the velvet project

As of June 2023, I am exploring how velvet hand-weaving’s slow, tactile intimacy can be communicated through digital technologies. Over the course of three years I will be diving deep into the depths of velvet, aiming to externalise a deeply internalised process and create a knowable experience of velvet weaving.
Here is where I keep diary-based updates, covering the progress, hiccups and inspiration of the project.
This three-year artistic research possible is part of the DiGiTal programme, funded by the BCP and housed at the Wearable Computing department at the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
Bad day
Because not every day at the loom is a good day.
Sunlit bobbins
Just some bobbins basking in the sun
Counting heddles
Today I changed the heddles on my loom
What’s in a velvet?
Reading the data in a square of velvet.
Winding bobbins
Loading the first 150 bobbins with doses of silk.
Refining rods
Collaborating with goldsmiths to craft velvet rods
Historic velvet
Gathering clues from 15th century velvet.
Rough rods
First forays into recreating velvet weaving rods
Preliminary pompom
Testing the velvet-suitability of a mystery silk
Grain store
Stockpiling carving experience for future use
Datenschutzerklärung — Impressum
©Emma Wood 2025