Three Tea Towels, Index Collection

The TextielLab at the Textiel Museum in Tilburg, Netherlands, is a studio for experimentation with state of the art knitting and weaving technologies. The lab regularly invites designers working in a variety of disciplines to conduct research and explore new capabilities using the lab’s machines. In 2012, the Dutch design studio Raw Color was invited to participate. Raw Color’s young principals, Daniera ter Haar and Christoph Brach, work primarily in graphic design and photography. When they were invited to TextielLab, the designers had been engaged in a series of color experiments—including using vegetables to create printing inks—to examine the relationship between materiality and color. Working with the team at Tilburg, der Haar and Brach created the Index Collection of tea towels and blankets, which explores concepts from graphic design in woven form. In terms of both technology and terminology, there is surprisingly little overlap between print and weaving.
The Index Collection uses a series of boxes, similar to the screen keys seen on the sides of printed fabrics, to express the intensity of color in each surface, from 10% to 100%. In weaving, this variation in color intensity is created by altering the weave structure to bring more of the colored yarn to the surface. In addition to color intensity, the three tea towels proposed for acquisition form a series that shows monotone, duotone, and multitone examples of color blending as executed in weaving.

Three Tea Towels, Index Collection; Woven by Textile Museum; The Netherlands; organic cotton; H x W: 67.3 x 55.9 cm (26 1/2 x 22 in.); Gift of Raw Color; 2013-22-2-1/3