Can You Name Your 10 Favorite Weaving Books? These Are Mine.

 

For me, hands down, my list starts with this one. Not because this is how I learned to weave or even because this is how I learned that weaving has cosmic possibilities. It's because I can't stop learning from this book and I love the beauty and intricacy of the ideas in this book. Sometimes I can't fathom what she's writing about, but I keep trying.

What's more important: Taking care of a book or reading it a lot?

I spent maybe a decade weaving my way through this one. 

And writing notes on it -- in pen -- which is not very classy.

"Strickler," that's how weavers describe it, sort of like "Beyonce" or "Marilyn" -- a true star. This book is a delight and (in my humble opinion) belongs in your library if you have eight shafts. Maybe even if you don't.

Atwater -- another single-name star.

I think Mary Meigs Atwater single-handedly resurrected the art and craft of weaving in America in the 20th century. This is not hyperbole. We owe her almost everything (again, in my humble opinion). Published almost a century ago, the book is grandly and authoritatively titled: The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving, Being an Account of the Rise, Development, Eclipse, and Modern Revival of a National Popular Art, Together with Information of Interest and Value to Collectors, Technical Notes for the Use of Weavers & a Large Collection of Historic Patterns. My edition is inscribed "Wayne Baker April 1951," a year before I was born. 

Davison. Now that I think about it, ALL of the weaving classics 

are known simply by the last name of the writer/weaver.

First published in 1944, my version is from the fourth printing in 1947. I treasure this book for several reasons -- among them, it's stamped with the name "Ruth C. Herron." She was a beloved member of our guild and a superb weaver, who continued to correspond with us from her late-in-life home in California, where she died at 107. I think of her often. 

Even Ruth wrote in her books, albeit in pencil.

This book. We all have our heroes.

Is there anyone more loved among weavers than Anni Albers? From the Bauhaus to the gold medal for craftsmanship from the American Institute of Architects, the weaver who summoned us to "take a thread for a walk" and continues to teach us to this day. This book is her masterpiece, second only to her art.

Oh my gosh, I'm only at book number five. But this is a good time to pause and qualify my listings, to try and explain why I've chosen them. My list is by no means a "must have" for every weaver, or for beginning weavers, or even for a guild's weaving library. Not at all. These are just the books that I, at this moment in my life and in my weaving practice, love to have on my bookshelf. You might say these are my "desert island" books -- you know, if you were stranded on a desert island and could take only a handful of books with you, what would you choose? I'm also writing this as a sort of dialogue with you, the reader (assuming you've gotten this far), hoping you might, like me, appreciate the weaving books you love and perhaps even consider reading the books I've listed, if you haven't read them already.

(Not that I've read each book cover to cover. I'm really not that kind of a reader when it comes to books about our craft.)

So on down the list. And one more note: This list is not in any particular order of preference or value. It's just for perusement, as libraries themselves are.

I have to include Chandler. May the weaving goddesses bless this book, 

because this is how so many of us learned to weave. 

There was a time when I referred to Chandler as I was dressing my loom, as I learned to read drafts, as I was deciphering how to sley 16 ends per inch in a 12-dent reed, all of the basics. She gave us this gift and this book will always be in my library for that reason.

Wait, what? Not quite about weaving, but this book is 

where I go down my own special rabbit-hole.

If you love dyeing, as I do -- and if you love creating textured weavings using shibori-resist techniques, as I do -- this book is another masterpiece, a weaver's companion. (Detour: There's a relatively new book out there, a brilliant book written by a former New Yorker writer who became a guard at the Met: All the Beauty in the World. You should read it, just saying.) Anyhow, this book by Yoshiko Wada presents all the beauty in the world of shibori. It's a big book, 9 1/2" high by 12" wide, with 211 pages of photos large and small, with information and inspiration about the magic and mystery of the Japanese art known as shibori. 

Three more to go. This is hard and a lot of you may not agree at all. But I will press on. (Get it? Press, as in publish?)

