Happy New Year! Please enjoy this collection of articles about weavings and textiles, both new and old, at norwegiantextileletter.com.
Many of us understand the continuing allure of the ancient warp-weighted loom, but a whole new audience discovered it during a home show exposition in Bergen this year. Read “Finally, Weaving is Now Trendy,” published with permission by journalist Nils-Ove Støbakk. We’re glad he attended the show!
This fall, our Scandinavian Weavers Study Group of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota decided to concentrate on Swedish art weaves techniques for our next study topic. An exhibit about Norwegian and Swedish weaving was held at Vesterheim some years back, and I decided to forward the article about it to our group members. Why wasn’t it in the archives of the Norwegian Textile Letter? I wrote to Kay Larson, who curated the exhibit. The article appeared in the Vesterheim magazine, the general museum publication, and not the Norwegian Textile Letter. This made me happy that I wasn’t completely crazy, and I asked for permission from Vesterheim staff members to link to a pdf copy, for the many Norwegian Textile Letter readers who may not have seen it earlier.
In a contemporary world filled with unrest and terror, this issue of the Norwegian Textile Letter brings a reminder of the power of textiles in another time of war and deprivation. Nina Granlund Sæther wrote on her blog, Hjertebank, about the handcraft of women prisoners at Grini Prison Camp in Norway during World War II. Besides this interesting article, her blog is filled with inspiration for the knitters among our readers.
Back when Mary Skoy was editing the Norwegian Textile Letter, she asked me to write an article about my series of textiles based on Edvard Munch’s Scream painting. I wasn’t quite done at that point, and then I was asked to write about the series for the British Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I waited for that article to be published, and am sharing it now with their permission. The series was featured in an exhibit at the American-Swedish Institute from June-September, 2015, and I’d be glad to share it again.
Finally, publishing the Norwegian Textile Letter online has been a grand experiment, and there are many improvements in style and access that could be made. I hope to find a better software platform in the next year. The software and hosting access is paid through the fall of 2016 from the $300 that was “left over” from the former print version. By the end of this year, the newsletter may change to a paid online version, or I may ask for donations to cover the costs of the next years.
Tell me your thoughts on the articles, and please tell me about articles you would like to see (or write) in the future.
Hilsen, Robbie LaFleur