| I was lucky
to begin my books with Faber and Faber, a most civilized firm with the
poets, T S Elliot and Walter de la Mere as past directors. At our first
meeting in 1966, I was offered sherry before the worldly matters of page
numbers, delivery date and advance were broached. This attitude
persisted even when I told them I was writing the book and had not yet
produced a page. It was Elizabeth's intervention (when I was away
teaching!) that pinned me down with a contract. Then I buckled down to
weaving in the mornings and writing in the afternoons, the then growing
family being menaced into silence.. and Elizabeth kindly going out to teach to
help with the finances. As with most craftsmen, the work proceeded
without any weekend breaks.
My material came to a very small degree from other publications, but mostly from my own teaching experience, ideas often sparked by the need to keep a fast-working student occupied. As I began each chapter I realized that there were whole acres of possibilities as yet untried and not found in other books. So this meant setting up a warp on a small sampling loom and working on variations, which I really enjoy doing. Next came the drawing over 400 diagrams, something I had to learn from scratch. Compare the feeble Fig 26, the first I ever drew, with the more confident Fig 258. The conventions adopted in the expanded structural views now look inevitable, but were reached slowly. I remember the moment of deciding that all warp threads should be distinguished with dots and the hours of delirium tremens-like activity that followed. The 170 photos, unfortunately confined to the end of the book for economic reasons, were mostly of my samples. Fabers demanded colour, so I especially wove the four rugs illustrated. The delivery of the text, figures and photos to Fabers really did feel like a delivery after two year's literary pregnancy! |
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| The Techniques
of Rug Weaving, first published 1968 by Faber and Faber, since then reprinted many times. Now a paperback, published 1993; ISBN
0-571-16994-5.
527 pages, over 400 diagrams, 170 B/W plates. 4 colour plates. Unfortunately, after being available for over 30 years and appearing in 11 editions, this book is now out-of-print... though copies do turn up on second-hand book lists. BUT Ralph Griswold has kindly added this to his impressive list of textile texts. So it is now available for anyone to read or download at will. The site is at www.handweaving.net/DAHome.aspx The site's official name is "On-line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics" an amazing undertaking. |
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