Over one, under two, over ... what!?
July 1, 2020 2:34 PM Subscribe
Complexity 2020 is the biennial exhibition from Complex Weavers featuring brain-melting technically challenging, but lovely, handweaving (possibly computer-assisted weaving or design or both or neither). You'll have to click around a bit on mobile to get to the detail shots. Previous Complexity exhibitions are here.
I love the way this one looks, but maybe artists shouldn't be allowed to talk freely about their inspiration.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:49 PM on July 1, 2020
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:49 PM on July 1, 2020
I like their crisp definition of what qualifies (The shed must be opened by the weaver!) I see that tablet weaving can qualify (is it.... all shed?) though I don't see an example in this exhibition of tablet weaving as I understand it (which isn't much).
posted by clew at 3:46 PM on July 1, 2020
posted by clew at 3:46 PM on July 1, 2020
The tablets are turned by the weaver, clew, so that counts. And I'd bet a large sum that the borders on Inge Dam's scarf are tablet woven.
The distinction is against a power loom where all the steps are done by machine (which shed to open, when to open it, "throwing" the "shuttle") and the human/craft part is only in the design and the materials choices. So Jacquard- or dobby-controlled shed selection, so long as the weaver is driving it, is cool, along with anything more manual (tablets, sply-splitting, sprang, whatever).
posted by janell at 4:50 PM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
The distinction is against a power loom where all the steps are done by machine (which shed to open, when to open it, "throwing" the "shuttle") and the human/craft part is only in the design and the materials choices. So Jacquard- or dobby-controlled shed selection, so long as the weaver is driving it, is cool, along with anything more manual (tablets, sply-splitting, sprang, whatever).
posted by janell at 4:50 PM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
Janell, is there a friendly explanation of those terms for non-weavers, preferably with pictures?
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:13 PM on July 1, 2020
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:13 PM on July 1, 2020
Here's a rough go to give you search terms (and some wikipedia pics):
1. All of the items in this show are woven in the usual sense -- there are longways threads called warp, and crossways threads called weft. There are weavings with 3-fold axes and some other weaving-adjacent techniques but let's ignore them for now.
2. The shed is the opening made by raising (or lowering) some but not all of the warp threads. If you were weaving a placemat out of strips of paper, you'd raise every other warp one at a time, but to go faster you pick up the whole group and keep it raised while you put the weft thread through. Through the shed! The shed is triangular or diamond shaped from the side, like the front of a tent. The shed can be opened by fingers, or by a laced string looping around the threads you want to lift, or by a stick, or by fancier mechanical contraptions. The fancier versions can be actuated by lifting them directly (rigid heddle), or by flipping a lever/stepping on a lever called a treadle, or by, say, solenoids.
3. The crossways threads - the weft - gets put through to make the fabric happen instead of just a bunch of parallel strings. The weft can go all the way across, or partially across. The weft can be put through by fingers, or being wound off from a stick (called a stick shuttle), or uncoiling from a spool inside a friction-reducing grippable wooden housing (the spool is called a bobbin, the housing is called a shuttle), or ... in the limit of mechanization, a single thread is shot across the through the shed on a jet of water or air. Handweaving covers the range from fully manual (fingers/toes/human parts) to shuttles either thrown & caught by the weaver or shuttles mechanically shot across (fly shuttle).
4. From one weft thread to the next, you have to lift up different warp threads, or else you just end up with a pile of crossways threads on top of a pile of longways threads. Which warps get lifted together, and in what order, is how we get the structure, texture, pattern, and the perceived color after optically mixing the various threads and open spaces.
4.5 Getting the thread across is usually followed by some action to press or "beat" it into place on the growing edge of the new cloth. Lots of ways to do this do, but they nearly all boil down to some generally comb-like object pushing the weft towards the fell.
5. If you are weaving totally manually/freeform, you can make up on the fly which threads to lift up for the next shed. Total pattern freedom, albeit including the freedom to mess it up a/o not make stable cloth. If you are weaving with leashes, you can set up infinitely many sheds and chose the order as you like. If you throw levers or step on treadles, you're limited more or less to the number of treadles you have for lifting different combinations. There are mechanical sequencing devices, too. On the "simple" side, there's a dobby, which is a chain where you use wooden pegs to specify which groups of threads to raise for some finite (but loopable and reversible) sequence of sheds(skipping some intermediate cases)... Or you can map each thread to it's own dobby peg -- or rather evolve that idea to a punchcard, for practical reasons if you have thousands of bits instead of 8 or 16 or 50 - and you have the Jacquard loom. People still use mechanical dobbies and mechanical Jacquards, but there are also (modern/electronic/digital) computer-controlled versions.
6. Putting it all together: If a computer/machine is doing all of the steps on its own: opening the shed, getting the weft across, beating it in place, and opening the next shed = not handweaving (per Complex Weavers). But they'll accept computer-control over which shed to open. And the weaver pressing a button or stepping on a pressure plate to trigger that shed open/closed. And using a fly-shuttle is OK.
posted by janell at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2020 [12 favorites]
1. All of the items in this show are woven in the usual sense -- there are longways threads called warp, and crossways threads called weft. There are weavings with 3-fold axes and some other weaving-adjacent techniques but let's ignore them for now.
