[“The Trojan War: The Abduction of Helen,”] is a jigsaw, full, bristling with detail, dazzling the eyes: a seeing prevention? Perhaps a different way of looking at the work is required . . . This new work [of mine] shadows the fading brown, beige and red of those overlooked tapestries. The color is emptied out, the rendition of faces, fussy and clumsy. It traces those whose images were appropriated at the turn of the colonial century. Eyes, looking directly at the viewer, fade in and out of focus in drapes of 'clothness'. Each event configures what seem like minor differences within the whole and like a jigsaw everything fits. But it is hard to see. – TT p.9

right top, Medieval tapestry: The Trojan War: the Abduction of Helen, probably Tournai, 1470, 480 x 960 cm, Zamora, Spain, Museo de la Catedral
right bottom, Pat Taylor, interpretation
Visit West Dean College and/or the House of Parliament in London

Peter Harris

Ayton, Ontario, Canada

I was first drawn to the Kashmir shawl after seeing weavers in Srinagar doing intricate tapestry on low-warp looms and realizing I had unanswered technical questions [...] Studying shawl-weaving is teaching me a lot about textile qualities I had previously neglected in my wall pieces, such as color combinations of warp and weft, and the attractions of repeats. – TT p.10

below, Peter Harris, Shawlweaving Sample
weaving detail, H 10 inches by W 13 inches; author's design
This is tapestry, defined as using discontinuous wefts, with double-interlock joining, and 2/2 twill structure instead of plain weave.

Experimenting with repeat designs in my own work has been perhaps the clearest thing to nudge my stubbornly pictorial imagination. But not by much – my favorite shawl designs are the earliest surviving, often just treasured fragments, showing naturalistic plants and flowers, or the very first, stylized steps in their 200-year evolution into the abstracted "paisley" motif. – TT p.11

below: Peter Harris, Shawlweaving Pattern Unit
One pattern unit is only 14 rows (28 picks) by 30 units (120 ends). The design is totally pre-planned, and then routinely followed by counting the length of each weft pass. Lots more info: tapadesi@hotmail.com

To see more, refer to Frank Ames, The Kashmir Shawl and its Indo-French Influence, (Antique Collectors' Club, 1997). It has a lot of plates illustrating the chronological progression of "paisley" styles. On the internet, Googlde the item and you would probably arrive at mid-19th century pieces for sale, because they were turned out in vast numbers.

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