I once bought a rug in the grand bazaar in Istanbul; many people do. I didn’t set out that day to buy anything, but as soon as I wandered into their little shop, and the glass door shut, I knew how this would end. I let my hand touch the fabrics, and a man in a cap came lumbering from the alcove, smiling. He whisked the rug from under my fingertips, and threw it to the floor: “Like it?” I’m not sure I said anything as he found another rug, bellyflopping it on to the previous. “Or this?”
An assistant was now involved, and a pageant of reds, yellows and blacks spilled across the laminate flooring like a knocked drink. “What a mess,” I thought. Getting to my knees, I dug into the pile midway, so close I could smell the age of the threads; I found one and thought: “That will do.”
I imagined that same ancient smell as I peered in close to the weavings of Anni Albers, currently exhibited in a retrospective of her work at Tate Modern. Imagined, because their scent and feel are denied to the viewer, the textiles rigid behind glass. Some are what Albers called “pictorial weavings”, woven modern artworks, as opposed to her textiles intended for architecture or interiors. Albers joined the Bauhaus as a student in 1922; in the textile room (derisively known by other students as the women’s workshop) she was influenced by Gunta Stölzl, who taught her how to apply the concepts of modern art to weaving. The school famously focused on how arts, craft, architecture could be transferred into domestic or industrial contexts. Two conceptions of what weaving is – on one hand, an ancient, traditional craft, and on the other, a medium attuned to modernist preoccupations with colour and pattern – provide the context for a career, and an exhibition, which blurs the lines between practical utility and fine art.