One loom, six metres in length, currently dominates the great, light-filled weaving hall of Edinburgh’s renowned tapestry workshop, Dovecot Studios. At its side sits Master Weaver Naomi Robertson, threading yarn from countless dangling bobbins between and around taut vertical strings, each dabbed with tiny, code-like markings. The tapestry, which is growing slowly upwards from the base of the loom, forms a spread of pinks, reds and golds, shifting horizontally through rich tonal ranges. The subject is as yet unclear.
Given the intensity of the colour in this tapestry, it may seem surprising that its architect should be the painter Alison Watt, known for her bleached-out portraiture and paintings of white cloth. The tapestry is destined for the Theatre Royal in Glasgow where, at the behest of Scottish Opera, it will hang over three floors of a new extension due to open next summer. In commissioning this work, which will be the largest piece of public art at the theatre, Scottish Opera has satisfied a longstanding desire to work with both Dovecot and Alison Watt. It has also set in motion a lengthy and complex process of creative collaboration quite unlike any other.
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When Watt was approached to design the tapestry for Scottish Opera, she naturally turned to painting to produce the initial image, which now stands beside the loom at Dovecot, dwarfed by the frame of the tapestry before it. The painting shows a folding length of fabric, patterned and richly coloured. A dark gorge cuts across the design sucking the eye into a deep, lightless chasm of the kind found so often in Watt’s work. Where this image differs is in the palette and the pattern, both inspired by Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.
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