Tapestry Weaving as Modern Art
This new book about Archie Brennan (1931-2019) and his life as a tapestry weaver is a wonderful mix of Archie’s voice and art, images of his work, and thoughts of his friends and colleagues. I heard rumors this book was happening many years ago and have been hoping they were true for a long time. I have not been disappointed. This book has far exceeded my expectations. Brenda Osborn has taken what has to be a rich collection of Archie’s spoken and written words and created a wonderful picture of an artist who had a huge influence on the trajectory of a very old art form, tapestry weaving. The book is by Archie Brennan, but the second author, noted as “with Brenda Osborn” deserves a standing ovation for her crafting of this masterpiece.
Brenda was part of the Wednesday Group, a group of students who met in Archie and his partner Susan Martin Maffei’s studio for decades to learn about tapestry weaving. Brenda has done a masterful job putting together Archie’s written and spoken thoughts and written essays beside images of his work and essays and quotes from students and colleagues.
Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art
Archie had a very long career. He started weaving as a teenager in the 1940s and wove until not long before he passed away in 2019. Though I never got the privilege of studying with him, I was able to meet him the year before his death. I found him every bit as interested in my story and what makes me tick as every student of his I’ve ever talked to. By all accounts he was a gifted teacher who was interested in helping students of tapestry art express themselves well technically and in their imagery.
This book gives you a feel for who Archie Brennan was as a person throughout his life. The words from Archie himself were written throughout his very long career and for the first time I’ve gotten a feeling for periods of his life I’d only heard small references to before such as his 7 years in Papua New Guinea or his time teaching on Baffin Island. All of the experiences he talks about are interwoven with this thoughts about the medium of fine art tapestry.
The book is full of Archie’s humor and experiential approach to life. It seems each page contains a nugget like this one about being a tapestry weaver.
“For people who sit in offices or milk cows, it may seem a curious occupation, and there are often long hours of private frustration when the word “obsessive” seems more appropriate than the word “curious.” To spend twelve hours each day manipulating weft through warp toward some kind of woven pictorial resolution of an idea is a choice I do not regret.
Along the way I began to understand why I weave the tapestries that I choose to weave. I am familiar with all the debate and argument among those involved in creative textiles and the arts about tapestry’s shrinking place in the twentieth century: about tapestry as fine art or decorative art, about tapestry as fiber versus fiber as tapestry, or tapestry as a meaningless, redundant activity in a high-speed electronic age. I am even willing to join in these discussions when I am not at my loom, but these days I am completely comfortable with the nature and the limitations of the tapestry process as I need it and as I use it.
It wasn’t always that way.”
How the book is organized
Table of Contents of Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art
This book is part memoir, part treatise on tapestry weaving, and part essay about Archie Brennan and his artistic influence on the world.
There is a lot of writing from Archie himself, whether each chapter was written by him in essay form or dictated to Brenda is unclear because his voice comes through brilliantly throughout. It is noted when a particular chapter was written which helps place his voice at that time of his life and underscores the way his beliefs and practice shifted over time. This material is interspersed with articles about his work by students and colleagues, images of tapestries and source drawings that go with the essays, and at the end of the book there is a lengthy section with additional tapestry images and then a series of essays by people who worked and studied with him including Sue Walker, Kay Lawrence, Joan Baxter, and Brenda Osborn. The book ends with a listing of his 500+ tapestries. The first entry is from 1953, the last in 2016.
The book was published by Schiffer. It has a nice table of contents and does have an index. It is a book that seems best read front to back to me as the ideas around what tapestry is build as we learn the story of Archie’s life as an artist.
Why is Archie Brennan important to the world of tapestry?
Archie Brennan is important firstly as an artist regardless of his medium. Of course this is true. I do think it is far too easy to think of the means of expression before what is being expressed, especially when the means of expression is as “odd” as making pictures with yarn as you build a piece of cloth. Archie paints himself in his own words as someone who was rigorously committed to mastering technique, but at the end of the day was most concerned about the image. Perhaps this is his first and greatest lesson to those of us learning how to weave. Though we easily get caught up in the how, the what is the most important.
There are surprises about Archie’s life, though probably anyone who knew him and experienced his sense of humor would not be startled to find that he was a lauded bodybuilder and was once crowned Mr. Scotland or that he lived in diverse places such as Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, and New York City. And once you know him better, you won’t be surprised that he and Susan taught above the Arctic Circle more than once or that they loved train journeys as they set out to teach in the continental USA.
