Yesterday's textiles and tea featured Elizabeth Buckley, a tapestry artist, in the tradition of Archie Brennan, wonderful art in a variety of threads. Her warps are cotton, her wefts wool, silk, linen, perle cotton, according to need for color and texture. She mixes threads on the bobbins, like mixing colors.
You'll see her drawing above is reversed from the cartoon -- that's the design attached to the warp as she works--because she works from the back of the loom. This preserves the surface of the work from friction as the weaving progresses and keeps the bobbins in sight and organized in front of the artist.
Working from the back is an ancient tradition of tapestry. All the famous Unicorn tapestries were worked that way. She also works with the design turned sideways, because that is great technically to achieve curved shapes. A lot of tapestry workers do this. Working vertically, but across the actual design.
She rarely accepts commissions, because she says she'd rather do the weaving that needs to be done, than work the idea of a client. An artist after my own heart. I used to say I didn't get into the life of art in order to take instructions from people who thought art was a commodity.
Anyway, this writer's dogma aside, this was a wonderful episode, which you will be able to catch on YouTube once HGA have uploaded it. You can catch older episodes there, too.
She's a great teacher, in all the techniques of tapestry and design, including workshops on drawing tapestry designs, and executing tapestry works.
Yesterday's other highlight, the Tuesday knitting group, had two new members and one returning original one.
