This is a transcription of an interview between myself and weaver Freya Olsson.
I want to know first a bit about how you got into weaving, how you learnt, and who taught you?
I think I started maybe three or four years ago. I’ve always done textile related things, and grew up making all sorts, but I always was quite fascinated by weaving. It must have been as we were coming out of COVID that someone told me about the Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers. There are spaces all over the country, and there’s one in Frome, so I became a member there. Each guild is run by the guild members, so you don’t get the same thing in each one. Actually the one in Frome was great in the sense that we had a permanent space and they had looms of all different sizes, and supplies of yarn and stuff… I learned that a lot of the other guilds would rent a village hall once a month, for example, and you would bring your own stuff. So, I paid a membership, and I knew they weren’t going to tutor me, but because I didn’t know how to weave they shared their skills and showed me how things worked. I actually started off spinning first and from that I quite quickly realised that I wanted to do some weaving as well. I was the youngest by about 30 years… It was just me and my granny friends!
Was it mainly women who were teaching?
There was a man who used to come a couple of times and I think they’ve had men in the past, but I think it was predominantly women. I think a few guys came on little day courses and stuff. Everyone who was there had a nice way of sharing knowledge. There was a member who turned a hundred and we had a little party for her, and it was just nice to speak to people who are much older. There’s something nice about knowledge actually being passed down in a non-educational setting. In some ways it was also hard because I wasn’t being properly taught… so a lot of the time I was just opening books thinking “this could be doable” rather than being shown how things work.
I actually do think that’s kind of an amazing way to learn and part of what I’m interested in is this idea of collectivity with weaving in particular. Prior to the Jacquard Loom, which was the first sort of automated, pre-programmable loom, weaving apparatus was hand operated, with treadles etc. I think that marked a turning point in teaching and in learning really; it created a space, obviously, for weaving to be capitalised upon more and made more efficient, but it also creates this space for people to work against that. It sort of opens it up as a craft in the way where it can become a sort of hobbyist thing.
Yeah, I mean, there’s the whole fiddly mathematics side but when you’re actually weaving it’s with your hands. I always feel like pottery is quite similar; theres a physicality with it which feels very embodied, and sometimes you’re involving multiple people. I think it gives you a real respect for the process when you’re thinking about everything around you that’s woven, that at one point in time would have been made completely by hand. There’s something that feels very old about it.
When I was doing a project earlier in the year where I was doing tapestry weaving and hand weaving, I really felt so connected to what I was making because I was gradually building this thing. I just remember feeling this supreme sense of like connection to what I was making; since it really is just you, the yarn, the loom and these sort of methodical movements. Which is similar to a lot of crafts, I guess. There is this element of the hand in the sort of runs through all of these things.
Do you tend to work from your own patterns, or build your own patterns?
There’s a lot of ways you can do your own pattern, but it’s really tricky since there are a lot of structures [twill, plain etc] and variables to choose between. Even if you just look at plain weave there could be a thousand outcomes because of different colour combinations… it suddenly becomes endless! Sometimes I will just copy a pattern, but the colours I choose will make the whole thing look really weird, or amazing. I’m just starting to learn CAD for pattern making, but even with that you’re still using existing structures.
I guess the structures exist for you to sort of bend them, don’t they?
Yeah, so the pattern that results is using a structure, but sort of with deviation — whether that’s to do with the colour, fibre, order, and then, like, maybe how you’re repeating on the structure of the pattern…
I sort of became like a bit obsessed with pattern diagrams and that language, especially through reading On Weaving by Annie Albers and looking at the diagrams that she’s got in there. I was drawing on relationships between the Jacquard loom and the birth of computation; through punch cards that were like used in the first computers, but also different forms of language throughout weaving. Eventually I was looking at weaving as language, essentially, which was great but felt a bit insular. Now I want to explore weaving as a feminist pursuit. Regardless of gender, I think that there’s something about weaving and, by extension other crafts, that is inherently feminist. I think you described it really well when you were talking about the way that you learned which was primarily through listening and watching other people make. There’s something about that collectivity that is inherently feminist and the sharing within that where you’re really embodied within what you’re making.
Do you see weaving as inherently feminist, or do you have like other views on it? You don’t have to agree with what I’m saying!
I do think it has a more feminist dimension to it I think. It’s tricky because it’s quite a unique craft in the sense that there’s quite a community around its teaching, but it also feels quite insular. I think the pattern of teaching, listening and learning feels quite feminist, as it is so rooted in communal knowledge. There’s also the element of the machine and you know, it can feel quite isolated, but not necessarily in a negative way. You know, if you see people doing backstrap weaving which is very communal, and also very physical — most often you’re tied to a post or a tree and then you can swap with others when you get tired.
I think if you take away the actual production of the fabric, the machinery side is perhaps more stereotypically “male”. There are these quite rigid structures, and a lot of carpentry or building involved to actually make the loom. And the knowledge of how they run feels like a more male pursuit… When I went to Mexico some of the people wouldn’t teach me because they said it’s only an activity for men… “you have to be be strong” is what they said. It was a 90 year old man, who had just woken up from a nap who said this to me. So I guess there’s this tension between the beauty, community and the learning versus the engineered, machine operation side to it.
