John Allen
Spirit of Place
goldmark
Catalogue £10
John Allen Wool and silk carpets hand-made in Nepal
1 Beach Huts, wool & silk, 116 x 108 cm, £3850
John Allen
Spirit of Place
goldmark 2018
John Allen
Spirit of Place Wool and silk carpets hand-made in Nepal All artists work hard in pursuit of their craft, but John Allen makes the efforts of most seem like hobbyism. To watch him detail the genesis of his carpets, from first thought to sketchbook, technical graph to weaver’s loom, is to experience a man compelled from the very depths of his core by total and incomparable passion. It is a work ethic that charts back to a working class upbringing on the edgelands of the Peak District. His has been, in many ways, a life of self-sacrifice. Conventional wisdom dictated that he initially forego art college in favour of a trade. Eventually graduating from undergraduate and masters courses in textile design at Camberwell and the Royal College respectively, for much of his career he has juggled professorship at the latter with freelance commission for some of the fashion world’s biggest names, all the while ceding the limelight to egos louder (and invariably less talented) than himself. Now furiously making up for lost time, he has since launched himself full-throttle into a solo career and in the last two decades become one of the most sought-after designers in the industry. A recent Louis Vuittonowned Loewe collection of bags and towels bearing Allen’s designs, produced in an edition of 200, sold out to VIP customers before they had a chance to stock the shelves. A stunned production team hastily
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issued another edition of 200 – only for the same thing to happen again. When the directors flew Allen out to their Tokyo flagship store to promote the collection, he discovered their head of design, Jonathan Anderson, had given him top billing: Japanese fashion editors were stopping him in the street for autographs. Most of us choose retirement as a chance to step back from the working world, but to Allen the idea of withdrawal – in its every sense of the word – holds very little cache. Allen’s current collection, inspired by the mutable land, sea and cityscapes of the British Isles, is called ‘Spirit of Place’ – a title that, deliberately or not, pairs him with the great Neo-romantic painters for whom local geography was a vital conduit of self-expression. Writing of one such artist in his book Unquiet Landscape, the author Christopher Neve described Paul Nash as a man with a view of the world that was ‘part poetry and part graphic design’, for whom ‘geometry was the trap... landscape the occasion and the vessel.’ His description is as apt for Allen, for whom Nash has been one of many personal heroes – ‘A very English painter. I think he felt about British landscapes as I do; he loved them in an almost unreasonable way.’ Allen’s Hampshire Clump or the vertiginous Bluebell Wood, replete with surreal, transplanted croquet hoops, is every bit the brothers Nash, while Cerne Abbas’ mythic chalk giant and the estuary of the Birling Gap, snaking past the Seven Sisters cliffs, recall Ravilious’ misted views of the same coastal stretch. Despite Allen’s obvious affinity for place, he is seldom sentimental. Projects go undocumented, dissatisfying ideas scrapped with hardnosed honesty. He also denies himself the title of ‘colourist’, though to look at these carpets is to sense a life lived in technicolour. He reserves the term for the rare geniuses – he names Matisse as an example – for whom pure chroma was instinctive. Allen’s relationship with colour is
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decidedly more torturous: some combinations are tested with more than 30 variations of a particular shade before a final colourway is selected. Like a magpie, Allen collects colours: from topographical scenes and vistas, but from paintings and curios too. And his deployment of tones is as thought-out and finicky as their coarrangement: his capriccio of Christopher Wren church spires, Lenin-red in the snow, turns a London skyline into a Russian Revolution propaganda poster with a single hue. Whether the echo is conscious or not, it reveals an aspect of the selftaught, an autodidactic absorption of references and reflections that has shaped Allen’s career: here is someone who really looks. Apply the same observation to his carpets and you soon find there is more here too – the floral patterns that festoon virtually every surface in Allen’s Victorian London house, the extraordinary collection of British art that appears there at every turn, the every colour scheme snatched and flash of inspiration that is spun together, revived, and revitalised in these woven canvases that shock like a defibrillator for the soul. While gestating designs emerge and take shape on paper, it is in Nepal, where Allen has flown at least once, and sometimes twice or three times every year for the last 20 years, that every carpet is properly born. Allen’s vast technical versing in the processes involved – one which previously saw him in conflict with senior tutors whose own practical knowledge was lacking – has helped establish a critical rapport with the native weavers. Their engagement is much a two-way channel: observing them at work, Allen broadens his understanding of the scope of their craft skills, and at his instigation innovations are trialled and added to an ever-expanding technical repertoire. One recent new technique, on display in the likes of Lavender Field and Blue Moon, involves cutting into the carpet ground to achieve three-dimensional
