Textiles from the collections of Nashoba Valley Weavers’ Guild members are being shown in tandem with the antique stoves in the Fivesparks exhibit “Artistry in Iron and Fiber.” While David Erickson restores stoves from the Victorian period, the six women represented in the exhibit create fiber works using centuries-old handweaving techniques. The exhibit, with stoves and textiles on display and for sale in each of the three downstairs rooms, runs through Feb. 4.
Fivesparks’ chair of events and programs, AnaMaria Nanra, said when the antique stoves exhibit was being planned, she knew she wanted some sort of warm textiles on the walls to both juxtapose with the metals and to complement them and evoke an overall feeling of warmth and coziness. Pieces from members of the weavers’ guild perfectly fit her vision, and she said the women were wonderful to work with. Nanra and Fivesparks board member Mamie Wytrwal laid out all the textiles and experimented with different groupings and placements. Weavers Penny Lacroix and Kristen Kelley-Muñoz helped them hang the final arrangement and advised them on how to fasten items without damaging them.
Roben Campbell poses beneath her “Earthy Shawl,” which she wove of homespun, natural, and hand-dyed wool.(Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Dorothy Solbrig stands in front of her large caftan, in which she playfully used multiple textures and weaves.
In the room to the right of the front desk is a poster board with short bios of the women whose works are on display and an image from each of their works. An introduction states the mission of the Nashoba Valley Weavers’ Guild. It was founded in 1987 to promote interest in and knowledge of handweaving and to provide a forum for weavers, with opportunities for members to improve their skills.
Reba Maisel, who started the guild when she was owner of the Fiber Loft shop on Mass. Ave., said weaving was in its prime in the mid-1980s. She knew there were weavers in the Harvard area, but there was no opportunity for them to meet locally. She decided to invite weavers to share ideas, and there was a great response. “And of course it ended up helping
my business,” Maisel added.
The exhibit pays tribute to one of the guild’s original members, Pauline Duke, who died in 2017. She is remembered as a master weaver and teacher who was an inspiration to all who knew her and instilled confidence in her students. Proceeds from the sale of her work will benefit the guild. One of her pieces is a lovely soft peach, lavender, and blue scarf of hand-dyed silk that is machine washable. In the large room are two cotton table runners, one short in blue and green, the other a long brown and white one.
From textiles to tapestries
A handweaver for more than 20 years, Kelley-Muñoz recently switched her textile practice to tapestry weaving. She is excited to have been admitted to the West Dean College of Arts and Conservation Tapestry Foundation program, where she will study in one of the few remaining professional tapestry studios in the world. Tapestry is a type of weaving that is hand-
manipulated and done in sections, rather than with one continuous back-and-forth of a shuttle. This allows the weaver to create pictures or abstract designs, suited more for decorative than practical uses. Kelley-Muñoz’s series of six miniatures, “Landscapes in Tapestry,” are framed depictions of a mountain scene and a farm scene, in varying color combinations.
In the same right-hand room, Susanne Brown, a former resident of Harvard who now lives on Cape Cod, has two hangings done on a four-harness floor loom. The multiple shafts allow the weaver to use a variety of textures and create striped patterns. The two pieces contrast in their use of color—one is muted, with light green and red; the other is bolder, with deep red, green, and blue. A third piece in red and yellow hangs on the back wall of the large room. Weaving has been a longtime passion for Brown. As a child she was fascinated by the “magic” of patterns and colors emerging from strings on a wooden floor loom.
The visitor is drawn to the two vivid blue ponchos on the front wall of the room to the left of the desk. Harvard resident Dorothy Solbrig said in a phone conversation that the nearer poncho is plain weave (basic crisscross pattern) with a white stripe, typical of ones made in Argentina. Her husband, a Harvard University professor, is from Argentina, and she made the poncho at his request. She laughed when she said that the yarn color is Yale blue. Next to this is a more intricate piece called “Mom’s Ruana” in twill, a type of weave with a pattern of diagonal parallel lines, with which she won a prize in a national contest sponsored by Handwoven magazine.
On another wall are a bright blue twill dress, a wool jacket, and multitextured scarves, all woven by Solbrig. In speaking of the exhibit, she laughed and said, “A considerable portion of my wardrobe is there now.” This becomes even clearer in the large room, where she has another dress and a coat—all, understandably, not for sale. On a back wall is what she calls a “lumpy” (loops and tufts) rya sampler. She said this was the first piece she wove in a second class following the one that got her hooked on weaving.
Solbrig knew she wanted to learn to weave when she was in her late teens and saw her aunt working on a loom that had belonged to Solbrig’s great-grandmother. But it wasn’t until her husband was on sabbatical in 1976 and they were in California that she had the opportunity to take weaving lessons at a store just down the street from where they were living.
Three purple mountain peaks rise from bright green valleys in the center of the far wall in the large gallery. This is a wool and linen rug woven by Lacroix of Westford, co-chair of the guild. In addition to being a spinner and weaver, she is a teacher, and “general lover of all things fiber,” who shares with others through such ways as hand-making something or demonstrating at historical events. Elsewhere in the large room are three more of her wool and linen rugs, one in shades of brown, the others with brighter magenta.
Flanking Lacroix’s mountains rug are two pieces by Solbrig. One is “Amethyst Dress” and the other, which echoes the dress’s colors of purples, pinks, and aqua, is a large caftan called “At Play with my Guild.” Solbrig said she was improvising, not knowing if the piece would look like anything decent. She used as many different weaves and textures as she could—“playing with so many things I’d learned.”
Roben Campbell of Still River is a founding member of the guild. She said she agreed to her husband’s choice of Harvard in a move from Chicago in 1986 partly because she knew the Fiber Loft was here. She had been introduced to fiber arts two years before at Winedale Museum in Round Top, Texas, through an intensive program for spinning, weaving, and creating color with natural dyes. She also helped restore the museum’s antique looms.
“The subtle palette and simple weavings of the past have always informed and inspired all my work,” said Campbell. She uses her garden as her chief color source for dying yarn, growing madder and bedstraw roots and occasionally the annual Japanese indigo. She also uses roadside plants, blackberry leaves, cattail, goldenrod, and the roots of rhubarb. She said colors derived from nature produce a complementary color palette in a way that synthetic dyes cannot achieve. One can see her use of natural materials in the lovely, soft plaid of “Earthy Shawl.” She used yarn spun from a Jacob sheep with brown, gray, and white coloring, hand-dyeing the white with madder and bedstraw roots to make orange and red.
Another piece by Campbell in some of the same earthy colors is a quilt with individual squares cut from handwoven yardage in different colors and then pieced together. The inspiration for the nine-square quilting pattern was a 250-year-old antique quilt pieced together with striped ticking, common fabric in Colonial times.
The simple beauty of these textiles belies the extremely complicated, skilled, and time-consuming process of handweaving. These women have created wonderful artistry in fiber in the same ways as centuries of women before them did.
