Material Wealth

 

Jack Lenor Larsen's book and Magee Cloth Company blanket

Over the centuries, cloth as been used as a trade good or even as currency - vadmal, Hudson's Bay blankets, etc.

As a new weaver, I heard the opinion that 'all industrial fabrics are poor quality; all handwoven fabrics are good quality'.

Which confused the heck out of me, because the job I quit in order to become a professional weaver was for a custom drapery house and I *knew* that industry produced excellent quality cloth (as well as some cheap stuff, of course).

As a new weaver, I saw lots of lovely hand woven cloth, but...I also saw handwoven cloth that was less than ideal for the purpose it had been made for.

It was, in fact, a piece of commercially woven cloth that actually inspired me to become a weaver.

My goal was to produce the 'best' cloth I could and to celebrate excellence in fabric whenever, wherever I saw it.

Jack Lenor Larsen wrote Material Wealth a few years ago, and I received a copy as a gift from my mentors when I passed the master level of the GCW tests.  I confess, I have not actually read the book.  Every time I pick it up to read I get sucked into the glorious photos of really excellent cloth.  Made by industry.  

Last June, we paid a visit to Macgee Cloth Company in part to deliver the rest of the pirns she had purchased from me in 2020.  I had several hundred that still had yarn on and I said I would give her the yarn as well or if she could wait I would use it up and send her the empty pirns.  She said that she had no use for the yarn (mostly 2/16 and 2/8 cotton) and would have to just strip it off, so I kept those pirns and eventually emptied them and wove it into tea towels.

But we had not had an opportunity to see her operation so we took a 'side trip' and delivered the box of pirns in person.

Pam weaves with Victorian era 'industrial' looms, which are a far cry from today's modern weaving equipment.  Kind of like a Model T and a Rolls Royce.

She has to be textile designer, loom mechanic and weaver, using equipment that is, in many cases, 100 years old.  Which is a challenge all by itself.

It was a treat to walk through her operation, discuss how the looms worked and examine some of the cloth she has woven.  We also discussed wet finishing, and how to do that for a larger scale operation.  

In the end, I came away with one of her blankets, woven from Geelong Merino.  It is subtle and elegant, and luxuriously soft.  It is large enough I could actually wear it like such a cloth might have been worn in ancient times.  Like a sort of cape.  It is supple enough to wrap around my body, and it feels like being wrapped up in a cloud.  Or how I imagine it might feel, to be wrapped up in a cloud.

We tend to forget that even industry requires textile designers and sample weavers.

I have woven a sample for a mill in part because I owed them some money for yarn I had purchased, in part because they didn't want to set up one of their very large looms with a 10 yard long 'sample' warp, but needed samples to show prospective clients.  It was a tartan, with 7 (seven!) colours.  It was technically challenging because I had to be as consistent as possible.

In the end, when I sent the cloth to the mill owner, he emailed and said that 'you would never know the fabric had been hand woven'.  

I took that as the compliment it was intended.

But to say that *all* commercially produced cloth is 'poor' quality?  Not so.  It is not the 'hand' production that makes good cloth, it is the weaver designing and weaving 'good' cloth that makes it good.  

What is good in my opinion?  Cloth that will perform the job it was intended to do.  Cloth that feels the way a cloth of that quality *should* feel.  Cloth that is appealing to the eye and touch.

And I will celebrate such cloth, regardless of the tools used to create it.