My work has always focussed on my collection of antique textile fragments, but sometimes an idea surfaces and when there are no deadlines to meet, it’s interesting to follow it.
Back in April I purchased some loom punched cards. Out of the research into these the Memory cards book was designed and made, see previous blog
Whilst I kew what they were and had been on the hunt for them for a while, what I was going to do with them was a mystery. I had seen them linked up to a wooden loom back in April 2019 in Lyon, France and it was an image that had remained with me.
My loom cards are modern and are 66.6cm x 7.3cm, but historically they come in all sorts of sizes and first appeared in the first decade of the C19th.
I worked out two simple folded books, based on this size and designed a Baroque style collagraph printing plate 5.5cm high, the design evolving from damask silk, which the system of loom cards would have facilitated.
Before I printed the plate I used the punch card to emboss the system of holes into the paper.
One pair of books has the embossing done from the front and the other pair from the reverse .
I then punched holes at both ends, these were the holes that originally had cords through them to link them all together as they rattled through the loom structure.
The completed folded books are 16.9 x 7.7cm. I decided not to back them or to produce covers for them. The reverse shows the imprint of the Collagraph print and the dimples from the embossing of the loom card and so add an interesting texture. I felt that there was a simplicity and quietness of these small folded books, but yet strong enough to tell their tale.
There are echoes of my Collaboration with Fiona Dempster see here, which we titled ‘The Shape of Things’. A shape is influencing the content and the final design.
Annwyn Dean 