From the Department of Conservation & Technology ofThe Courtauld Institute of Art came the invitation to share the research and reconstructions of historic canvases.I feel honoured !
Author: Helena Loermans
Owner at Lab O, a laboratory for handwoven cavas.
Connecting craft-entrepreneurship-art-history-technology and science
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helena_Loermans
“Deciphering the Textile Layer of Historic Paintings”
Textiles with a complex woven pattern were used as painters’ canvases by Italian and Spanish painters throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The X-Ray technology reveals these patterns in the paintings and allows us to follow the position of each thread in the textile, both horizontally and vertically. Drawing all crossing points identifies the repeat of the pattern and a weave draft can be generated from this. Reconstructions have been woven in linen on a handloom. The presentation will guide you through the story of this project.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Helena Loermans is a former laboratory technician, engaged in histochemical and morphometrical investigation of normal- and pathologic muscle in the mouse, (Nijmegen University, The Netherlands) and is now weaving in her studio in Odemira. Lab O is a laboratory for the research and reconstruction of canvases of old master paintings. Its mission is: Recovering and sharing the knowledge of historic canvases. Loermans studied Jacquard Design in Florence, including textile analysis. She has a long term experience as a fine production weaver and as a weaving teacher and tutor in various European funded projects for Rural Development, Projects on Reintegration in Society as well as for adults with limited capacities.
upcoming presentation ICCOM-CC Paintings Working Group
(ICOM members only)
announcement :
Helena Loermans Owner of Lab O, Portugal.
The Textile Layer of Paintings.
Helena Loermans will share how she has approached reconstructing different textiles used by painters as canvas.
Helena has used technical studies and x-radiograph images to reconstruct weave patterns in order to re-create them.
While art historians and paintings conservators have meticulously studied the paintings of the Old Masters, Helena has found there is a comparative lack of information on the characteristics of the canvas itself as a textile.
Helena has recently presented her approach to studying historic canvases at the Conserving Canvas symposium at Yale and to participants in the Conserving Canvas Initiative of the Getty Foundation.”
upcoming presentations:
16-9-2021 Euroweb round table conference
6-10-2021 ICOM CC paintings workgroup; open for members of the working group
10-10-2021 Weefnetwerk Nederland (in dutch language)
…sharing the knowledge in 2021:
Zoom presentations have been a great opportunity to share the research at
Lab O on the historic canvases and textile fragments located in the museums:
Conserving Canvas Zoom Presentations series:
8th July 2021
email announcement by The Getty Foundation::
“Dear Colleague,
Thank you for RSVPing to our Conserving Canvas Zoom Presentation series. Our next presentation will be held this Thursday, July 8th at 9:00am PT (Los Angeles time). This is a very special presentation (outside of the Conserving Canvas grants) and very relevant to the paintings conservation field. Please be sure to join!
Presented by Helena Loermans, the talk is titled “Canvas: The Textile Layer in Paintings.” Helena is the founder of Lab O and a Dutch weaver working in Portugal. She will talk about her research and reconstruction of a-typical canvas patterns.
Please note that the presentation will be recorded (not including the Q&A) and that we use the same Zoom link for each presentation.
You may use the link below to join:
See you soon,
Getty Foundation
Getty Foundation | getty.edu
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A 3 min video poster presentation at the CTR conference “Old Textiles-More Possibilities: Weaving sources together” in Copenhagen
15th June 2021
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Zoom presentation in “PONTO textile art in perspective”
“Preserving, defending and /or renewing the role of traditional textile centers? Évora-Arraiolos
12-13 June 2021
El Greco
1541-1614
Note that the canvases are both woven on a loom with 14 shafts…
El Greco
1541-1614
Find the (almost invisible) differences in the pattern of the two canvases in the first row. The warp threads were threaded in the same design in the loom , the weaver skipped a few weft passes in each repeat. Not a mistake!
scroll here:
El Greco
Titian
1490-1576
a visual story
Velázquez
1599-1660
“An Old Women Cooking Eggs” 1618, one of Diego Velázquez’s masterworks is painted on a plain weave canvas.
Only seven paintings, also from his early Seville perod, are on a canvas with a complex pattern.
At www.labo.pt you will find four of these patterns analysed.
Work in progress….
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/…/old-woman-cooking…
seven reconstructions of the canvas in Old Master paintings
