Weavers to the world at the Dovecot Studio

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 19

Weavers to the world at the Dovecot Studio

By

RICHARD CARR,

design historian, Jor-

danstone College of Art, Dundee

It is not everyone who can set up an entire design studio specifically to create tapestries for the family home. Yet when the Dovecot Studio in Edinburgh, Scotland, was founded in 1912 by the third Marquess of Bute with the help of two weavers from William Morris’s London sheds, the sole purpose was to weave tapestries for the Bute family. Today, one of the largest tapestries ever created, “The Lord of the Hunt,” hangs in the seat of the sixth Marquess at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute in western Scotland. Work on a companion tapestry was abandoned just before the Second World War. The design remains at the Dovecot but would cost 5700,000 to finish. Now the Dovecot faces a new challenge. It has just won its biggest commission, to weave 11 tapestries designed by the American artist, Frank Stella, for the headquarters of Pepsi-Cola in New York. The commission is expected to take between 18 months and two years to complete and will earn $510,000. Altogether, five of the Dovecot’s present six weavers will work on it and, says Joanne Soroka, the newly appointed artistic director, if other commissions come along in the meantime, the studios will take on more staff.

It was after the Second World War that the Dovecot began to accept commissions from other private patrons, and from architects and interior designers. There are, for example, tapestries by Robert Stewart in Glasgow Cathedral, by Archie Brennan in Edinburgh Airport, and by Tom Phillips in St Catherine’s College, Oxford. All were done during the 19705. It was Brennan, the Dovecot’s former artistic director, who more than anyone else was responsible for the renaissance in tapestry weaving after the war, and for getting the Dovecot to work with artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Piper, David Hockney, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Jean Dubuffet.

More recently, the Dovecot has woven its biggest tapestry, designed by Samantha Ainsley for the new headquarters of the insurance company, General Accident, near the Scottish town of Perth. This building, although completed two years ago, will be officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II shortly. Joanne Soroka has also designed a tapestry for the visitors’ centre at the Glenfiddich whisky distillery at Dufftown in the Scottish Highlands. Other recent public commissions include a tapestry for a Kansas

City department store in the United States, two works for an airport in Saudi Arabia, and one by the Canadian artist, Antoine Dumas, for Montreal. Recent private commissions include a smaller version of the General Accident tapestry for Cleish Castle in Perthshire, Scotland. This is the home of James Parr, the architect of the General Accident building. Another Brennan tapestry has been ordered for the cookery expert Pru Leith’s home in the Cotswold Hills, in western England. Although it is so long established and has its roots in the English arts and crafts tradition, the varied list of people who have worked with the Dovecot proves that its weavers are used to tackling many subjects in different styles, and to using non-traditional materials. For the American sculptress, Louise Nevelson, for example, the Dovecot often used metallic threads and created textures similar to low relief, occasionally even weaving one piece of tapestry on top of another. Yet for David Hockney, it created linear designs which are the most difficult of all to weave.

For Frank Stella’s tapestries, wool, linen and synthetic threads will be used. As so often happens, collaboration began at the sketch stage — derived from a series of lithographs — when the studio advised on how it would translate into tapestry. It wove a small section to check on textures, colours, and other aspects of the interpretation. According to Stella, the first

panel “is even better than my original. I am very happy with the results so far.” The tapestries tell, in a very abstract and slightly Paolozzi manner, the Jewish children’s Passover story of Had Gadya, about a goat which is eaten by a cat, which is bitten by a dog, which is beaten with a stick, and so on.

The weavers work in front of the loom, with the sketch on the other side, and the tapestry is rolled up as the work proceeds.

Although many of the tapestries are a fair size — the General Accident one is 9 x 5.3 metres and is unusual because there are gaps in it so that the wall behind becomes part of the over-all design — Joanne Soroka says the Dovecot is prepared to take on anything from 13.3 square metres upwards. Besides working with architects and designers who already have a clear idea of what they want, the studio is prepared to explore new ways of handling space. This is shown by its first nontapestry commission, just completed in Edinburgh. It involves a series of kites designed by Samantha Ainsley for hanging in a three-storey-high canteen at Esso’s oil refinery at Mossmoran in Fife, Scotland. The kites, based on the molecular structure of benzine and ethylene, are hexagonal shaped, with different elements in red, yellow and blue, and are made out of spinnaker nylon stretched on aluminium frames. Getting shapes, colour, and tension right has not been easy, but the commission is an exciting new departure for the Dovecot. — Copyright, London Press Service.