Over the last several years, I've started drawing various kinds of machinery and equipment used in weaving. Once a skilled hand-craft and a cottage industry, weaving quickly became industrialised with the mechanisation of the modern age. In drawing older pieces of hand equipment in particular I've become interested in documenting them as historical artefacts, made unique through age and use, and also in exploring drawing as a process of understanding structures and mechanics.
In early 2017, I spent time making studies of weaving equipment at Farfield Mill, Cumbria, a museum and working mill. Many items similar to those on display and in use at Farfield can also be found in the Shetland Isles, Scotland where I currently live - remnants from the islands’ often overlooked but once active weaving industry. Weaving was a process which could be traced in stages, beginning on the land with the rearing of sheep, and ending with the use or sale of finished garments and cloth, items which made up the materiality of everyday life. With the onset of global mass-production, however, this is now a materiality which has become increasingly complex - and more often very damaging to our natural environment.
I see the drawings I've made so far as the start of an on-going series and by continuing, I hope to further explore my preoccupation with the nature of progress. In choosing to make ‘realistic’ studies of these items, I investigate the potential of drawing as not only the production of images of surface-reality, but also a way of gaining knowledge of workings and processes, of real looking and understanding of the material world around us. With the older pieces of domestic weaving equipment I've studied so far, it is possible to understand their mechanics – the workings of peddles, levers, pulleys and wheels – through just careful looking. But with today’s more advanced and complicated technologies, this is mostly no longer possible. There are many things we encounter every day that we have no hope of fully understanding. I am interested too in the effect this might have on our grasp of the material world around – and ultimately whether our ‘advances’ can in fact lead us to become further disconnected.
WHEELS
Shetland Spinneys I & II
March 2020
Graphite pencil on warm toned paper
This traditional spinning wheel was owned by the grandmother of late local musician Alan Anderson. It’s a very interesting well-used object, and even has a piece of sealskin fashioned into a connector between the treadle and fly wheel.
Contribution to ‘Quarantzine’, Gaada’s online, open zine of art made in self-isolation, March – June 2020. View here.
LOOMS
Other Equipment
EXHIBITIONS
Working with Wool, Speldiburn Cafe, Bressay, Shetland, September - October 2022
Showing Lighthouse Loom Warp, A Box Creel, Warping Board, Delting Bobbin Wheel, Douglas Andrew Loom, Shetland Spinney I and II
Studies At A Mill : Drawing & Weaving, Speldiburn Cafe, Bressay, 19th May 2017 - 30th July & 25th September - 22nd December
Showing six drawings of weaving equipment, all domestic-scale hand weaving items (apart from 'Witney Blanket Loom') found at Farfield Mill, Cumbria. The order the drawings were displayed in follows the stages of preparing for weaving - spinning/preparing pirns, making the warp, dressing the loom, and finally weaving: A Great Wheel, A Box Creel, Warping Board, Douglas Andrew Loom, Arrol Young Studio Loom, Witney Blanket Loom.
Materials and Methods, Speldiburn Cafe, Bressay, 22nd - 30th september 2018
Showing previous drawings plus Lighthouse Loom Warp, Delting Bobbin Wheel and Unst Loom.
Home and Away, Shetland Museum, Lerwick, 25th November - 22nd December 2017
Showing Delting Bobbin Wheel, Unst Loom, Lighthouse Loom Warp, Warping Board and A Box Creel
TEXT
‘Studies at a Mill : Drawing & Weaving’, 2017. Accompanying introductory text including details and history of the weaving equipment in the drawings.