On Weaving

Edison, the great inventor, was asked to what, specifically, he attributed his great creativity. His answer was: “I think in pictures.”

That is—not in words.

Those of us who read art magazines, art catalogues, art revues, know the inclination toward wordiness today and the confused state of mine they, by the abstraction of words, can bring about, —in me at least—or—that perhaps brought them about. Not in all, though, for I am going to quote from one. But as a result of what I learned then, I will be careful and limit my talking and concentrate mainly on comments to the slides, that is, on the visual.

But a few things I do want to say before that, out of an old habit—and that is that things are changing so extraordinarily fast today that, except for a few unchanging things, what is true today no longer is true tomorrow. Therefore there remain two things to talk about: change and the timeless, and it is both that we have to be concerned with in our work.

If we think of change we are thinking in the direction of technology, of ways of doing things. And if we think of the unchanging things, the timeless ones in contrast to the variables, we have in mind immaterial things, for instance, a belief in a cosmological order, in a forward development, in the good, the beautiful, things that have to do with art, as I see it. (Though we are sometimes, even often, made to believe that this old stuff.)

Weaving is my concern and looking at it from these two angles, that is, in a specific, circumscribed, way, and also inclusively and comprehensively, it brings me to a number of realizations which, of course, also have to do with living in general.

Now, if we look at weaving, or more precisely at making cloth from the technological standpoint, it takes us back about 8000 years, and, more clearly recognizable, 4500 years. Our vista into the past widens with new excavations of fabrics and new methods of dating. The oldest fabrics thus far known to us were found not very long ago, in 1961. They were excavated by a Danish archaeologist in Ancient Anatolia (Asia Minor) in Catal Huyuk, and carbon dates for them are 6500 B.C.

They are said to be twined, a method of thread interlacing preceding weaving, though the photo reproductions do not show this clearly. Some seemed constructed by knotting.

In this hemisphere Junius Bird of the Museum of Natural History, New York, excavated in 1946 at the Huaca Prieta at the North Coast of Peru several thousand cotton fragments, dating back to 2500 B.C. The earliest ones are also twined. And on the South Coast of Peru Frederic Engel excavated more recently, in 1959 or 1960, I believe, at Cabezas Largas, material consisting mainly of rushes but held together in the same twined construction. Dates given: ca. 3000 B.C. (published in a French archaeological magazine).

You will have noticed that I mentioned here three times "twining" as construction of these earliest fabrics. And perhaps I should define "fabrics" here as a fabricated pliable plane. I will now show you a slide form the Huaca Prieta digging, and a diagram of twining. So here we are right in the midst of technology, for twining, as mentioned above, seems to belong to one of the earliest techniques, following perhaps knotting and looping. These fabrics belong to a pre-ceramic age.

No equipment is necessary to produce these except perhaps a gauge for measured looping and later for netting. The twining of rushes, which are stiff and act similarly to warps, can also be achieved without tools, while twining, using pliable warps that are verticals, held together by a crossing of another pliable element, the weft, needs a first piece of machinery, which in later centuries is to become the loom. This is a bar to hold vertical, suspended, threads, that is warp threads, that have to be given tension. In fact this is the principle reason for any loom. (I will show you slides of this.)

The first invention in regard to giving tension to the warp was, sensibly, to attach weights to it. This is the warp-weight loom, the Greek loom. It is also the loom of the North Pacific Coast on which still fairly recently the Chilkat ceremonial blankets were woven.

To save time is one of the most intelligent human drives and I believe it is responsible for the development of the loom. I have been told however by an archaeologist that earlier centuries had all the time in the world. What an absurd notion! Just think of the time we save by having an icebox and that we do not have to hunt—in the literal sense—for days, to find food. I will show you in quick succession some slides of looms, each one representing a step forward in regard to speed of production as also in regard to precision, though this seems only secondary, considering the amazing feats of accuracy achieved with little or no implements. Faster and faster we go, increasing the output, limiting, however, with mechanization the range of possible results. With our fingers we can make infinite variables, with machinery only limited variance. In textiles this means that a handweaver can weave far more different things than a mill, equipped for a defined range of end results. Despite all of the advances in regard to speed and the changes the loom has undergone the underlying principle has not changed in thousands of years.

We should look now, I think, at the effect on thread construction brought about through the advancing technology. Twining was the earliest technique demanding as equipment more than our fingers. It is, as you have seen, a doubled thread traveling horizontally to lock between its crossed ends the vertically suspended warps. It allows for wide spacing of these horizontal wefts while holding them securely.

