Deirdre Wood: Peter Collingwood Trust Award Winner 2013

interlocking rings_ Dierdre Wood LRUK weaver Deirdre Wood is this year’s winner of the Peter Collingwood Trust Prize for the most innovative loom based textile. Founded in memory of one of Britain’s most celebrated weavers, this national award was given in recognition of Deirdre’s unique and inventive circular weaving technique that she uses to create woven rings and discs.

Deirdre, who has lived and worked in Winchester for almost thirty years, works as a hand-weaver and dyer creating abstract architectural tapestries using silk, linen, cotton and wool. The new approach to weaving she has devised uses the contrasting properties of linen and silk to create rings and discs. Although the cloth is woven straight, it becomes dramatically curved when cut from the loom and treated by finishing processes.

Strip woven fabric has long been a fascination for Deirdre and on winning the Clothworker’s Travel Award from the Royal Society of Arts, while a student in 1996, she travelled to Mali, West Africa, to study Bogolanfini and indigo textiles produced by the Bamana and Dogon tribespeople. These cloths are strip-woven on simple back-strap looms.

Earlier this year Deirdre was one of three textile artists selected to represent the UK at the 14th Triennial of Tapestry in Poland. After her woven rings were exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts, London, they travelled to Poland where they are now displayed at the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, until Nov. 3rd 2013. Deidre Wood website
Deirdre Wood portrait LR

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