Theme:
Textile

Formkraft dives into the current textile wave and explores the field’s potentials, trends and history. Follow the articles and case stories, which will be published continually during April, May and June.

Among other things, we will take a closer look at Trapholt, where director Karen Grøn provides insight into the museum’s investment in citizen-involving works.

Journalist Pernille Anker Kristensen looks at textile waves through time.

The 6.-8. April 2022, the conference Make it Together will be held with a focus on research and development projects within the subject craft and design. On that occasion, Formkraft has invited weaver, ma and PhD Marie Koch to write an article about her research project.

The leader of this theme is written by journalist and author Heidi Laura.

Photo: excerpt from the work Connected by Helle Trolle. The work measures 1.5 x 1.70 meters and has been prepared for the Biennial of Arts & Crafts & Design 2021. Photographer Dorte Krogh.

Enjoy reading!

Editorial

The social fabric

By Heidi Laura, journalist, writer and PhD

You only need to look carefully at any piece of textile to see the theme of this issue of Formkraft: fibres + connectedness = textile. Whether fibres are being spun, woven, crocheted, knitted, braided or felted, the purpose is the same: binding a vast number of tiny fibres close together in formations that now suddenly possess new potential and capacity. The loose fibres become fabric, knitting, felt or mesh, which in turn becomes clothing, sails, fishing nets and upholstery – among many other objects.

Helle Trolle

Theme

Textiles are making ANOTHER comeback

By Pernille Anker Kristensen

Read theme article

Co-Created Art at Trapholt

By Karen Grøn, museum director, Trapholt

Portrait

BREAKING THE PATTERN

By Hanne Lange Houlberg, weaver, artist, folk high school teacher

Why do many thousands of people follow when the Danish designer and influencer Lærke Bagger posts knitting photos on instagram daily? Weaver and folk high school teacher Hanne Lange Houlberg looks at the textile community around Lærke Bagger as a framework for freedom, commitment and pattern breaking.

Lærke Bagger, fotograf Robin Skjoldborgs 2021

Research

The Fabric of My Life

By Anne-Louise Bang, Marie-Louise Nosch and Else Skjold

Seventy-eight podcasts about clothing and textile told in twelve different languages. That is just one of the outcomes of the project The Fabric of My Life, in which team of researchers from Germany, Greece and Denmark focused on migration, clothing and memories. The EU-funded partnership, which ran from 2019 to 2022, involved museums, education programmes, women migrants and refugees and two textile artists.

Read research article

Book Review

A conversation between loom and world

By Heidi Laura, journalist, writer and PhD

Puk Lippmann’s work is beautifully presented and gently dissected in new book. The loom always provides a firm framework for the woven piece: a field, a space of possibility for the weaver’s expression. Books and photographs do the opposite: they provide a slice of a larger whole, a section of the world. However, these two perspectives – working within a limited space to make a significant statement versus reducing a vast field to a selective, coherent expression – complement each other well in a new book about the Danish weaver Puk Lippmann: Orden og kaos – en vævers virke (Order and chaos – a weaver’s work).

Read book review

Puk Lippmann

Exhibition Reviews

Exploration, reflections and influences

By Mette Bielefeldt Bruun, art historian

Art historian Mette Bielefeldt Bruun and design student Selma Bækkeskov Momme Nielsen have visited four different exhibitions in Copenhagen, all of which are positioned at the intersection of art and design.

Fictions Peach Corner