Now, if I am right in my speculations seeing the desire for ever greater speed as a dominant driving force in regard to technical progress, we can discover, that a method holding these warps in place, using a single weft and crossing it rectangularly over and under alternate taut warps, produces a fabric—a pliable plane—quicker, and, as a by-product, with half the weft needed for each crossing—though more crossings are needed for a firm material. The result is a fabric lighter in weight, faster in production. So here already, 2500 B.C. a concern becomes evident that must have been in its reasoning very much like 1965 A.D. For we, too, want things lighter in weight as also quicker in production. Our air travel demands lightness and lack of bulk. Textiles more than other materials can supply this. You can reduce a textile to a minimum of its size by folding it.

Then already, 2500 B.C. the intersecting at right angles with single wefts was gradually introduced; gradually, for the excavated fragments for the Huaca Prieta in Northern Peru show how twining was more and more replaced by this, then new, method, we call weaving. Twining was retained for centuries in its capacity not only to interlock the warp so securely but also for its capacity of spacing them evenly. In ancient Peruvian fabrics the beginning and the end of a woven piece are often found to be twined.

It is interesting to follow this function of twining until it is dismissed with the invention of the reed in the emerging loom, which has as one of its functions the even spacing of the warps.

These examples show you, I believe, the interaction of technique, the process, and technology.

It should be mentioned here that twining, this efficient early method of thread interlacing was also used in its capacity of being useful for intricate designs. The Chilkat ceremonial blankets, mentioned earlier, were worked by this method.

That weaving took over completely and made twining an obsolete technique—except for some specific purposes involving rigid materials (fences, window shades, etc.) lies also in the fact that the process of weaving was open to mechanization through the ingenious invention of the heddle. This is the device that lifts mechanically selected warp threads, in order to allow the weft to enter faster. Except for further, less fundamental, devices to further increase speed, nothing has changed the basic conception of this machinery for weaving for uncounted centuries. Our hand-loom is the loom developed to this point.

Our hand-loom belongs to the craft stage. Buckminster Fuller, in one of his more recent books, "Ideas and Integrities" has an analysis in it of the crafts versus industry. In his eyes, he rightly, I think, points out that the crafts are involved with the local scene, industry with the global one. Tools, working materials, purpose, all involve in the crafts the limited surroundings, while industry and industrial equipment make use of inventions from everywhere, use materials from all over and are aimed at international consumers. The speed of production and its distribution are keyed to a world public and our world today is, of course, the whole world.

Here, then, we see change taking place increasingly. Textiles are no longer local products but are geared to worldwide consumption. It is true, of course, that also in earlier centuries precious fabrics travelled far, but they had less utilitarian functions than our fabrics today, rather they were sought for the high quality of their raw material, their skill of execution, the beauty of color and formal treatment and, with these, their preciousness that made them also class and status symbols. All these reasons, except for the last, make us admire fabrics still today, for here are the intangible qualities to be found, lying in the direction of art.

When I had arrived at this point of writing this talk I happened to find in an issue of Vogue Magazine the following in an article by William C. Seitz of the Museum of Modern Art, New York: "The content of the arts, like that of human experience is timeless—Art is still a means of examining a leaf, smelling the air, and renewing one’s contact with the infinite." You see, I am not alone in my thoughts on the timelessness of art though it is surprising today to discover this. Today, that is, when we find a statement by Marcel Duchamp, that a work of art lives no longer than 30 years! Or when you find statements that change itself is sufficient justification in a work to be recognized as art.

Though we have gained through concentration on speed and with it quantity of production we also have lost something which we have slowly to re-conquer. We had lost for a time our concern for that surface quality that is typically textile, at its best, the result of thread construction. I will show you here some exercises I developed with this in mind. Now, this has only to do with one quality, the surface character. There are those of proportion, for instance, and I am speaking here only of the visible characteristics of fabrics and not of warmth, for instance or pliability, water-repellence fluorescence, sound-absorption, spot-resistance, being moth-proof, shrinkage controlled, crease-resistant, flame-retarding, drip-drying and so on, the ever-increasing list of qualities with which we endow our fabrics today, which make our life easier and even longer. I will show you examples of simple stripes that are carefully considered and therefore of lasting quality ad with it a step nearer to art. Here we are dealing with proportions. I remember Mies van der Rohe saying: "after all, proportions don’t cost anything". Embedded in the process of weaving is, of course, the concern with stripes, horizontal, vertical, warp and weft stripes, and their crossing, going back to the time when the loom evolved which fixed the verticals through tension, and weaving was established as a crossing at right angles. These are the basic elements of textile structure and with it textile form. This relatedness is a relatedness of structure to form, belonging to all art, to architecture, sculpture, painting, music, etc. It is timeless resultant quality.