Another book in my own area of interest: Ann Richards's definitive book on weaving dimensional textiles. She approaches her designs with a laser-like focus and creates beauty as a result.

Ann Richards of England is one of the luminaries in the field of dimensional weaving. I traveled to London to study with her, and that workshop plus this book gave me a foundation to build my own textured weavings. The joy is in the process, from start to finish: learning how to tame unruly threads as you dress your loom and then how to give them freedom as you weave so that they have room to move about in the finishing. And the finishing is a joy, as you see a fabric change almost organically in the water.

Sometimes the best books are those that continue to offer up insight and enjoyment well after you've read them -- or rather thought you read them. 

There's a saying attributed to several sages: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." This book keeps bringing me lessons for new techniques -- and I've owned it for at least 20 years.

Ah yes, the old Weaver's magazine, perhaps one of the greatest how-to resources for weavers. Somehow I got my hands on the entire collection (which is another treasure, but not a book, that I could add to this list). Fabrics that Go Bump is a compendium of patterns and instructions that appeared in a number of issues, all focused on achieving bumps, pleats, ruffles, and billows in your fabric. I turn to this book often for inspiration and understanding.

So what's number 10? Stubenitsky once again!

Why? Because it's crammed with originality and innovation 

about one of my favorite techniques: deflected doubleweave.

 Stubenitsky always lays a world before you, this time looking at the graphic, colorful, texture-full world of deflected doubleweave. (The woman is merciless when it comes to writing books: I think she's at five now, if you include Janna Weaves, and they're all abounding with patterns and ideas.) What I like about this book is that she offers a solid explanation for drafting DDW, which isn't as easy as it looks. One of my friends whose work appears in the book, when I asked how she arrived at her wonderful designs, told me she "played around a lot." And I understand exactly what she meant. There is a mystery to creating these designs and Stubenitsky helps de-mystify much of it. 

That's my top ten. For right now, at least. What are yours? If you're like me, you have a library -- some of which you love, some of which you like, some of which you don't like but can't seem to part with. We need them for our work but we also need them as friends, it seems. That's what books are for.

I can't forget to mention my own book, 

which is a favorite because I wrote it ;o)

Thanks for reading!

The Genius of Richard Landis

 Signal, 1976, Richard Landis

I came upon the work of Richard Landis as I was reading Loom-Controlled Double Weave: From the Notebook of a Double Weaver by the late, great Paul O'Connor.

It was one of those moments.... You see a weaving and the lightbulbs go off: "Who IS this? What exactly is happening here?" 

This was the photo I saw. Even though it was a poor reproduction and printed in black and white, it had presence.

The Passion, detail, Richard Landis, 1978

I wanted to know more. Which led to a Google Search, confirming that this was indeed the work of a celebrated weaver, one whose weavings are in the collections of MOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Museum of Art (a gift of Helena Hernmarck), and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. 

Google told me he was living somewhere in Arizona. Emboldened, I searched for him on Whitepages.com and found a landline. So -- why not -- I picked up the phone and called him. 

And he answered! Long story short, he was kind enough to grant me an interview. As it happened to be his 92nd birthday and he was going out to celebrate with friends, we set up a phone call for the following week. We followed through: I had my questions ready and his answers were every bit as interesting as his work.

First off, I asked him the basics: sett, yarn, loom, inspiration. He explained that he bought standard polyester sewing thread on cones, in hundreds of colors, that were sold in Los Angeles at the time. This fine thread and the vast number of colors allowed him to create fluid color graduations in each block, with his warp sett around 88 epi (44 epi per layer) on his 8-shaft Gilmore with a weighted beater. 

Clearly, to achieve those wonderful shifting hues and values in both warp and weft, he had to do a great deal of sketching and planning before he even wound a warp.

All his designing was done on paper, with colored sketches like this.

A sketch from 1967-68, in which he worked "to discover the position of full tones," he says. (This image is reproduced from a privately published book on Landis, Episodes.) He describes the process of sketching "somewhat tedious." 

