The decline of the handmade industry has its historical factors and is a result of the trend of the times.
Therefore, in order to bring handicrafts back to modern life, it is very important to explore the relationship between handicrafts and lifestyle from the essence.
Today's article is the story of how Ptolemy Mann, a successful British fabric designer, became a successful brand in home furnishing through his handmade fabrics.
After graduating from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in 1997, Ptolemy set up a studio where she innovated cross-disciplinary commercial and artistic applications with her unique approach to hand-dyed weaving, wall façades, architecture, and artwork, all of which stemmed from a single textile course in her university days.
Why did she take the path of dyeing and weaving design? Ptolemy laughs and says that when she couldn't draw, her teacher suggested that she might as well create with fabric. Someone else told her that it was best for young people to learn a trade, so she went into it, earning a degree in fabric design from St. Martin's.
Photography by Enzo Capaccio
In an interview, Ptolemy said, "I love fabric design, but it's actually a very specialized field, and I ended up choosing knitting because I thought it was an aloof skill that I might never use in my life, and I never thought I'd end up doing it for a living (laughs).
Says Ptolemy, "While I love all aspects of textiles, weaving is by far the most challenging and intellectual. Because weaving is so demanding in terms of skills and processes, in the process I am able to practice precisely what I want to create through a precise handwork process.
Like an artist painting one stroke at a time on a canvas, Ptolemy begins with the dyeing of the yarn, on a specific loom, to create a linear pattern, a task that is a direct result of the dyeing and weaving process.
Perhaps because she did not major in painting, Ptolemy took her passion for art and color and used weaving as a brush to create, instead resulting in commercial success.
She loves color, so she started her weaving color design from cotton yarn, she invented the unique Ikat technique and applied bold colors and geometric patterns to modern fashion home and fabrics.
IKAT is a Malay word meaning "bundle, knot, twist" and is an ancient technique of tying and dyeing. IKAT fabrics have been made in Japan, India, the Middle East and other regions since the fifth century CE. It is the most difficult and complicated weaving technique because the spinning yarn is first tied and then dyed, followed by the weaving part.
Traditionally, the yarn is tied with nylon rope to create a pattern, then dyed with a dark red dye made from Engkudu leaves and roots, and then dried. The yarn is also tied with nylon rope again according to the design, so that the red dyed part is kept and put into the natural dye of indigo, and the red mixed with indigo will produce a black effect. After cutting off the nylon string, you will see the white, red and black yarns. At this point, the initial pattern has taken shape and is ready for the weaving step.
Ptolemy's creations cover a wide range of projects - from one-off artworks to corporate and privately commissioned fabrics. Her first foray into commercial design was a series of flat-weave rugs and fabrics in collaboration with the renowned Christopher Farr. In designing this line of high-end rugs, Ptolemy translated her signature as an artist into a commercially viable product.
Ptolemy has been involved in the design and development of many successful commercial fabric designs, and in 2013 collaborated with renowned designer John Lewis to create digitally printed and printed creations for home fabrics, including bedding collections, upholstery, and cushions.
In addition, she has collaborated with fashion designers and furniture design brands on many home textile designs, and in 2011 she won the Best Textile Design Award from the International Better Homes Magazine.
Since 2007, the British Luxury Institute has been helping luxury brands find skilled artisans through its Crafted program, and has given more business opportunities to artisans who have been quietly working on their craft in the back alleys. Ptolemy is a second-time winner of the British Luxury Brands Institute's Young Craftsman Award.
Yet even after 25 years of weaving cotton threads on a dobby loom, Ptolemy still considers himself a painter.
"For me, 'painting' is woven cotton stretched over a frame," Ptolemy says. "I put dye on the weave, only my dye is colored threads."
Using the ancient technique of ikat to modern effect: dipping dyed threads into multiple colors and then weaving them into abstract wall art, her work is reminiscent of Mark Rothko's paintings.
No. 13 (White, Red on Yellow)1958，Mark Rothko ＠metmuseum
Influenced by the Bauhaus weavers, Ptolemy found that the limitations of the loom allowed her to translate her creativity into color to express it. "I went into the dye lab and let the color express itself." She says. "It's a loose, expressive process."
One of the most striking elements of Ptolemy's work is her use of color; she favors bold, bright hues and uses strong, saturated colors as her signature.
Currently relocated to Ptolemy, Sussex, to build a 48 square meter studio in her garden, she is not only creating on a loom, but has also started painting. There are two strands to my work practice at the moment - I've been hand-dyeing and weaving art for over 25 years, but more recently - for the last two years - I've been painting on paper," she says.
Painting on one side and working on the loom on the other, Ptolemy says, "The process of making behind these two ways of working is completely different. Weaving is a very slow and technical art-making practice, taking at least two months to make even a small work of art - a very specific series of movements. Whereas painting allows more freedom to realize my obsession with color, and the two go hand in hand.
Says Ptolemy, "The hand weaving and Ikat dyeing methods that I use have actually been around for thousands of years. What I'm doing is basically mastering a well known traditional technique and modernizing it."
Ptolemy says, "Actually, handwork is a methodology, a way to find commercialization from the handwork process, to explore the process and the method of making through the handwork process, and every step of the handwork is thinking and making decisions, and that decision is related to the strategy of business.
Ptolemy's view is worthy of our consideration when we discuss the future of traditional dyeing and weaving.
In fact, the design profession, which is extremely important to modern life, did not exist before the industrial revolution. Once upon a time, when people needed to build a house, they looked for not architects but civil engineers, various pots and pans and other daily necessities were not designed by industrial designers, but made by carpenters, silversmiths and blacksmiths, and various clothes, shoes, bags and jewelry were not designed by fashion brands, but by tailors, silversmiths, leather makers and weavers together.
In fact, traditional artisans have two roles: design and manufacturing. In order to make up for the industrial revolution that killed the tradition of artisans, the initiator of design education in Europe: Bauhaus, through a detailed analysis of the merits of artisans and following the traditional artisans' insistence on handwork, placed great emphasis on practical work in the study courses, allowing students to grasp the texture, skin touch, and design characteristics of materials through their hands and practical work before proceeding to the next stage of creative courses.
In Europe, because of the Arts and Crafts Movement promoted by William Morris and others, the highest reverence for traditional artisans and skills was restored, and the popular fashion industry has maintained the tradition of Haute Couture. In Japan, the Mingei movement promoted by Soyue Yanagi and others provided a counterbalance to the massive westernization of Japanese society during the Meiji Restoration.
