Weave Parkhead
Weave Parkhead! is a collaboration between schools, community groups, weavers and archaeologists to create a series of four woven panels celebrating the history and heritage of Parkhead in Glasgow. Over the past year, the Weave Parkhead! team have run a series of workshops and events in and around Parkhead, combining weaving, creative craft skills and historical research with the aim of revealing the spirit of Parkhead – the stories, people and places that make it unique.
We at Humphries Weaving were approached by Weave Parkhead! and asked to weave a panel of bespoke Jacquard fabric for the collaboration.
Weave Parkhead – Woven Panel
Maintaining a cohesive look across the four panels a major challenge. To ensure the panels worked as a group as well as individually, the Weave Parkhead! team decided early in the design process to restrict the colour palette to monochromes and a yellow shade (in honour of the bees on the co-operative crest).
The other unifying element can be found in the use of the geometric shapes found in local architecture, industrial buildings and machinery features, and in the use of hexagons, referencing the cellular structure of honeycomb and chemical formulas for carbon (coal). The materials used to create each panel were selected to reflect the four major themes – Radical Politics, Landscape, Made in Parkhead and People and Place – but also the evolution of textile technologies and styles – from the early days of handloom weaving, through the era of mechanised weaving and into the age of steel manufacturing, for which Parkhead is perhaps most famous.
The ‘Landscape’ panel, was woven at Humphries Weaving who worked alongside Shielagh Tacey to create a design that merges elements from historic and geological maps. This was achieved by using different textures and weaves to highlight the relationships between the natural and cultural environment of the area. The panel was woven in several contrasting, traditional weave structures, including hopsack, herringbone and twills, which would have been familiar to the Parkhead handloom weavers.
Project reference: 2701
