To the limits of the loom

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 20

To the limits of the loom

Peter Collingwood’s life; as an army doctor reads like something out of M.A.S.H.

He recalls riding around in an ambulance, siren going, weaving on a portable loom in the back. “I made lots of scarves,” he remembers.

Today the Englishman, who lives in a village school in Colchester, is known throughout the world for his weaving technique in making rugs. After training as a doctor in England, a stint in the army and nine months working among Arab refugees in Jordan, Peter Collingwood finally flagged away medicine in favour of weaving. He has no regrets about his decision of 30 years ago. “I was hopeless as a doctor and I didn’t like it,” he says. He became interested in weaving through watching patients in occupational therapy. When he returned to England from Jordan he worked in a weaver’s workshop for a month.

“That month has never ended,” he says. “I have been weaving ever since.”

Now based in Colchester, Peter Collingwood weaves to order. He has a list of 52 rugs and 30 wall hangings waiting for him when he returns from New Zealand.

Rugs and wall hangings are his speciality. He explains away his own technique of rug weaving with a “It’s very technical and complicated. What I do is weave a flat, two coloured rug.” He has travelled the world to teach the technique. Before coming to New Zealand he visited Australia and will return to England via Japan for a series of workshops.

He worries that time away from his workshop will mean orders backing up. His trip to New Zealand has brought more orders as people have asked him to make replicas of the rugs he has brought to exhibit while in this country. Almost all of the six rugs and 18 macro gauze wall

hangings he brought to this country have been sold. The techniques he has developed he describes as “making the loom do something it hasn’t done before.” By altering the actual structure of the loom he creates an effect in the finished product.

“My aim was to explore how far you could go with the loom, to see exactly what it would do. It suited me to plod on in one direction and that was altering the loom to create a new effect,” he says.

Peter Collingwood describes himself as weaver first, teacher second. Although he pays the annual fee to stay on the medical register, medicine does not rate a mention in the priorities list.

Although he concentrates almost exclusively on rugs and wall hangings, often repeating designs to order several times, Mr Collingwood also makes belts in tablet weaving. Tablet weaving is the subject of his

third book on weaving published recently. For his weaving he uses linen and animal fibres. “For the wall hangings it’s linen. For the rugs, linen and sheep’s wool, or goat’s hair or camel hair,” he says. “I am very interested in getting hold of some Drysdale fleeces that are used as carpet wool in New Zealand.”

Weaving in England and New Zealand was quite different.

“There are so many people here spinning and knitting natural wools. We don’t have that in England. Most of the yarns used in weaving are machine produced. No-one weaves lengths of cloth any more, just single items, either rugs or wall hangings,” Mr Collingwood says.

The exhibition of his work will continue at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery until June 24. Mr Collingwood is at present in the North Island having given workshops in Christchurch last week.