2. The shed is the opening made by raising (or lowering) some but not all of the warp threads. If you were weaving a placemat out of strips of paper, you'd raise every other warp one at a time, but to go faster you pick up the whole group and keep it raised while you put the weft thread through. Through the shed! The shed is triangular or diamond shaped from the side, like the front of a tent. The shed can be opened by fingers, or by a laced string looping around the threads you want to lift, or by a stick, or by fancier mechanical contraptions. The fancier versions can be actuated by lifting them directly (rigid heddle), or by flipping a lever/stepping on a lever called a treadle, or by, say, solenoids.
3. The crossways threads - the weft - gets put through to make the fabric happen instead of just a bunch of parallel strings. The weft can go all the way across, or partially across. The weft can be put through by fingers, or being wound off from a stick (called a stick shuttle), or uncoiling from a spool inside a friction-reducing grippable wooden housing (the spool is called a bobbin, the housing is called a shuttle), or ... in the limit of mechanization, a single thread is shot across the through the shed on a jet of water or air. Handweaving covers the range from fully manual (fingers/toes/human parts) to shuttles either thrown & caught by the weaver or shuttles mechanically shot across (fly shuttle).
4. From one weft thread to the next, you have to lift up different warp threads, or else you just end up with a pile of crossways threads on top of a pile of longways threads. Which warps get lifted together, and in what order, is how we get the structure, texture, pattern, and the perceived color after optically mixing the various threads and open spaces.
4.5 Getting the thread across is usually followed by some action to press or "beat" it into place on the growing edge of the new cloth. Lots of ways to do this do, but they nearly all boil down to some generally comb-like object pushing the weft towards the fell.
5. If you are weaving totally manually/freeform, you can make up on the fly which threads to lift up for the next shed. Total pattern freedom, albeit including the freedom to mess it up a/o not make stable cloth. If you are weaving with leashes, you can set up infinitely many sheds and chose the order as you like. If you throw levers or step on treadles, you're limited more or less to the number of treadles you have for lifting different combinations. There are mechanical sequencing devices, too. On the "simple" side, there's a dobby, which is a chain where you use wooden pegs to specify which groups of threads to raise for some finite (but loopable and reversible) sequence of sheds(skipping some intermediate cases)... Or you can map each thread to it's own dobby peg -- or rather evolve that idea to a punchcard, for practical reasons if you have thousands of bits instead of 8 or 16 or 50 - and you have the Jacquard loom. People still use mechanical dobbies and mechanical Jacquards, but there are also (modern/electronic/digital) computer-controlled versions.
6. Putting it all together: If a computer/machine is doing all of the steps on its own: opening the shed, getting the weft across, beating it in place, and opening the next shed = not handweaving (per Complex Weavers). But they'll accept computer-control over which shed to open. And the weaver pressing a button or stepping on a pressure plate to trigger that shed open/closed. And using a fly-shuttle is OK.
posted by janell at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2020 [12 favorites]
For the record, other people vehemently disagree that drawing a weaving pattern on a computer and having the computer raise the threads in order counts as hand weaving. That's their choice, and usually an aesthetic one, but it works out to being ableist as well.
posted by janell at 6:15 PM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by janell at 6:15 PM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]
I wish I knew more about weaving so I could understand more of the technical details of what makes some of these fabrics complex. Some of them seem relatively simple and repetitive and in others, I can see the complexity. I assume the former are also complex, and I just don't know enough to know why. As an example, this yardage has a texture that wouldn't be hard to produce in hand-knitting -- there are approximately a zillion double basket weave patterns that create a similar effect -- but is apparently complicated in weaving and I don't understand the explanation of why.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:45 PM on July 1, 2020
posted by jacquilynne at 6:45 PM on July 1, 2020
Wait, janell, are you saying one on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:19 PM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:19 PM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
eeeee, the demoscene never fails to delight me.
posted by qbject at 9:57 PM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by qbject at 9:57 PM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
what makes some of these fabrics complex: In some cases it is the required loom that makes them complex. With a two harness loom you can lift only lift the threads (create the shed) in two ways. The more harnesses the more complicated the possibilities. Double weaves are one example. In other pieces it is the amount of hand manipulation. Tapestry only requires two harnesses, or none, but each thread is laid in by hand and usually doesn't cross the whole warp so images can be created. The textured weaves can be made in more than one way but putting different tension on warp threads is how seersucker is woven so when it is taken off the loom and finished some stripes shrink and some don't, causing the puckering. The piece you asked about seems to get its puckering from having a different twill weave structure in the blocks with some pulling in horizontally and some vertically. This was made with a dobby, so complex, loom.
posted by Botanizer at 5:09 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Botanizer at 5:09 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'd bet a large sum that the borders on Inge Dam's scarf are tablet woven
Yup, she even has a book if you were so inclined as to want to do such a thing yourself.
http://www.ingedam.net/shop.html
[I'm not a complex weaver.]
posted by lagomorph at 10:10 AM on July 2, 2020
Yup, she even has a book if you were so inclined as to want to do such a thing yourself.
http://www.ingedam.net/shop.html
[I'm not a complex weaver.]
posted by lagomorph at 10:10 AM on July 2, 2020
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