Unbekannt

“I tried to put my students at the point of zero. I tried to have them imagine, let’s say, that they are in a desert in Peru, no clothing, no nothing … And gradually then we invented looms out of sticks and so on.”

As soon as she starts weaving at the Bauhaus, Anni Albers sees a thorough understanding of techniques and materials and the willingness to experiment with both as the foundation of her work. During a trip to South America in 1939, she learns about using a backstrap loom. She buys herself one, but quickly realises how difficult it is to use. On other journeys, she also buys around a hundred textiles that later end up in the Harriet Engelhardt Memorial Collection at Black Mountain College. Harriet Engelhardt had been a student of Anni Albers at the college but died while working for the Red Cross in Germany in 1945. Engelhardt’s parents endowed a memorial fund with their daughter’s entire fortune; the collection is now housed at Yale University Art Gallery.

The display case contains a small selection of the textiles collected by Albers. They demonstrate the range of weaving techniques used in and around the Andes. There are fragments of intricate two-ply weaving and open weave lace. Albers is fascinated by the different techniques that have evolved over the millennia and are still in use today.

Nonetheless, she is aware that some techniques are based on the simplest tools. Some textiles are produced on a backstrap loom. To use the loom, the warp threads are attached to pieces of wood. One of them is tied to a suitable static object while the other is strapped to the back of the weaver. The result is kind of mobile loom.