Beyond the Baths: Designer at the Baths

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Designer at the Baths

I’m Christopher, a recent Textile Design Graduate of Bath School of Art and Design, and Ancient Textile Researcher who is a regular volunteer. During the past two years here at the Roman Baths, the building and its collection has provided a wonderful wealth of inspiration for my work.

I am a keen student of both history and design, constantly looking for ways to combine the two subjects coherently; with the help of the Roman Baths I have successfully discovered my niche as an Ancient Textile Researcher. During the final year of my degree, the ‘Developing Textile design’ module gave me the opportunity to produce a collection of woven textile samples inspired by Roman mosaics.

Woven sample based on Mosaics

Using a variety of different mosaics, to explore the geometric patterns of Roman mosaics, to develop a series of ‘colour and weave’ patterns to weave cloth samples. The mosaics include two from the Roman Baths collection, the geometric mosaic floor from Weymouth House, Bath and the mosaic from the Keynsham Roman Villa.

Exploring Geometric patterns: the Weymouth House mosaic, now in store

Through a series of observational drawing I broke down the mosaics into re-occurring patterns, developing them into repeatable weave blocks to weave the samples.

Observational drawing of the mosaic

Preparing for my Graduate Show, I returned to the Roman Baths again, this time taking a series of photographs of the exterior of the building, while there was scaffolding all over the building to do maintenance of the Pump Room roof. I used the juxtaposition of the scaffolding over the windows and columns of the building, to create a series of tartans and checks. This was done by breaking them down into blocks of colour and lines created by the overlaying features of the building.

Breaking down images into colour and lines

Alongside the module I experimented with natural dyes, to discover the effect of dyeing natural coloured wool on the depth of colour produced during the dye process. Trying to keep to similar colours to what would have been available to the Romans; therefore I used Madder (Rubia Tinctorum), Weld (Reseda Luteola) and Indigo (Indigofera Tintoria).

NB. Even the chalk used in the dye process, is from the Baths (used in conservation, as sacrificial mortaring in the pavement around the Great bath.)

Natural Dye Experiments

The module concluded with the presentation of my work in the Textile Design Degree Show at Bath School of Art and Design in June 2014, where I created a gallery space, that combined aspects of research and design.