the MAIWA JOURNAL

Tuesday, June 27, 2017 No comments

Monday, June 19, 2017 No comments

New Bengal Shawls - keeping the great Indian tradition of hand spun cloth alive.

Step into summer with our latest hand spun scarves and shawls in a variety of styles and weights. This collection features jamdani embellishments; a traditional technique where the artisan uses a supplementary weft thread to create intricate designs. They also showcase the metallic sparkle of zari (gold & silver plated thread), undulating ikat, and the softness and tradition of hand spun handwoven cloth.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

What is handspun?

This is handwoven cloth made from handspun threads.

But it is so much more than simply a beautiful type of fabric. It is an idea of cultural self-sufficiency with deep roots in the Indian identity.

In its essence, handspun, handwoven is fabric created through personal labour without industrial machinery. It harkens back to the centuries when India produced some of the world's most prestigious cloth. With it’s emphasis on manual skills and hand production, handspun also had a central role to play in countering the displacement of family life that took place during industrialization.

Mahatma Gandhi saw handspun as a way to break India’s dependence on British manufactured cloth. As part of the non-violent freedom struggle, Gandhi understood that a return to hand-made cloth would strike an economic blow to Great Britain (India is one of the largest markets in the world) while empowering the Indian public with a sense of self that could be achieved by all.

Gandhi’s exhortation to boycott British imports and mill-made fabric, and for everyone to spin and weave their own cloth, is now well known. The effect of the Swadeshi (homerule) movement had the side-effect of slowing the erosion of traditional Indian hand production; —especially weaving. Because “homespun” had played an important role in creating a national identity (the spinning wheel or “charkha” is on the Indian flag) India’s craft sector continued to privilege traditional materials and methods. Handloom was encouraged and promoted.

Traditional handloom is a remarkably flexible technology. Its great advantage lies in the production of embellished fabrics such as jamdanis. A jamdani is a cloth with tiny motifs made out of supplemental weft threads. At each throw of the shuttle, the weaver stops and turns the threads of the each motif by hand. As the weaver progresses a field with patterned embellishment emerges.

Handloom also permits weaving from fibres too fine to be handled by industrial mills. The mechanism of the loom (almost always worked with bare feet) permits the weaver to judge by feel when it is too damp, or too dry to continue working with extremely fragile fine-spun cotton. Exceptional muslins - as light as the air itself - can be woven only for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening when the conditions are exactly right.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

Tuesday, June 13, 2017 No comments

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Wednesday, April 12, 2017 No comments

The Cartographic Quilt

With Valerie Goodwin

May 15-18 (Mon-Thu) 10am-4pm

Maiwa Loft - Granville Island - Vancovuer, BC

MEET QUILTER AND PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE VALERIE GOODWIN

Internationally known for pushing art quilts into new cartographic territory, Valerie Goodwin’s award winning works are inspired by her love of maps, aerial views, landscapes, and her diagrammatic re-interpretation of cities.

Her unique artistic voice is influenced by her formal training as an architect. In Valerie Goodwin’s own words, “The journey I have been on has taken me in many surprising and totally unexpected directions. It has also created interesting results made by my desire to fuse my work as an architect with my work as a fibre artist.”

Valerie Goodwin joins us from the USA

THE CARTOGRAPHIC QUILT

Cross-fertilization between disciplines can enrich how an artist approaches her work. This workshop will focus on the basic principles of graphic composition used by many architects. Students will learn to create rich and complex arrangements using principles of scale, merging, layering/overlapping, ranking, and framing.

Beginning with a series of quick exercises, students will gain a grounding in the fundamentals of composition and begin employing the elements and principles of design.

Valerie Goodwin will work closely with students, guiding them to more advanced explorations that afford opportunities to experiment and invent. Valerie is well known for creating a flexible environment of encouragement, order, and inspiration.

Building on these creative foundations, students will tap into the right and left sides of the brain to design a thoughtful and imaginative composition from a distinctive perspective. Each student will create a cartographic art quilt that tells the story of a particular place.

Register now