Philippa Brock
Philippa has 22 years’ experience as a designer, researcher, educator and artist, graduating from Goldsmiths’ College and The Royal College of Art, London. She is also a Lead Researcher in The Textile Futures Research Centre www.tfrc.org.uk . She was awarded The Worshipful Company of Weavers Silver Medal in 2014.
Her practice lies in both hand and digital textiles, materials and structure investigation and investigates making methods within these fields. Known particularly for her 3D engineered digital industrially woven jacquard, her work also includes, researching and developing sustainable textiles, new yarn development prototyping, e-woven textiles, designing seasonal textile trend packages, including for the Taiwan Textile Federation and developing swatches for the international textile industries, both fashion and interiors. She has developed a range of ‘on loom’ finishing process exploring innovative design, yarn and structure combinations.
Clients have included VF Corporation, Taiwan Textile Federation, The Medical Research Council, various fashion and interior companies and in 2014 was awarded the Silver Medal from The Worshipful Company of Weavers for her outstanding contribution to education, industry and research.
Her work from her ‘Self Assembly’ series for the science/art project: ‘Nobel Textiles’ is in the Crafts Council permanent collection, and also her work is in private collections.
Most recently she has exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Montréal Centre for Contemporary Textiles, Canada: in group exhibitions at The Fashion Gallery, Hong Kong, The Design Museum, UK, The Shenzhen Modern Art Museum, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou, China and the Design Museum London.
Her work is featured in many publications and journals and her research/design practice pushes the boundaries of what is possible within the field of textiles by exploring and documenting process as well as the end artefacts.
Philippa is also editor of The Weave Shed, a free community resource site for weavers, with a blog www.theweaveshed.org
Jo Pierce
Jo Pierce has 20 years experience as designer, educator, researcher and artist. Currently in role as Senior Lecturer, Print Pathway Leader on the BA (Hons) Textile Design Course at Central Saint Martins since 2007 and a member of the Textiles Future Research Centre at Central Saint Martins. www.tfrc.org.uk
Jo’s design practice focuses on the boundaries between hand and digital design techniques for printed textiles, designed through the exploration of both traditional print process and digital production technologies. The rise of global local and the evolution of home technology, the last decade has seen phenomenal advancement into home printing capabilities allowing the rise of DIY production for textile printing. This combined with the rising craft revolution means more and more people are crafting and making for themselves. This relationship between craft and digital is a focus for Jo’s research and ‘handmade digital’ a driving aesthetic to explore in her textiles.
Research is concerned with the notion of design and participation; user centered making to foster more connectivity and attachment through personal experience. Its interest is based in opening up the process of design for the end user as a form of increasing a sense of wellbeing and inclusivity. Democratizing of the design process, Jo’s re-surface wallpapers and patterns encouraged the user to ‘join in’ creating pattern and image to complete the design. This process of allowing the user to design aims to generate greater connectedness with a product and the process of making and participation to increase longevity and life cycle of consumer products.
Through teaching and course based practice Jo is constantly building up a database of materials and resources available for today’s textile printer, expanding the knowledge of both hard and soft print substrates, print pastes and print materials to push the potential of textile print for future production.
Jo’s work has been exhibited and is included in the V&A Prints collection and has featured in publications and journals. She has worked to commission, delivered workshops and run seminars.