Below is an intricate piece called "Triumph of Logic," woven in 1982 and now owned by the Cooper-Hewitt. Landis says that Jack Lenor Larsen told him it was his masterpiece.

This is art you can read and feel: the tactile quality is visible to us as weavers. It speaks volumes to me, as 20th-century art in a language I can understand. 

Landis earned an art degree from Arizona State University in the 1950s. "When I got to college I took a basic design course from a woman, a European woman who was on fire about modern art. I thought a lot of modern art was just crazy, Picasso and Braque and all these people.... but when I took her course I learned it was just amazing."

He found, however, that "painting didn't interest me much.... I just decided that woven things -- things that were made of cloth, fiber -- I just thought that was more interesting."

His training in weaving? "I only studied weaving for three days," he remembers. "I studied at Mary Pendleton's in Sedona and slept in my car because I didn't have any money. She gave me a British book on doubleweave and I went from there."

Landis asserts that "Anni Albers was my North Star. Bauhaus thought and modern art were always in my mind."

He didn't ignore the technical aspects of the work, as with any true artist. His finishing process was meticulous. "I washed them and ironed them in very specific ways. I had to wash them three times, because I wanted them to do the natural shrinking. And then I wanted the doubleweave not be flattened beyond what it needed to be."

Still, technicalities were not his focus. He never used weaving software -- even though it was available in the later years of his weaving career -- and even today he doesn't use email or a cell phone.

Landis stopped weaving in 1995. "I was pretty good at weaving but I'm very bad at salesmanship and giving a damn. After it's done in its proper form, I'm through with it." 

"In its proper form" is an understatement, in my view.

Campo di Fiori, Richard Landis, 1976, Cooper-Hewitt 

All images in this post are used with permission from Richard Landis. To watch a 2018 interview with this master colorist, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whID0hd-1Qg

Thanks for reading!

Book Launch!

Weaving Outside the Box: 12 Projects for Creating Dimensional Cloth is now available for purchase! It's been a long road but at last it's ready to launch.

Front and back covers (right and left respectively) for printing

The book is 122 pages long, in full color, with a soft cover and a coil binding so that you can lay it flat as you read and weave. It's also available as an eBook and in hardcover. You'll find all these options on this blog site under the page titled "Publications for Purchase".

Here's a brief description:

"Color and structure are key elements in weaving, of course. But we often overlook the importance of texture. Dimensional fabrics, with their pleats, puffs, and curves, take us 'off the grid', reflecting the organic forms of nature. We can both see and feel the tactile quality of dimensional cloth, which adds much to the beauty of handwoven fabric.

"This book gives you tools to optimize texture in your weaving. Starting with background on the techniques involved, it then offers step-by-step instructions for 12 projects for four to 16-shaft looms: four for beginning weavers, four for intermediate weavers, and four for advanced weavers. As a bonus, there are two patterns that allow you to weave three different projects on a single warp.

"Weaving Outside the Box provides the tips and resources you need to move beyond the two-dimensional plane and rectilinear patterns of warp and weft."

Here are a few of the projects offered.

Among the four projects for four shafts: woven shibori using fulling techniques

Doubleweave layers and ruffles for eight shafts 

using differential-shrinkage techniques

Deflected doubleweave on 16 shafts 

using differential-shrinkage techniques

There are diagrams and even microscopic photos of yarn throughout the book, to help you understand the mechanics behind these designs, all using some combination of active and inactive yarns, structure, and finishing.

I will teach a workshop straight from the book June 11-16 at the Michigan League of Handweavers Conference in Holland, MI. Participants will choose one of the 12 projects from the book and start by weaving up samples so they can learn how to finish their projects to get just the right textured effects.

Dimensional cloth is a specialized area of weaving, one that is sometimes overlooked but has been woven for centuries. My book begins -- and this blog post concludes -- with this quote from Anni Albers, from her definitive book, On Weaving. 

