Foreword The Crafts Study Centre applied successfully
exhibition ‘Woven:Unwoven’, and it is the
to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant
first time that the Centre has presented a
in its imaginative programme ‘Collecting
single-focused exhibition that draws these
Cultures’ in 2007. This grant of £180,000
interlocking elements together. In doing
enabled the Centre to enrich and develop
so, we can see new relationships between
its collections in both strategic and reactive
creative thinking and writing, between
ways. That is, we focused our attention on
Collingwood’s extraordinary and diverse
three named collections and archives in the
research collection of world textiles and his
fields of textiles, lettering and furniture; and
own practice, as well as the reaction to his
we were able to bid for individual objects
work in the public domain. The exhibition
or archive materials that came up for sale,
becomes a way of looking at a major textile
following our collecting policy.
artist in the round.
The Crafts Study Centre was delighted
The exhibition also fulfils the Crafts
to acquire a very substantial body of work
Study Centre’s intentions, expressed in
from the great woven textile artist Peter
the original application form, to ‘tell the
Collingwood, including his creative work
rich but sparsely-told story of modern
as well as samples, a very large body of
crafts’ through an exemplary display of
ethnographic textiles and a paper archive.
connective materials: writing, thinking
This collection forms the basis of the
and making.
Peter Collingwood | Woven : Unwoven 3