Textile Artists News

Twice a week the fulling can be seen live, in a tub rather than a stream.

Eight swatches of one wool, from straight off the loom to twelve hours fulled.

A cold mountain stream compacts more slowly but evenly across the whole cloth.

And that is why the pile lies predictably rather than as the current lays it.

Not about pattern or colour: only about what happens to the cloth in water.

Half a century of experience recorded nowhere except in the lizhnyky themselves.

It hangs beside one from last year: the same pattern, the difference is only in the dyes.

Water beats the wool until the pile rises on its own; a machine does it in an hour, but differently.

That is why a lizhnyk holds warmth: the fibre does not mat under its own weight.

Lizhnyk weaving in the Kosiv area is still alive: in mountain villages it was never revived because it never stopped.

Two languages about one district: a photograph fixes a moment, a tapestry months of work.

The dates are deliberate: the work is meant to be seen when the window shows what the wall does.

The only difference is the weft direction, which is where the sense of falling light comes from.

Bark gives a warm grey-brown that does not collapse into black under gallery light.

Roofs, chimneys and sky: the whole work rests on seven shades of one dye.

Density, yarn composition and dyeing method — data that used to stay in the studios.

Each takes six people; no more looms would fit in the hall.

That is a choice, not a tradition: bought yarn gives an even colour these compositions do not need.

It is shown as a starting point: the technique has not changed, the attitude to texture has.

From classic flat tapestry to works combining wool with metal thread.