Carpets of Distinction @ Dovecot Studios

From the mid nineteenth century into the early twentieth, the Arts and Craft Movement stood for artistic craftsmanship over the increasing superfluity of industrial mass production. The latest offering from Dovecot Studios explores this seemingly dichotomous relationship in collaboration with seven contemporary artists. John Byrne, Alasdair Gray, Ruth Ewan, Nick Evans, Nicolas Party, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan work in collaboration with Dovecot weaver Jonathan Cleaver to produce a limited edition collection of six hand-tufted rugs.

Using the Stoddard-Templeton Archive as inspiration for their commissions, the artists reference traditional motifs from the history of industrial carpet design. But by exploring colour, form and finishing, the project positions the relationship between artist and craftsperson as central to the making of the rugs as art objects.

These explorations take many forms, from John Byrne’s double self portrait, to Alasdair Gray’s ‘Incomers and Outgoers made, make every land,’ which examines Scotland’s international identity on a personal level. Ruth Ewan’s homage to the Templeton factory workers takes the form of a shaped rug, with a cat’s head holding a weaving shuttle in its jaws – the symbol of several weavers’ guilds.

The exhibition, produced by Glasgow curators Panel, will showcase the commerciality of the six rugs, produced as saleable editions of eight, in a space encompassing both the ‘workspace’ and ‘salesroom.’ By emulating the showrooms and sales catalogues of the Stoddard and Templeton factories at their peak, Carpets of Distinction sets out to examine the style and design, but also the value systems, of our culture in the last century.