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A France adventure: the tapestries of Dom Robert

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A France adventure: the tapestries of Dom Robert

On my tapestry tour with Cresside Collette in France last May, we visited the Museé Dom Robert in Soréze. I posted a video with some thoughts about this visit to Albi, Soréze, and the museum in THIS post from June of 2019. I’d like to show you more of the photos that I took of Dom Robert’s tapestries.

Guy de Chaunac Lanzac, otherwise known as Dom Robert, lived from 1907 to 1997. In 1930 he entered a Benedictine abbey as Brother Robert and became a priest in 1937 and was ordained as Dom Robert.

In 1941 he met Jean Lurcat who inspired Dom Robert to become a tapestry cartoon designer. His tapestries were woven primarily by Tabard and Suzanne Goubely in Aubusson. Though tapestry weavers in the USA might be disappointed to realize that these large-scale tapestries were not woven by the same person who designed them, this is common practice elsewhere in the world even today. Dom Robert was a tapestry cartoon designer, not necessarily a weaver. He clearly understood weaving techniques and his cartoons seem very approachable to me as a tapestry weaver.

His work includes 150 cartoons, mostly woven in Aubusson. Numerous copies of his cartoons were often made and most are in private collections.

A tapestry January in photos

A tapestry January in photos

January has come and gone. It was a busy month for me. Here is a tour in photos.

January 1: New Year’s Day. #weaveeveryday

I have no illusions that I as a business-owning, traveling teacher, tapestry weaver will be able to weave every single day of this year. But my intention is to weave as often as I can because even a few minutes of weaving means that my hands and eyes return to the process and little by little, progress is made.

Tapestry looms: Matching loom choice to what you want to weave

Tapestry looms: Matching loom choice to what you want to weave

The American Tapestry Alliance’s media tour kicks off today. This year they’re holding it on Instagram and I am kicking off the week with a day of posts about tapestry looms. You can see the posts on my Instagram feed HERE. You do not have to have an Instagram account to go there and look at them. All the information about the next days of the tour is in those posts and also at the end of this email with links.

I wanted to talk some about choosing a tapestry loom. Most people who jump into tapestry outside of a university fiber art program start with small tapestry looms. I’ve written articles on this blog about looms (three of them are HERE, HERE, and HERE) which focus on what looms are out there and why some are better than others for tapestry weaving.

Today is my day on the tour and I wanted to use this blog post to provide more information and links. The video in this post is one I did for the Instagram stories today.

Designing for tapestry

Designing for tapestry

A tapestry weaver’s task is to weave an image at the same time they’re creating a stable fabric. As a creator of images, many tapestry weavers are challenged by the process of designing. And part of that challenge has to do with that fact that we’re creating the fabric as the same time as the image so the work has to be structurally sound.

Some of us want to make fine art-level tapestries that hang in galleries and eventually someone’s home or office. And some of us want to enjoy the practice of the craft and don’t care one bit if anyone even sees their work. I think what matters most is whether or not the creator’s needs from the medium are met by their practice.

The thing that is true for of both of those kinds of creator is that design plays a part in engaging with this medium. Because we are creating something based in image, how we design that image is important.

The new class opens Monday, Jan 13th!!! Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver

The new class opens Monday, Jan 13th!!! Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver

A new online experience starts on Monday. My new course, Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver begins Monday, January 13, 2020. This class has been something I’ve been working on for about a year and a half and I’m so thrilled to say that it is ready.

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Habits not resolutions: Weave every day.

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Habits not resolutions: Weave every day.

Historically speaking, I think we can safely say that I’m rubbish at New Year’s Day resolutions.

I remember a New Year’s Day when I was a pre-teen deciding that I was going to write a letter to someone every single day of the year. This was in the 80s before the internet though I probably had learned to type on my electric typewriter by then. But my resolution was to put pen to paper and hand-write someone a letter. Every. Single. Day.

I made it to January 8th.

As humans we certainly love to make grand promises to ourselves of how we’re going to change our lives starting with this one day which marks a new calendar year. But it is just another day and we are still the same people we were on December 31st (though hopefully a little more sober).