Peter's Loom

This is Part 3 of The Weaver’s Library, my almost-monthly series on the books that have inspired me as a weaver. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

If there’s one book I consult at the start of every project, it’s Peter Collingwood’s The Techniques of Rug Weaving.

For those that are unfamiliar with him, Peter Collingwood was one of the pre-eminent British weavers of the 20th century, and remains hugely influential around the world. He’s probably best known for his macrogauzes, sculptural wall-hangings where sections of warp are layered, interlinked and crossed over each other to create an entirely new woven geometry.

He’s also appreciated among his fellow weavers for his writing, and particularly the excellent The Techniques of Rug Weaving, first published in 1968. It’s over 500 pages of meticulous diagrams and instructions for every conceivable rug weaving technique, ranging from block weave to knotted pile.

My own copy was included in the bundle of yarn and weaving tools that came with the Don Porritt loom I purchased in 2016. I’ve never managed to read it all the way through (who could?) but it’s probably the book I’ve returned to the most. Whenever a client gets in touch with a particularly unique brief, I consult Peter’s book before I begin. Nine times out of ten, he has something useful to say.

So how did I go from owning one of his books, and dreaming of following in his footsteps, to actually owning one of his looms?

In the summer of 2019, fellow weaver Angie Parker messaged me about one of Peter’s looms. His son Jason was running the weaving studio by then, and he was trying to get rid of several dilapidated looms from his garage. Despite promising myself that I would not take on any more looms (I already had 4) I took the train out to Suffolk to visit Jason’s studio.

After touring the looms that were currently in use, he showed me to the looms that weren’t. There were two (possibly three) but only one was intact enough to be salvaged. This was a 1940s Lervad countermarch loom from Denmark, which Peter had used to weave many of his rugs. I’d never woven on a countermarch loom before, and I most certainly did not have space for it in my current studio, but it was too lovely to let it continue rotting in a shed. I hauled it out onto the driveway and did my best to clean off the worst of the dust and grime, before the van arrived to take it back to London.

Peter’s loom has now travelled with me to four different studios, slowly being restored along the way. I treated it for woodworm, sanded off all the grime and polished it with beeswax. I washed the string heddles with bicarbonate of soda, and painstakingly cleaned off the rust from every spoke of the sectional warp beam. And even more slowly, over many, many years, I figured out how it all fitted together, and set it up to weave on once again.

As for Angie, who told me about this loom - she took on the entirety of Peter Collingwood’s studio when Jason retired. She has created an impressive archive of his books, work and looms in her studio in Bristol, and is committed to preserving his legacy alongside her own practice. (Do visit her website and her Instagram if you’d like to find out more.)

Right now, Peter’s loom sits in one corner of my studio. It still has some parts missing, and I’m definitely not using it to its full potential, but that’s okay. I have his book next to me while I weave, and in the coming years, I plan to try as many of these techniques as I can.

Announcements & Updates

If you’d like to learn to weave tapestry or rug weaving (on a slightly less complicated loom than this one) enrolment for my September online courses are open now! Find out more at Balfour Weaving School here.

In September, I’m launching a new collection of framed tapestries. Sign up to the waiting list here to get exclusive previews and to be notified when they are available to purchase.