NOBO Handweavers

February 15, 2010

“One of the most ancient crafts, hand weaving is a method of forming a pliable plane of threads by interlacing them rectangularly. Invented in a preceramic age, it has remained essentially unchanged to this day. Even the final mechanization of the craft through introduction of power machinery has not changed the basic principle of weaving.”

The above quote is from “Anni Albers: On Weaving.” This is a name known to those of you who are familiar with the Bauhaus movement, which was founded ninety years ago in Germany by Walter Gropius. Young and enthusiastic, Anni Albers had a background in art, and joined the Bauhaus with the intention of becoming a painter – a full-fledged artist. However, that was not possible; the only choice for women was to become involved in the Weaving Workshop. From that rather reluctant beginning, Anni Albers went on to become well-known in the field of textiles as a designer, author and lecturer. She has had an enormous effect worldwide on the design of yard materials, the creation of singular weavings and wall hangings.

This book is a classic, and we are fortunate to have it as part of our library. I will bring it to the next NOBO meeting, in case one of you would like to take it home.

For further study of the Bauhaus Movement, please consider visiting Historic New England’s Gropius House in Lincoln, MA, which Walter Gropius designed and built after moving to this country. In addition, if you are planning to attend Convergence this summer, you might want to sit in on James Koehler’s Friday morning seminar entitled “Bauhaus Design Principles.”

January 17, 2010

“I can really claim a variety of experience, from art school in Paris, to decoding secret messages in a wild spot in Mexico, to cooking with llama dung on a mud stove in high Bolivia, to escorting homicidal insane men on a country walk, to – oh, well, fairly unusual bits of adventure……”

A quote attributed to Mary Meigs Atwater, in a biographical work entitled “Weaving a Life,” compiled by Mary Jo Reiter.  Ms. Reiter goes on to say that if Mary Meigs Atwater had never thrown a shuttle, her life would have been fascinating.  But throw a shuttle she did – and very well at that – along with creating The Shuttle-Craft Guild and Weaving Studio.

This book is in our library, along with two books authored by Mary Meigs Atwater.  All good reads.  I’ll bring them to the next NOBO meeting with the thought that perhaps someone will want to take one or more of them home.

Ginger LaMontagne has accepted our offer to purchase her weaving books. On Friday, July 31st, Joan B. and I drove to Stratham, NH, to collect the books and transport them to their new home which, for the moment, is in Joan’s home. 

It’s a marvelous collection, in great condition, and it was a pleasure getting to know Ginger a little bit better. Joan is working on cataloging the whole works and will post a list of titles at her earliest opportunity. The new library feature created by SusanB at LibraryThing seems like a great tool for managing the NOBO library.

I created an account for the Guild at LibraryThing. Take a look at the link.

It’s very easy to add books. I just added 3 from my collection.

We can add author and title as well as tags. I put in the notes field that the books belong to my collection.

I can probably make it do whatever the group wants! And if you don’t want it, that’s fine too.

Let me know what folks think. I can send the password to anyone interested in playing around behind the scenes.