All progress, it seems, is coupled to regression elsewhere. We have advanced in general, for instance, in regard to verbal articulation -- the reading and writing public of today is enormous. But we certainly have grown increasingly insensitive in our perception by touch, the tactile sense.

I hope my book inspires weavers to explore all three of the wonderful tools we have in our craft: those of structure, color, and the tactile sense.

Thanks for reading!

Detail of Echo threading in four-color doubleweave on 28 shafts, 

using cotton/stainless-steel yarn for one of the wefts 

to achieve crinkled layers

Anni Albers, "Work with Materials," at the Syracuse University Art Museum

Wall hanging designed by Albers in 1925 and woven in 1983

A few guild friends and I took a road trip last week to see the Syracuse University Art Museum exhibit, "Anni Albers: Work with Materials," curated by Fritz Horstman, education director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. The exhibit is up through December 11 and we were thrilled to view some of her designs up close and personal.

The title of the exhibit comes from an essay she wrote, "Work with Materials," in 1937. Here's a quote from that essay:

But if we want to get from materials the sense of directness, the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, we have to go back to the material itself, to its original state, and from here on partake in its stages of change.

Such eloquence and insight! To me, she writes as well as she weaves. In her classic book, On Weaving, she devotes a chapter to "Tactile Sensibility," to explore and emphasize that unique aspect of our craft. 

We touch things to assure ourselves of reality. We touch the objects of our love. We touch the things we form. Our tactile experiences are elemental.

This tactile sense, in addition to the powerful tools of color and structure, is what I love about her work. She explores and exploits the textural aspect of weaving and in so doing appeals to two of our senses -- those of touch and sight. Below, a sample woven on a clear plastic warp with a rough fiber (perhaps jute, I'm not sure) in the weft.

The exhibit included more than 100 objects from the collection, from rugs to prints to textile samples. Small as they were, they revealed her keen mind and powerful design sense. Here's a leno sample that uses a gold metallic yarn in the weft:

Below is a room divider designed by Albers for a textile company in the early 1980s.

By 1968, at the age of 69, she had given up her looms and, as Horstman writes in the exhibit pamphlet, "embarked on a breathtaking decade-plus in which she worked almost exclusively in drawing and printmaking". Her appreciation of tactile sensibility, as she termed it, can be seen in her embossed prints, some of which were included in the exhibit. This one, below, is particularly striking. It's described as "zinc plate embossing on metallic laminate on paper" from 1970. (If you look closely, you can see my reflection as I'm taking the photo, which adds another element to the image.)

Our guide for the exhibit was museum curator Melissa Yuen, who began by showing us a series of flat-woven wall hangings designed (but not woven) by Albers. The piece featured at the beginning of this blog post began with a screenprint on paper from the portfolio "Connections", created by Albers while studying at the Bauhaus in 1925. 

The exhibit gives proof of her strengths in several media and techniques. Below is another wall hanging woven in 1984 according to a design by Albers.

As most weavers know, Anni Albers is one of the great lights in weaving and textile design in the 20th century. What some may not know is that she was one of the first women ever -- and definitely the first textile artist ever -- to have a solo exhibition at MoMA in New York City, which took place in 1949. 

The press release for the exhibit called her "one of the most imaginative and daring of modern weavers in the United States". Her ability to take textiles from the realm of utilitarian craft to abstract art was admired by 20th century artists like Philip Johnson and Jack Lenor Larsen -- as was her versatility. As Fritz Horstman writes in the exhibit brochure, "the exhibition highlights the nimbleness with which Albers moved between mediums, and her fluid transitions between creating artwork and designing more functional objects."

The show also provides evidence of her meticulous study and process, shown here in her diagrams of doubleweave structure. (I had to take the photo at an angle to avoid capturing the shadow of my iPhone.)

It is as if she was perpetually striving to understand "the stuff the world is made of" -- and the results continue to bring joy and inspiration to weavers everywhere. 

"Red Lines on Blue" 1979

Thanks for reading!