Exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes

 

I went to see the exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes at Margaret Howell in London at the weekend and was delighted to see so many of them on display. Although he was a weaver, Collingwood’s macrogauzes tend more towards lace than traditional weaving because the warp threads do not remain vertical, which allowed him to move away from rectilinear shapes. The other lace-like feature of his work is that much of it is three dimensional. He is quoted as saying ‘All along my weaving has depended on finding and exploiting new techniques’ and these are certainly unusual weaving techniques.

Although this image is a bit fuzzy, because it was taken through the shop window, the macrogauze at the back shows exactly how the vertical warp threads move. The warp threads in this case are hung in a line together across the header, but are then separated and moved at angles to cross and twist with each other, to form the geometric patterns, until they finally merge on the lower rung, in a line, in the same alignment as the header threads.

It was also interesting to see so many of Collingwood’s drawings, notes and photographs in a separate display, exploring his designing and working methods. The shop window image also shows how the pieces are made into three dimensional structures with the help of fine steel rods placed diagonally from one integrated steel rod to another. This clever engineering solution also means that the pieces are woven flat, can be stored flat and potentially displayed flat until the diagonal steel rods are put in place.

Some of the details of the macrogauzes reveal how carefully they were designed and worked. The exact nature of their construction and the thread placement is stunning. If you want to find out more about Peter Collingwood and his work, he wrote several books about weaving and his archive is held at the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.