The Textile Conservation Lab recently had two fascinating (and beautiful) examples of the weaving technique “double weave” in the lab at the same time: a length of fabric designed by William Morris in 1878–1881, woven on a Jacquard loom, and a contemporary artwork by W. Logan Fry, hand woven in 1991.
Though the two textiles were created only roughly one hundred years apart (not that long considering double weave has existed since 700 CE) using the same technique, they diverge in imagery and influences. Morris’s cloth draws from textiles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while Fry’s mines modern painting, computer technology, and futuristic fictions for inspiration. Considered together, they demonstrate how a single technique can achieve multiple, unexpected effects.