The Peter Collingwood Ethnographic Collection
Peter Collingwood (1922–2008) was one of the pre-eminent British artist weavers of the 20th century. Originally trained as a doctor, he began collecting textiles in 1946 while working for the Red Cross in Transjordan. He later trained as a weaver with such pioneering figures as Ethel Mairet, Barbara Sawyer and Alistair Morton, before setting up his own workshop in London in 1953. With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures scheme in 2009, the Crafts Study Centre acquired Collingwood’s internationally significant collections, including his ethnographic textile collection gathered from around the world, a tools collection, his own samples (including rug samples and braids), a number of finished pieces, and an important paper archive of documents. This funding also led to the production of a digital resource which examines the ethnographic collection in more detail, and the curiosity which led to it, fuelled by an obsession with technique, structure and invention.
