Inspired by the V&A
11 May 2012 6 Comments
in dye, exhibitions, felt Tags: crochet, felt, gauze, indigo, muslin, sake bottle, shibori, silk, V&A, velvet, vessels
Every year the Victoria & Albert Museum holds an art competition, called “Inspired by” for people on part-time courses. Entrants have to create a piece inspired by work in the collections of the V&A or the Museum of Childhood. Selected works are displayed in the relevant museum in October.
I’m planning to enter some of the indigo felted vessels I’ve made. The pieces that have inspired me are a stoneware sake set by Yamada Hikaru made around 1979, and a 17th-century blue and white porcelain sake bottle, maker unknown.
I love the organic simplicity of the forms of the vessels in the sake set, and I thought I would use indigo dye and shibori, both traditional Japanese techniques, to add the blue and white element.
You’ve already seen some of these, but here’s a photo of the final set. The two larger felt vessels are ombre dyed with indigo, while the five smaller ones are nuno felted with a different yarn or fabric, also dyed with indigo.
Larger felt vessel, ombre dyed with indigo
Smaller felt vessel, also ombre dyed with indigo
Nuno felt pot with silk velvet
Nuno felt pot with cotton muslin
Nuno felt pot with silk chiffon
Nuno felt pot with ombre-dyed crocheted lambswool
Nuno felt pot with cotton gauze
Just have to fill in the entry form now – probably the hardest part! ;-)
Golden spider silk at the V&A
25 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in embroidery, weaving Tags: golden orb spider, sericin, silkworms, spider silk, V&A
Arachnophobes look away now! I’ve just been to see the golden orb spider silk display at the V&A – and it is stunning.
There are two items. The woven shawl took four years to complete and is woven from threads twisted from 96 individual strands of spider silk. The geometric design is based on traditional Madagascan woven textiles, known as lamba akotifahana.
Even more spectacular is the cape, which was woven and then embroidered and appliquéd.
The comparison between silk from spiders and silk from silkworms is very interesting. The fibre from spiders is cylindrical in cross section, whereas the fibre from the silk worm is triangular, so they reflect light differently. And silkworm silk contains sericin, which has to be removed to improve the sheen and texture of finished silk. Spider silk doesn’t have to be degummed and is also stronger.
However, spiders can’t be farmed like silk worms, as they tend to eat each other, so need to be kept in individual boxes while they are “milked” (or should that be silked?).
The numbers are staggering – more than a million spiders were used, as it takes 600-1,100 to produce 1g of silk – that works out at 300,000 spiders to produce one square metre. One spider produces around 30-50 metres in 25 minutes, after which it is set free.
The exhibition runs until 5 June 2012.
African hats at the British Museum
23 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in exhibitions Tags: Africa, British Museum, crochet, felt, hats, spider silk, V&A
In the same room as the wonderful Benin plaques at the British Museum is a small display of African hats. No wonder they are easily overlooked.
They include some funky crocheted cotton hats from the Cameroon grasslands:
Also a Tunisian chechia, knitted in 2-ply merino, washed in hot soapy water until it shrinks to half the size (the photo below shows the original knitted hat above and the felted one below):
After felting, the surface of the hat is raised by carding with a tool made from a teasel:
Finally, there’s a fascinating hat made from spiders’ webs, cane, twine and ostrich feathers made by the San people of southern Africa in the early 20th century:
Talking of webs, a new V&A display has just opened that will showcase the world’s largest pieces of cloth made from spider silk. Just as long as they don’t have any of the producers lurking in the corners…
Postmodernism at the V&A
03 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in exhibitions Tags: postmodernism, recycling, V&A
You know you’re getting old when policemen start looking young – and when museum exhibitions cover periods you remember.
Such is the Postmodernism exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which I visited yesterday. I was a student in London in the early 1980s – the heyday of Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, Andrew Logan, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and Grace Jones, the dystopian era of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the golden age of style magazines The Face and i-D. All these feature in the exhibition. (And I was disappointed to discover that the arabesque pose by Grace Jones on the cover of Island Life was in fact a fake; in those pre-PhotoShop days, the film was literally cut and pasted to produce the final image. Kind of sums up the movement, I suppose.)
Anyway, personal nostalgia aside, I enjoyed the section on adhocism, or bricolage. Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss defined a bricoleur as “someone working with oddments left over from human endeavours”, and the examples on display included the punk jewellery of Bernard Schobinger, a concrete stereo by Ron Arad, and a glass chair by Danny Lane.
So my spectacle and smartphone cases recycled from plastic bags and old aeronautical charts are postmodern works. But, as the exhibition points out, this is a very Eurocentric view of art. In many countries, this type of recycling has been going on for decades and is an everyday necessity, not an artistic statement.
In these environmentally sensitive times, we are all postmodernists.
The Power of Making
20 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in exhibitions Tags: Crafts Council, V&A
This exhibition, a collaboration between the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Crafts Council, presents an eclectic range of objects, including various textiles, made by both amateurs and professionals.
Some use traditional techniques in unexpected ways, like Shauna Richardson’s crochetdermy bear, or Christien Meindertsma‘s knitted Aran rugs, requiring custom-made needles nearly 2 metres long:
I was particularly struck by a machine-embroidered snowflake made by Ellis Developments in polyester suture thread. This delicate structure is actually a surgical implant – it provides multiple attachment points for replacing lost tissue:
Other exhibits feature unusual materials. For example, Sabrina Gschwandtner made a quilt from 16mm film stock, sewn together with polyamide thread:
On a similar theme, Alyce Santoro produced a dress woven from audio tape and polyester thread. Apparently, if you drag the magnetic head from a tape player (remember those?) along the fabric, it emits a garbled, underwater-type sound.
And then there was Elisa Strozyk‘s fascinating wooden textile, made by applying tessellated triangles of maple wood to Elaston polymer:
Finally, there were some innovative materials, like Manel Torres’ spray-on fabric, Fabrican:
And I’ve written about Suzanne Lee before – she uses bacteria to “grow” material, which she then makes into garments or other items. One of her tote bags was on display.
There were lots of non-textile items, of course, including 3D printers and sugar sculpture. But my favourite was a Santoku kitchen knife, which is made by folding and forging 101 layers of different steel, producing a stunning wave pattern on the blade.
The manufacturing technique is based on that used for making samurai swords, which you can also see in the Japan section of the V&A. In one particularly fine example, the pattern is in the shape of a dragon. Quite amazing.
The Power of Making runs at the V&A until 2 January 2012, and admission is free – definitely worth a look.
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