I think that what you’re describing is a really valuable way to learn. Where I work, community is quite a prominent point of discussion, I guess and we’ve got members who work there and everybody is sharing and learning from one another as well as being taught on sort of specialised workshops. But, then there’s this technical side to things which historically has been so male dominated — particularly with something like letterpress, since it is all to do with rigid structures, machines and industry. I think I see that kind of learning that we’ve sort of been talking about as inherently feminist. Because it’s rooted in sharing, even though weaving is quite a solo pursuit, the whole ancestry around it is quite feminist. Not necessarily that this means it excludes men, of course.
That being said I think it’s a very open industry at the moment and that people want to share, probably because there’s only so many people doing it now. Also, because it’s complicated, all it takes is someone being open to share, which is lovely. Obviously the making is quite a solo pursuit, but I feel like you learn as a community.
I’m quite interested in how you could open weaving up to be collaborative — meaning the actual making process. Is that something you’ve ever considered or had any thoughts about?
I think it is definitely is very doable. At the moment I only do hand weaving. I haven’t yet been taught how to use the Jacquard loom which I think would be easier to collaborate on design-wise because it’s less hands on. With hand weaving, because it’s so personal I can imagine people not wanting to collaborate because it feels so tied to your own self. Though, I do think a lot of the process of weaving is actually very collaborative already. Especially setting up the loom, because it’s often not a one person job. If someone asks to help put the warp on the loom, it can take hours even with two of you to help. I also feel that there is scope for collaboration with the weaving element since you are following a pattern and a design. So, potentially you can pause and mark where you were for someone else to hop on and continue. Sometimes, all the decisions are very overwhelming when you are making them on your own. I do feel that with the more industrialised weaving there would be less collaboration in the making, but more scope for collaboration in the design.
There are also very simple community weaving workshops that use very simple tapestry style weaving, and so lots of people can do it. I think there is a side to weaving, particularly for artists or artisans who want to control the work completely, where they wouldn’t want to share. But for me I think it has to be a more social enterprise, otherwise the craft and craftspeople die out and take their knowledge with them…
There’s this collective based in Argentina called Silät and one of the leading artists is Claudia Alarcón, who make weavings made out of old fishing nets from their community. Their work is rooted in indigenous forms of knowledge and teachings and even a specific fibre that is native to the area. I think this idea of collective difference is nice, where you’re working together to support one another but the things that you’re producing are different. For example like the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers.
Yeah I think collaboration is the only way that the community doing it together can protect and sharing the knowledge that weaving generates. Information and skills do get lost if you don’t speak to each other and allow yourself to collaborate. Especially with indigenous communities or cultures that are under threat, everything is more community based because they are protecting a dying art form; like you said sometimes it’s a very specific fibre that might be lost, or the particular type of weaving…
Do you see weaving as a sort of language, and if yes, how so?
Well my focus is on fibre so when I see something textile based, it speaks about where it’s from, what it’s made out of, how has it been sourced? How has it been processed? That’s the sort of language that I resonate with. For me, that’s communicative. You can quite often feel the quality of an item or its stories. It speaks to me in that way, I guess; sometimes it raises questions for me, and challenges me.
I feel like you can communicate through what you’ve made [with weaving], especially as it does involve your body. It’s a full physical experience and so I feel there is the capacity for communication within and through that. And I think that is the case for a lot of textiles. Regardless of whether the motif it is figurative or whether it is purely fibre based, the maker communicates through the textile. There’s also this relationship with the drafting patterns as their own sort of language. They are to be read and then that’s translated into fibre. Inherently there is a kind of binary language because it’s come from something that is on a page to which allows something to be woven — in a way the pattern language is instructional, but it’s visual. There’s this poem by Cecilia Vicuña, which is called Word and Thread which touches on how the two parts of her practice [textile and poetry] drift into one another and inform one another and I thought it was really interesting.
Do you see the relation between weaving and coding? Or how weaving is in a way digital?
I definitely see weaving and its preparation as a form of coding. You can get hand looms that use the punch cards which you have to fill in and manually block in your design. There is a strange rhythm to it. It is essentially a code in that way, there is that language element to how you learn remember the process of doing filling them in and thinking about what that might look like. It’s almost like how people read sheet music. For musicians, they see it and can imagine how something will sound, even though you’re looking at diagrams. I find it very hard to draft patterns, and mostly I have to draw it out myself to work out what’s actually going on.
What does that drawing process look like?
