J288 The Journal for WSD

There she was involved in the women’s suffrage movement and set up a weaving workshop to enable the local women to earn a living. She enlisted in the army as a handweaver in 1918 and began to train as an occupational therapist. She used weaving in her treatment of injured soldiers and then in mental health hospitals. In 1922 she set up the Shuttle-Craft Guild – teaching a correspondence course in weaving, as well as selling yarns and equipment. Amongst her publications were The Shuttle Craft Book of American Handweaving in 1928 and Byways in Handweaving in 1954. Mary Black was raised in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She built her first loom aged eight, having seen a picture of a loom used by indigenous people. In 1919 she enrolled on a three-month course for ‘ward occupation aides’ and was then deployed to a veterans’ tuberculosis sanatorium. She spent 20 years in the US, taking on roles in the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). She spent four years at the Milwaukee Sanatorium, preparing a handbook on the treatment of mentally ill service personnel while also working on her book The Key to Weaving. On her return to Canada in 1943 she was appointed director of the Handcrafts Division of Nova Scotia. She started local weaving guilds and served as Honorary President of the Guild of Canadian Weavers. It is more difficult to find references to British weaver/ occupational therapists. Alice Mary

Weaving and Wellbeing So far, I have only found two pieces of research focusing on weaving or including a substantial number of weavers. Jill Riley, an occupational therapist and weaver, kindly passed on her paper written in 2008 describing her study of a Welsh Guild of weavers. She was also weave editor of the Journal WSD from 2014-2019. Ann Futterman Collier (2011), a clinical psychologist, interviewed 821 textile makers, 72% of whom wove regularly, the third most practised craft after knitting and sewing, although many enjoyed several textile crafts. Sarah Neubert (2021) wrote a piece for Handwoven magazine describing how weaving could help to relieve symptoms of anxiety. Five areas emerge: 1. Skill mastery Learning to weave involves learning new skills and constantly adding to these. There is a sense of achievement and creativity which can be demonstrated to friends and family with gifts or by selling items. Courses are available online or in person for further development and each weaver decides how far they will go. Social media abounds with advice on choice of looms. I was initially amazed that more than one was necessary – I now have four, having sold a fifth.

English (1891-1975) organised simple looms to be sent out to Prisoners of War in 1939-1945 and several recent obituaries of notable weavers in previous editions of the Journal WSD mention their careers in occupational therapy, notably Mary Keer (1928-2020) and Anne Lander (1934-2018). Weaving continued to be used therapeutically in hospitals for the physically and mentally ill. Floor looms were often adapted so that shafts were raised by a system of pulleys, designed to encourage movement in injured limbs. In 1967, there were 26 references to weaving in a standard occupational therapy textbook but by 1990, there were none. The duration of time of hospital admissions, both in physical and mental health units, reduced considerably. The quest for occupational therapy to follow a medical model, as shown by the loom adaptations, resulted in the loss of the enjoyment and sense of achievement in creating fabric out of yarn which the early occupational therapists had recognised.

A moment of ‘flow’

Photos by Lesley Lougher unless otherwise specified

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Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers 288, Winter 2023