Beatrice Larkin / Anni Albers Exhibition / Tate Modern / 11 October 2018 – 27 January 2019

Photograph by Helen M. Post of Anni Albers in her weaving studio at Black Mountain College, 1937

This time two years ago, during Spring/Summer 2018, I was honoured to be commissioned by Tate to create a woven textile inspired by Anni Albers. The piece was to celebrate the upcoming exhibition at Tate Modern, the first major retrospective of her work in the UK. It was a dream come true to be asked to delve into my weave hero’s incredible back catalogue and come up with a design for throws and cushions to be sold in the Tate shop alongside the exhibition.

I was keen to design a fabric inspired by Albers’ work and not replicate already existing textiles. This led me to look closer at her paper work, sketches and weaving notations. They resonated with my love of stationary and my interest in the balance between weave structure and design. I came up with a number of jacquard weaves which influenced my own collection that year.

They included a fabric called Type inspired by Albers’ paper series of patterns created with a typewriter. I wanted to create a more subtle design than I have before and it is a definite departure from previous bolder block geometrics. I’m pleased that the papery, inky quality of the type writer series is really visible when you look closely at the finished merino fabric.

Anni Albers, Typewriter study to create textile effect, n.d.
ink on paper mounted on board - Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation

Beatrice Larkin, The Type Fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire, 2018

Beatrice Larkin, The Type Fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire, 2018

Alongside this fabric I created one called Graph, taken from a weavers’ favourite medium. Here, again, the fabric holds the quality of the initial paper the design was based on.

Beatrice Larkin, The Graph Fabric, light side, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire 2018

Beatrice Larkin, The Graph Fabric, dark side merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire, 2018

Beatrice Larkin, close up of the Graph Fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire, 2018

I was also inspired by some of Albers’ pieces featuring the triangle, a key recurring motif in Albers’ oeuvre. I drew my own version and this resulted in Flint, a larger graphic design which breaks the triangle, moving away from her repeating Dobby woven and printed work. I think the jacquard loom has allowed me to create this Albers’ quality without it being too representative.

Anni Albers
Second Movement V, 1978
etching and aquatint from The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation

Beatrice Larkin, The Flint fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire 2018

Anni Albers
Fox II, 1972
photo offset from The Joseph an Anni Albers Foundation

Beatrice Larkin, Close up of the Flint fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire 2018

For the Tate Shop and the exhibition my fabric On Weaving was chosen to be sold as throws and cushions. This design was taken from one of Albers’ weaving notations, Weaving Plate 19 – Undulating Twill which was in the show and appears in her seminal book On Weaving. As I said I am fascinated by the play between structure and design in weave and the Jacquard loom allows me to experiment here. I used the weave structure as the design of the textile as well as passing the undulating twill across the double cloth fabric. It resulted in one of my most optical and flowing designs, creating waves from blocks.

Anni Albers, On Weaving, Plate 19 Undulating Twill

Beatrice Larkin, On Weaving throw, merino wool, Jacquard woven in Lancashire, 2018

Beatrice Larkin, On Weaving fabric, merino wool, jacquard woven in Lancashire 2018

Tate Modern Gift Shop

11/10/2018 at the opening of the Tate Modern exhibition

It was such a pleasure to spend some serious time looking into Albers’ seminal work for this project and a real honour to be connected with the exhibition, a celebration of weave, an art form which doesn’t usually get a platform like this.

For more information about Albers’ life and work take a look at the Tate website – https://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=text&q=anni+albers and The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation https://albersfoundation.org/

There are only a few of the On Weaving throws I designed for this exhibition left in stock. Woven from the finest merino wool these super soft light weight blankets fit nicely on the end of a double bed or thrown over an armchair or sofa. If you are interested in purchasing the On Weaving throw head here.