, John Wardle Architects & Mark Llewellynn Photography

Beige, 2008
Nylon, polyester,leather & rubber on wood
260 x 190 x 14 cm

Beige, 2008, detail
Nylon, polyester,leather & rubber on wood
260 x 190 x 14 cm



George, 2001
polypropylene, nylon and polyester on wood
200 x 610 x 8 cm



George, 2001, detail
polypropylene, nylon and polyester on wood
200 x 610 x 8 cm

       Here's another example of me thanking the wonders of Google. A couple of weeks ago my mind wandered and I found myself googling images of 'extreme weaving' (yes, I know, I'm a weave nerd)...... and up popped a picture of the cast concrete images you see above. A big WOW moment.

Dani Marti is an artist producing woven panels of huge scale. Ropes, braids, strips of leather, rubber and chains are woven into giant twills, hopsacks and tabby structures. I long to see this work in the flesh, as I'm sure the impact must be utterly striking. The colour, textures and pure graphic impact of these panels is really exciting.  However the translation of these qualities into cast concrete is just brilliant. I love the idea of bringing the artisan, hand made textures into the architectural environment, and the huge scale of these familar surfaces must garner a huge level of curiousity.

Please do visit Dani's website - there are so many wonderful images to look through. For those of you in Australia, there is a solo exhibition coming up at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery opening on the 17th September until the 13th November.