Twining & Coiling ~ Exquisite Indigenous Australian Weaving
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What an opportunity I had today, and in my own town of Taree. Weavers from Bula’bula Arts in Ramingining, central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory are here to teach basketry in a three day workshop. Clara Matandatpi and Marley Djangarri helped us to start weaving a basket.
Although the weaving technique is generally called coiling and twining, it is referred to as weaving here in Australia. The weaving is so expressive and beautiful that it moves me to tears. You can feel and visualise the land and country by its colouring, shapings and textures. Meeting the makers added to my appreciation of the great richness of cultural expression held within these containers. The Manning Regional Art Gallery is exhibiting the Bula’bula weavers work which consists of coiled baskets in many shapes and handle types, twined dilly bags, twined large mats and looped string bags. There are also sculptural animal images which are delightful and surprising. There is nothing like seeing skilled hands creating this work. I have studied lots of basket beginnings but it was something of a revelation to see how to start a basket in the ‘buttonhole’ stitch which was quite different to any technique I had read about. We started by preparing some fresh Pandanus then moved on to starting a coiled basket base with pre natural dyed and dried pandanus. The colours of the dyes really make the work distinctive. String bag looping was fascinating and we saw Clara spin the yarn for the bag on her thigh in the traditional method.My jeans weren’t conducive to this – sadly. (see Curiousweaver May 95 – PDF for instructions on thigh spinning) Clara and Marley are Yolngu and their Ramingining community can be seen in the film Ten Canoes
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This is an exceptional book that contains information about textile design and weaving techniques, some of which were new to me. 
I’ve been thinking about beginner weavers in general. There is something exciting about beginnings. Learning something new allows no preconceived ideas about anything much. Anything may be possible and experimented with. This is why I think it is so important to be around beginners. When we know more about the rules and conventions our choices become more refined but also much narrower.