There is an area where there is an overlapping of utilitarian and art qualities, of course, in textiles as much as in architecture, for instance. We use a house as much as we use a fabric. Usefulness does not prevent a thing, anything, from being art. It is the thoughtfulness, care, and sensitivity in regard to form that makes a house or a fabric turn into art and it is this degree of thoughtfulness, care, and sensitivity that we should try to achieve. Neither the use for which an object is intended nor the material it is made of keeps an object from being art, for there are no exclusive materials reserved for art though we are often told otherwise. Neither preciousness nor durability of material are prerequisites. A work of art, we know, can be made of sand or sound, of feathers or flowers, as much as of marble or gold. Any material, any working procedure and any method of production, manual or industrial, can serve an end that may be art.

turn once more to technical, fast moving progress: strangely, it lies today mainly in invisible qualities brought about largely through chemical inventions, not by inventions of textiles technology. Our newly invented fibers and finishes come and go so fast that you can hardly learn their names before they are outdated already and replaced by others.

Since these qualities are invisible we need labels to identify our fabrics and their new characteristics and even experts can hardly do without them. For the results look much alike and become even more and more alike: linen can look today like silk or silk like linen or jute; cotton like wood, to speak only of the older more familiar fibers, treated by new methods. Glass can look like silk or wool and the new synthetic fibers can look practically like any other one. We can only be grateful for this fantastic wealth of new properties given to the textile world.

Those of us who are visually concerned can make with their help materials sensibly suited to their purpose in addition to the visual qualities we may want to give them. And just as we do not buy a car primarily because it is red, so too, we should go about the choice of fabrics. Often the first consideration when it comes to textiles for interiors, is their decorative quality, wrongly so, I believe.

You can not show visibly what makes sense in a fabric, you need words, that is labels, for that. You can show however, what makes it beautiful, even in a slide, though fabrics are largely unphotogenic.

And since I want to show you things and not only talk about them, I will show you what I think is art in textiles, timeless art. Not useful in many cases, but endowed with that quality that lifts our spirit, the quality of art.

I am greatly prejudiced in that direction and I will be showing you no balanced selection of the art of textiles. I will try to show you, however, pieces that are thought out in relationship to their working material and work process and that did not trespass into fields outside their own realm, such as painting, as some of the renaissance tapestries do, for instance, as also some of the tapestries of today, woven from painter's cartoons. Those, however, that are based on designs with largely flat areas are of high quality. We must realize, though, that a woven face obeys other formal laws than a painted face. Here are some woven faces.

In contrast, I will show you a painted Peruvian piece. It has a different concept of form than a woven piece.

And here again, a tapestry, conceived completely in the woven idiom.

I will now show you slides from pre-conquest Peru, textiles that have been preserved through many centuries, for they were found in the burials along the desert coast. This dry climate has preserved them just as fabrics have been preserved in Egypt, for instance.

In Peru we have the longest record of textile development. I have shown you already twined constructions dating back to 2500 B.C. That makes them about 4500 years old. The textiles of ancient Peru are to my mind the most imaginative textile inventions in existence. They form, I believe, the greatest textile culture we know. They had all the techniques known to us today and some that are uniquely their own. They had more tapestry techniques than Europe, centuries later. They had double weaves, triple weaves, a quadruple weave, even, not existent elsewhere. They had gauzes and laces, braids and embroideries. Their language was textile and it was a most articulate language, as you will see. It lasted until the conquest in the 16th century. Until that time they had no written language, at least not in the sense we think of as a form of writing.

I promised not to talk too much so here are the slides.

And now I feel obliged to show you some of my own work to balance all that talking I have done here. Please close in your mind completely that chapter of beautiful and imaginative things I showed you just now and get ready for that dabbling that is my own. Sorry it is no better.

First a few works again: I am working mainly in two areas: useful fabrics for interiors and attempts in the direction of art, pictorial in character, tapestries, that is, though they are not tapestries in the technical sense.

The useful things: I try to make them as anonymous as possible, concentrating on their serving quality. No personal handwriting. They are machine produced, for mass consumption, or for special architectural commissions, though first developed on the hand-loom.

The tapestries are woven by me, are one of a kind, completely useless in any practical sense. If they make sense at all, it lies in the direction of those unchanging things that are our concern when we are alone.

I want to end with a quotation by Odilon Redon which I found recently. It may sound just sentimental to you, for we just don’t say things like that anymore. But I feel it to be important to read to you what he said, today, when much of art is losing its stature and so much bluff and nonsense is connected with so-called art.

Odilon Redon says: "Art is the supreme goal: noble, sacred and good; it resurrects."