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sunken passages. Trimming the top of the pile away, the shorn yarn also appears deeper in colour, effectively cheating two shades from one dye and dividing an otherwise ostensibly flat surface into shifting pitches of shadow and texture. The art of weaving has for many thousands of years held a mystic air. Since the age of Homer and beyond it has stood as a metaphor for authorship, the stitching of stories, the layering of times and places, people and cultures, intangible narrative and felt material. And so Allen’s kaleidoscopic views of England are now inextricably intertwined with the threads of the Himalayas; and with the memories of other travels, snapshots and flashbacks, some invocations deliberate, others automatic and instinctive, all potent distillations of a profound ‘spirit of place’. Next year John Allen turns 85; just two weeks ago, he eagerly discussed plans for his next collection. His energy and commitment, both boundless, are like his carpets a treasure to behold. Max Waterhouse
All carpets are hand-woven in Nepal using hand-spun and hand-dyed wool and silk. Each carpet is produced in an edition of 3 only. View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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2 Cerne Abbas, wool & silk, 142 x 82 cm, £3850
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3 End of Journey, Birling Gap, wool & silk, 118 x 86 cm, £3850
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4 Big Ben, wool, 122 x 90 cm, £3850
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5 Blue Moon, wool, 92 x 82 cm, ÂŁ3850
View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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6 Bluebell Wood, wool, 159 x 100 cm, £3850
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7 Boats, wool, 91 x 85 cm, £2750
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8 Groynes, wool & silk, 108 x 90 cm, £2950
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9 Hampshire Clump, wool, 83 x 83 cm, ÂŁ2950
View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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10 Lightning, wool, 91 x 125 cm, £2500
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11 Sunset, wool, 102 x 105 cm, £3250
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12 Peveril of the Peak, wool, 125 x 85 cm, £3850
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13 White House, wool, 72 x 108 cm, ÂŁ3250
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14 Pink Sea, wool & silk, 87 x 104 cm, £3850
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15 Red Boat, wool, 113 x 88 cm, £3850
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16 Pleasure Barge, wool, 114 x 87 cm, £3850
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17 Dales, wool, 89 x 80 cm, ÂŁ2750
View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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18 Wren Churches in Snow, wool, 137 x 100 cm, £3850
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19 Scarecrow, wool & silk, 109 x 121 cm, £4250
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20 West Pier, wool, 134 x 94 cm, £3250
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21 Lone Sailor, wool & silk, 104 x 123 cm, ÂŁ3850
View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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22 Railway Line, wool, 101 x 98 cm, £3850
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23 Sunflower, wool & silk, 164 x 100 cm, £3850
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24 Stonehenge, wool & silk, 119 x 129 cm, ÂŁ3850
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25 Lavender Field, wool, 123 x 133 cm, ÂŁ3850
View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
Biography 1934 Born in Matlock, Derbyshire BA Hons, Camberwell School of Art, London MA, Royal College of Art, London 1977 Set up the knitting department at the Royal College of Art in London 1985 Became a Fellow of the Royal College 1989 Left Royal College to concentrate on his own work including lectures, workshops and master classes 1989 Planned new design courses for the Nihon Vogue School in Japan 1993 Appointed consultant to the Victoria and Albert Museum including setting up the annual ‘Design for Knitting’ and ‘Art of the Stitch’ days 1997 Organised and selected the contemporary work for the Barcelona Terrassa Textiles Museum exhibition, ‘One Thousand Years of Knitting’. 1997 Compiled a short history of British knitting from 1940 to the present time 1998 Presented a paper to the National Knitting Forum, in Dallas Texas and at the Parsons School of Fashion and Textiles in New York 1999 Invited to become president of the Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Association 2000 Curated the Anglo-Dutch ‘New Concepts in Knitting’ exhibition for the Dutch National Textile Museum in Tilburg, Holland 2003 First one-man touring exhibition ‘Dreamtime Revisited’ 2008 Second one-man touring exhibition ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ 2014 ‘British Landscapes’ exhibition at the Millinery Works 2015 Exclusive product range produced with Jonathan Anderson for Loewe 2016 Workshop at Le Vieux Monastere, France 2018 Touring exhibition ‘Spirit of Place’
Allen currently lectures and conducts workshops, masterclasses and seminars, and continues to work as a consultant designer. He has appeared on television and radio programmes about design and textiles and was heavily involved in the development of the 12 week series of textile programmes for Anglia Television in 1993. He has written 5 books and writes regularly for numerous magazines and journals.
This catalogue has been produced to accompany John Allen’s December 2018 exhibition at: Goldmark Gallery, Orange Street, Uppingham, Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 www.goldmarkart.com
‘I fell in love with the colours. I thought they were the most incredible, modern thing that I’ve seen.’ Jonathan Anderson - Creative Director, Loewe
‘John Allen’s carpets intertweave English vistas with the threads of the Himalayas, snapshots and flashbacks, some deliberate, others automatic, all potent distillations of a spirit of place.’ Max Waterhouse
All carpets are hand-woven in Nepal using hand-spun and hand-dyed wool and silk. Each carpet is produced in an edition of 3 only. View and buy online at goldmarkart.com or call us on 01572 821424
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