Category: Craft

  • CuzyT

    The recent trip to the Costume and Textile Association of Aotearoa New Zealand symposium in Whangārei included a surprising discovery. The North of the North Island/ Te Ika-a-Māui is home to Tāne Mahuta, the giant kauri tree. To get to it from the East Coast one travels across the island on a meandering road that…

  • A new use for newspaper

    Newspaper has a new lease of life in the work of South African Tamlin Blake. Tamlin Blake’s art is concerned with the ways in which materials can be used and reused. In her most recent work, newspaper is hand-spun into yarn that is then used to create tapestries. Presenting this material alongside mosaics and embroideries…

  • The Price of Memory

    In 2015, the National Gallery of Jamaica hosted an exhibition of 7 women artists. One of those artists was Miriam Hinds Smith. Miriam Hinds Smith is a Jamaican-born artist with a textile diploma from the country and a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the UK. Her art explores materials and indigenous knowledge, using textiles…

  • Peg Moorhouse’s loom

    Readers of the blog will know about Peg Moorhouse, the damask weaver from Aotearoa New Zealand. Peg’s loom is with her family at the moment and they are looking for anyone who might be interested in acquiring it to get in touch. The loom is from Sweden’s AK Joinery. It is a draw loom of…

  • A visit to the white herons

    South of Māwhera Greymouth is the settlement of Ōkārito. A couple of weekends ago I spent three days in the area, camping out in a thunderstorm and enjoying the beautiful wildlife, scenery and weather of this part of the West Coast. One of the reasons to go down was to see the kōtuku – the…

  • The Loving Stitch

    A new book has been donated to the studio library: The Loving Stitch. A history of knitting and spinning in New Zealand, the book was published in 1998 by Auckland University Press and was written by Heather Nicholson. It features photographs as well as sketches scattered among the chapters and the book ends with a…

  • Sound engineering – bower bird style

    The great bower bird is known for its mating rituals that take place in tall arched structures made with gatherings from their native bush in New Guinea and Australia. The male bower bird loves to show-off. He performs in the court of his edifice to prospective females, picking up bits of food and decoration and…

  • The Australian autograph textile with a South African link

    In 1894, as was a custom in those days, a quilt was created to raise funds for a new Anglican church in Sunbury, Australia. People were able to subscribe to the undertaking by having their names, signatures, motifs or initials embroidered onto squares that were then stitched together to form the completed quilt. This particular…

  • Kate Beck’s Impossible Evolutions

    The natural world is almost impossible to imagine in its complexity and intertwined relationships and yet much of that world is under threat. Using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Kate Beck trains these AI machines to understand how insects, plants and their pollinators support each other, and allow us to think about what might happen in…

  • Spotify this week

    Each week a playlist is curated to reflect the blog articles. The whole playlist is available on the Spotify platform and can be heard by clicking on the player above or by searching for “Music to read a blog by” on Spotify.