Special Exhibitions
A Common Thread:
Weaving Traditions of Norway and Sweden
October 10, 2005 to February 20, 2006
Anna Hong Gallery, museum’s main building
The exhibition is offered to the public in 2005, the year in which the world will celebrate the centennial of the peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. A Common Thread will serve as a keystone for the Conference on Norwegian Woven Textiles, inspiring dialogue and challenging participants to view Norwegian textiles within their broader Scandinavian and global contexts. A Common Thread: Weaving Traditions of Norway and Sweden is sponsored in part by Helen Garnaas of Minneapolis, Minn.
Celebrating the host of similarities in two textile heritages, A Common Thread: Weaving Traditions of Norway and Sweden will also recognize the characteristic elements that distinguish these neighboring traditions. Textiles from the family bedstead, often the most decorative in the household, will be the focus of the exhibition.
Textile artifacts brought to America by Norwegian immigrants will be drawn from the collection of Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum. Swedish handweaving will be on loan from Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Wash., the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, Minn., and the private collection of Tom Ericson.
The exhibition will have two major themes: the broad strokes of similarity, and the fine lines of distinction, to be found within the textile traditions of Norway and Sweden. In addressing these interrelated themes, the following elements will be explored: customary use; techniques and variations; aesthetics (pattern and color selection); and the social, economic, and physical conditions that provided a backdrop to the development of these elements.
The guest curator of A Common Thread is Katherine Larson, a Seattle-area researcher, author, and teacher of weaving. In 2001 Larson curated a major exhibition of Norwegian coverlets for Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, in cooperation with Vesterheim. The exhibition traveled to Fargo, N. Dak.; West Vancouver, B. C.; and Anchorage, Aka. Larson wrote The Woven Coverlets of Norway (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001) as a companion to the exhibition, though it stands alone as an excellent resource on Norwegian åklær. Larson commented on her work and the exhibition A Common Thread:
Years ago I returned from a year of study in Norway, energized by the textiles I had seen. On the shelves of my university library at home I found many books about Swedish weaving traditions, but almost nothing about Norway. Certainly the Swedish weaving techniques seemed similar, but the results just did not look the same. Perhaps these simply were not textiles my grandmother would have woven and thus were dismissed for the time being. Undoubtedly the “better press” enjoyed by Swedish textiles spurred my own efforts to understand Norwegian textile traditions and to make them more accessible to Americans, an effort that culminated in The Woven Coverlets of Norway. I am excited now to be revisiting the subject of Swedish textiles, but this time with a sense of curiosity rather than indifference. Norway and Sweden share many traditions, not least of which is their textile heritage. But what exactly are the differences that seem so evident, within a textile tradition that seems so similar? That question is the basis for the exhibition A Common Thread: Weaving Traditions of Norway and Sweden.