Usually I use squared paper to block the design out and match it to which shaft will carry it, so then I can match it to which pedals will pull that shaft to create the design. I like this way of doing it so I can see how the design might come together a bit easier, rather than just relying on the punch cards. In this way, wearing really shows its reliance on structure — it’s very regimented. When you’re doing these designs, ultimately they line up to a machine which will produce something. So it is like coding. If you mess up, it becomes quite hard to unpick the issue. So the designing and drawing around the preparation is very meticulous and there is a lot of learning that goes into that. After a while, you can see different structures in that type of language. Different countries will approach pattern drafting slightly differently and, you know after a while you can look at a draft and try to work it out. It’s almost like graphs; you have to look at one point, like the Y axis, and then look at the X axis.
Thinking back to the language element, I guess there are two points of language — the instructional part of the preparation to weave, and how the finished item communicates to the maker and the user. There are these set structures; a plain weave or a twill are universal structures, so you can learn it in the way you would sheet music through this visual element. Producing that weaving language, as well as creating and building from it can be quite hard.
I think if I were taught, I would be able to learn it, but it does sound quite alien to me because you have to have this knowledge of the machine as well.
And there are different machines, so sometimes the layout will be different depending on what type of loom you’re using. Each time you’re designing, it’s always a slow process. I don’t think it ever gets any faster, because the project is never the same. You know, you could be using one structure and still have to design a pattern. I think you’re always learning and weaving, because really there are endless possibilities — it’s not like when you get older you can draw a pattern in 5 minutes, it will still take you a long time to figure it out.
I did an essay earlier in the year on Bringing Feminism Home by Sarah Ahmed. I wrote about how her ideas translate to the teachings around weaving and there is this lovely quote in it which is, “to become a feminist is to stay a student”, and in the essay I write that to become a weaver is to stay a student as well. You’re always learning. I think that’s the case with many crafts because you’re combining the design element with practice and process.
I think it’s unique. I mean, I feel like I’m always going to be biased. For me it feels unique in the sense of each component provides a specific challenge… I have always struggled with the component of colour in weaving, because I can never pick up two colours and think about how they would go well together. For example, if I choose red and blue, even though they’re so contrasting, suddenly when you weave with them it could be that you completely lose the red because of the structure. Often I pick up colours that I hate, for example like a yellow, but then it comes out as perfect specks of mustard or something. It plays tricks with you… So you have this ever changing colour game and then you’ve got fibre as well, and you ask yourself how can I work with this? On top of that there’s the structure. Really it is endless, and all these possibilities make it this ever changing constant dynamic of learning.
I do see a link between weaving and letterpress in this way. That’s a lot of what my last project was about, which explored how they are different but in so many ways very similar too. They obviously produce different things, but there’s a lot of similarities because you’re so involved in the structure and the building of an image or a piece of text and that structure really dictates the outcome. Like you said, if one thing is wrong, then you’re having to do a lot of fixing. You can spend hours typesetting your text but then you can do your proof, and have to re-jig those letters, sort out all the spacing and your matrix sort of shifts around a lot…
I think I’m interested the capacity for craft[s], to be this sort of social enterprise, and the shift away from that in recent years as well. This morning I was reading some really cute books at LCBA. We’ve got a series of manuals by the Dryad Press, who were based in Leicester, who printed all these DIY pamphlets for stuff that you can learn at home. From like cross stitch, to weaving, to carpentry, to making an old tin look nice by painting it… they have manuals for everything. I think there definitely was more of a culture of just sort of like make-do-and-mend, but also learning something yourself as a hobby to make things for yourself. Whereas, now I think there is more of a culture of people’s hobbies turning into capital by monetising it. For example, there are lots of people who are crocheting. Which is great but then a lot of the time, you see people selling their crocheted items and it’s suddenly not hobby it’s a business.
I almost have a love hate relationship with the word craft… There’s this organisation called Heritage Craft who have a list of near-extinct crafts, and at one point these would have just been peoples’ careers, which would have been supported by local industry or demand for the skill they demonstrated. Now, there’s been a bit of a resurgence in craft which is great, but in many ways it’s about building an at-home business to sell products. I do think what you were saying about the community aspect, is really important. It would be really lovely if these crafts were more community based, so you didn’t have to suddenly make money and you could just do it and learn from each other.
I think it sort of goes back to what we were speaking about in the beginning where, you know, like weaving is in solo pursuit, but it comes from centuries of knowledge and of teaching and of like knowing how to use machines. To be really good at it, you can’t just watch YouTube tutorial. It’s hard because I’m glad that there are accessible resources that people can tap into, but you’re really only tapping into one perspective there. You’re engaging with one person who’s making something on YouTube, which is a video that has ads on it…
I feel like we have less and less opportunity for collaborative, hands-on teaching and learning, which results in people trying to copy things they see on Pinterest or online somewhere. I think there’s a growing problem with the lack in originality of thought, because of how readily available things are. I think even if you’re making something just for yourself, it’s really important to be doing that in a communal setting because if you are going to copy someone, but you’re sat next to them and they’re teaching you and showing you how to do something, it shows you the value of sharing knowledge in a specific space. I think it’s so important to be making with your hands to feel connected to what you’re doing, since it grows your knowledge of where things come from.
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