Archie Brennan passed away on October 31, 2019. He was an artist, a teacher, and someone who had a significant impact on the face of tapestry today. Archie began his weaving career at 16 years of age with a seven-year apprenticeship at the Dovecot in Scotland. He was eventually became director of the tapestry workshop and also established the tapestry department at Edinburgh College of Art.
Please take some time to get to know a bit about his life, his work, and his thoughts about tapestry weaving. I believe it is important and helps those of us who are contemporary tapestry weavers place our practice in the broader historical context of this art form. Archie, perhaps more than anyone else in recent history, was able to express the shift that happened in the early 1900s from reproductive tapestry where paintings were copied in great detail to an artist/weaver approach where the weaver also designs the work. He was instrumental in creating this shift first through his work at the Dovecot Studios as a weaver and their director, then in other parts of the world.
Archie Brennan at 16 years old, his first year as an apprentice at the Dovecot in 1949. Front row, center. Image from Master weavers: Tapestry from the Dovecot Studios 1912-1980, Canongate Publishing, Ltd, Edinburgh, 1980, page 37.
Archie Brennan, postcard
One of the things that impresses me about Archie’s life and work is that he seeded his ideas of tapestry successfully in many corners of the world. He was a huge force in Scotland both at the Dovecot Studios and the Edinburgh College of Art. He advised the founders of the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne (which was then the Victorian Tapestry Workshop) after some time working on a large art project in Papua New Guinea. And after moving to the United States in the 1980s he was instrumental in encouraging this art form in this country through his own work and his teaching. He maintained a studio in New York City with his partner Susan Martin Maffei for several decades.
In 2015 I wrote an article for the magazine Fiber Art Now about Archie and his partner Susan Martin Maffei called Susan Martin Maffei & Archie Brennan: Tapestry Partners and Innovators. In it I summarize some of Archie and Susan’s ideas around weaving without cartoons, daily practice, and the process demanded by the medium of building the image from bottom to top as the weaving progresses.
Fiber Art Now has made that article available for everyone to read. There are further images in the article.
The only time I met Archie was in 2018 when I was able to visit his and Susan’s studios in New York. I wrote a blog post about that HERE. I remember Archie talking about Queen Elizabeth II awarding him the Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for contribution to the arts. As we were chatting, his tapestry of Princess Diana was hanging next to the table and he referred to it a few times. It must have been a favorite of his.
“Quite simply the practice of woven tapestry has been an obsessive passion my entire adult life. It is my creative language, and I love-hate-delight- and struggle with it each day, all day. In a unique manner it is a vehicle to convey concept, comments, harmony, discord, rhythm, growth and form. Simply put, it is what I do. That tapestry today is widely regarded as a minor art form leaves me unconcerned. This is someone else’s problem. In medieval Europe, pre-Columbian Peru and Coptic Egypt, tapestry was supreme. Five hundred years ago it was already extremely sophisticated- aesthetically, technically and in diversity of purpose. Today its lack of defined purpose – its rarity – gives me opportunity to seek new roles, to extend its historic language and above all to dominate my compulsive drive.
In 1967, I made a formal decision to step away from the burgeoning and exciting fiber arts movement and to refocus on woven tapestry’s long-established graphic pictorial role. My belief was and still is that tapestry had foundered into an imitative, reproductive process. In spite of a few notable exceptions, the technical virtuosity of the eighteenth – twentieth century became a serious and sorry disadvantage. Tapestry was merely a servant to painters and paintings.”
Archie wove more than 500 tapestries. He had just finished number 503 when I spoke to him in 2015. Please explore these further resources about Archie’s seven decades working in tapestry. If you know of other sources, please leave those in the comments.
The American Tapestry Alliance’s online show about his work curated by Anna Byrd Mays HERE. Please don’t miss this. It is excellent. Take the time to look at the vast scope of his work. Unfortunately the photos are poorly sized on some pages, but some of the pages you can click and see a larger version of the image.
Archie and Susan’s website: http://www.brennan-maffei.com/
Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry by Ann Lane Hedlund. Chapter 4 is called Archie Brennan and the Dovecot Studios
Master Weavers: Tapestry from the Dovecot Studios 1912-1980, published by Canongate Publishing, Edinburgh, 1980. “Transposition of a Painting into a Tapestry” chapter by Archie Brennan.
Tommye Scanlin’s blog post about Archie is HERE.
Elizabeth Buckley’s blog post about her last conversation with Archie is HERE.
Another blog post from The Archie Brennan Project is HERE. I have never worked out who the author of this blog is, but there is a great quote from Archie in this post!
An article from the Maui News (Archie lived in Hawaii) is HERE.
Three interesting YouTube videos about Archie. Set aside an hour to watch these. They feature Archie speaking about his work, his teaching, and his philosophy around tapestry. They are excellent and worth the time.
Weaving Illusions, Part 1
Weaving Illusions, Part 2
Weaving Illusions, Part 3Archie and Susan produced a series of educational videos about tapestry weaving. They are full of fantastic tips from both of them and I highly recommend them as an addition to your tapestry library. It looks like they are now selling them streamed from Vimeo and you can find more information here: http://www.brennan-maffei.com/ There is an example video on that page of their website that will give you the flavor of these videos, but more importantly, you’ll hear Archie himself speaking.
Archie’s obituary can be read HERE.
“Archie was also a passionate advocate for tapestry - writing, lecturing and teaching. His work and viewpoint have influenced the entire field of contemporary tapestry. Archie championed not only technical excellence, but also an attitude of exploration that was grounded in weaving itself. He encouraged weavers to develop their designs keeping tapestry’s structural grid of warp and weft in mind. His emphasis on process was reflected in his propensity to see weaving as a journey up the warp, a conversation between the weaver, the technical realities of weaving, and the unfolding image on the loom. He championed weaving on upright looms, from the front of the tapestry, for a more direct and interactive experience translating the image into tapestry.
Archie’s love of weaving was infectious. He celebrated the many amateurs in the field, finding joy in the idea that across the world, weavers were tap, tap, tapping away on their looms. He freely shared his design for a copper pipe loom that could be made cheaply and easily, whose components could be found in any hardware store, and that could be broken apart to fit in a suitcase.”
Archie Brennan in 2015 finishing his 503rd tapestry. Image courtesy of Archie Brennan and Susan Martin Maffei as used in the Fiber Art Now article linked in this post.
UPDATE June 2020: Dovecot Studios is putting together a retrospective exhibit of Archie’s work. They are raising a fairly small amount of money considering the scope of the project to support bringing works that are in public and private collections all over the world together for this show in 2021. This is a marvelous opportunity to learn more about Archie’s work and I hope you’ll join me in Scotland to see it in 2021. If you can, please donate something to the effort. It will be well worth it. The video below tells more about the project and you can find more information about it HERE.