One of the stories Archie wanted to tell me when I met him in 2018 (and I am someone he didn’t know really at all except in name) was about his OBE (Order of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth. And of course Princess Di came up a few times as his tapestry of her was hanging near where we were chatting.
Archie Brennan taught tapestry all over the world throughout his life. He was director of the Dovecot tapestry workshop and he set up and ran Edinburgh College of Art’s Department of Tapestry. He was instrumental in setting up the Victorian Tapestry Workshop (now Australian Tapestry Workshop) and he and Susan Martin Maffei taught around the USA and beyond when they moved to New York.
Archie’s thoughts about what tapestry is to art and to the practitioner are seeded around the world and I believe this art form is immeasurably better for his influence. Tapestry was on a slippery slope heading for obscurity after the reproductive practices of the 1800s and onward and Brennan with his humor, wit, and unconventional (at the time) ideas helped shift us toward a time when artist/weavers are prevalent and ideas around this medium continue to flow.
Archie on teaching tapestry
Archie does talk about teaching throughout the book. When he moved to the USA he taught with his partner, Susan Martin Maffei. Susan is a phenomenal artist working in tapestry and a gifted teacher. She has often given me advice about my own practice and teaching just because I asked and I am grateful that she is so willing to share her knowledge with those of us coming along behind her. She and Archie did indeed pave the way for a resurgence of tapestry weaving in the USA and elsewhere that we are seeing today.
Archie definitely has his opinions about how to teach and it is clear that his and Susan’s methods have been incredibly successful. I do wish that Archie were still here and I could have a good sit-down and discussion of his list of principles about weaving tapestry and teaching he presents in the book. The first time I read these pages (p 194-197), I had to laugh. I had heard some of these concepts from Susan in past and I’ve been teaching and weaving long enough to not take a couple of them personally and to wholeheartedly endorse most of the others. We all learn in different ways and as Archie has shown us in this book, we all evolve over time and change our opinions and practices. This shifting experience of making seems important to me and I think was certainly important to Archie. I’ve included one of the statements I’d love to discuss with him in a quote at the end of this article, though I suspect Archie wouldn’t entertain such a discussion for long!
Pages from Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art
Physical nature of the book
This is a gorgeous hardcover book. There is a nice dust jacket which you can see in the image at the top. The hard cover underneath is embossed with Archie’s signature. The paper is thick and the images are beautifully printed.
The photos are good! When gathering images from 70+ years of making, it always seems true that images that are older are difficult to reproduce in this format in any legible way. Brenda Osborn has done a magnificent job of making the images clear and representative of the text. Yes, there are a few images that are not crystal clear, but the fact that most of them are is frankly astounding to me given the circumstances. There are hundreds of images here. The included snapshots of him throughout his life are a wonderful bonus, young Archie in Papua New Guinea for example. There are lots of photos in this book. If you want a deep look at Archie’s work over his lifetime, there is no better source than this book that I know of.
Pages from Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art
Summary
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Archie Brennan changed the face of tapestry weaving in the 20th century and this book is the most comprehensive summary of his life and work as an artist you’ll find anywhere. I have enjoyed reading it immensely. Just like Archie himself, it is accessible, friendly, and endlessly engaging. Archie’s thoughts about being an artist working in a “minor medium” (as he says) and his relationship to tapestry as an art medium occur throughout the text and you get some sense of how his thoughts evolved over his many decades (about 7 of them!) of being a weaver, artist, and teacher. The thoughts about life, art making, humor, and experience extend far beyond just the practice of hand-woven tapestry and this book would be a good read for anyone interested in a life well lived.
When Archie passed away, I wrote THIS blog post which is full of links to more information about him. Please explore more about this incredible artist as you read his autobiography.
The book is published by Schiffer and I recommend purchasing it from your local bookshop or bookshop.org.
“Tapestry is like life: you can’t change what you did yesterday, but you can modify it by what you do today.”
And as someone who does a fair amount of hatching and thus weaving line by line and who teaches line by line as a starting place to understand hatching and simpler tapestry techniques, the quote below seems a good place to end. Thanks for making me laugh Archie and for always making me question how I teach and practice tapestry weaving. May I continue to evolve and thank you for helping to lay the foundation for me to do so.
“Anyone who weaves tapestry pass by pass right across the tapestry cloth, like a cloth weaver, is nuts and deserves to be stuck with a bias of horizontal mark making and constant interlocking or looping. It is like filling a dozen wine bottles drop by drop, in a line.”
Do you have any memories of Archie Brennan or any thoughts about the impact he had on your life? Please tell us in the comments if so!
Brennan, A. & Osborn, B. (2021). Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd.