Page 52 - Studio International - July/August 1967

The making of a tapestry: Harold Cohen's designs

for BP and the V. & A.

In 1965 the artist Harold Cohen was commissioned by British autumn before being hung at Moorfields.
Petroleum to design a tapestry 26 ft long by 8 ft 9 in. high for Subsequently Harold Cohen has designed other tapestries which,
BP's new offices at Moorfields, London. This was Cohen's first like the first, have been woven by Edinburgh Tapestry Co. Among
experience with tapestry work, though he had previously had his most notable designs is that for a tapestry commissioned by
experience in textiles. the Victoria and Albert Museum, the first tapestry commission
The tapestry, which is illustrated on page 39, was woven at ever executed for the Museum.
Edinburgh Tapestry Co's Dovecot studios—the largest tapestry Harold Cohen describes here, in captions to his own photographs,
woven there since 1936. It was exhibited at the Tate Gallery last the making of the tapestry for the V. & A.

1 The design for a tapestry is essentially the same as any other 2 Before weaving begins, a full-size linear transcription of the
design handed to the producer; it is primarily a working drawing design must be prepared for transfer to the warp. A tracing is
—or set of drawings—whose function is to communicate certain made and this, not the design itself, is enlarged photo-
information. Any aesthetic merit it may itself possess is graphically. The tracing process is to some extent interpretative,
incidental. In this case, I found it necessary to let the weavers for the weavers are concerned practically with discreet areas of
see clearly the tonal transitions forming the 'background' to the colour. Where boundaries in the design are marked by lines, the
areas of dots: consequently these dots were stencilled on to a lines themselves are treated in the tracing as narrow areas, and
transparent overlay instead of on to the drawing itself. In any even smooth transitions of tone and colour have to be broken
case the overlay was used only to convey the colour of the dots: down into areas: hence the contour-map-like appearance of the
the size of each dot, the angle of the rows, were determined tracing in this case.
directly in relation to the warp dimensions: each dot taking up six
threads of the warp, each successive row beginning one or two
threads over to give the correct angle.