PUTTING A SPIN ON TRADITION
Gudrun Robinson has combined original designs, Portuguese wool and the unusual skill of locker hooking to create a myriad of beautiful and luxurious items for the home. She has experienced so much interest in her work that she has now written a "How To" book.
Carolyn Kain reports:
Gudrun has a three-word motto: Patience, Practice, Persistence. She applies it consistently to the out-of-the-ordinary skills she has developed over 23 years of working with wool.
Her original interest and later skill in spinning was inspired by a visit to the Orkney Islands when she was a university student. She fell for the islands, took up an affair with the spinning wheel, and left her university in Germany to go and live there. She stayed for ten years, moving eventually to the Algarve in 1988.
"Spinning is a therapeutic activity", says Gudrun. "I can spin sheep's wool and many other natural fibres to order." Alpaca, cashmere, silk, mohair, and llama are the most usual, but almost unbelievably she also has requests to spin the hair of cats and dogs by their loving owners. She explains: "Over the course of five years one lady had accumulated two kilos of hair from her German Shepherd dog. She wanted it spun into two-ply wool suitable for making a blanket. I also had a Portuguese lady from Portimão who wanted the hair from both her cat and dog spun into knitting wool.
"Whatever type of wool or hair it must first be carefully washed and dried and carded so that all the fibres face in the same direction. It is then ready to be spun into a single fibre and further plied on the spinning wheel to make a two-ply strand".
She has such pride in the finished woollen thread it is surprising that Gudrun did not take the more normal route from spinning wheel to weaving loom. Instead, her textile adventure really began when she was introduced to the aged craft of locker hooking. This is a method of stitching still used by a few rare individuals in Ireland, Australia and America but unknown in Portugal.
A cotton canvas with a regular hole pattern is the base, the locker hook being the tool. It is a sturdy needle with a crochet hook at one end and an eye at the other. The hook is used to pull up loops of fleece through a row of canvas holes. The two are secured together by pulling the needle, threaded with the spun wool, through the holes to produce a row of locker hooked stitches.
Gudrun combines this technique with the natural coloured wool of the Churra Algarvia sheep. The finished texture is exceedingly tactile and, in the case of her rugs, feeling with the feet is like seeing is believing!
She also has an eye for something original and a desire to use local trimmings to enhance the whole. For instance, she has created wall hangings embroidered with storks sitting on a nest of real palm leaves and windmills, with cane and pole supports to hold out the sails. Each item is painstakingly produced and an heirloom in its own right. In the works of Gudrun quoting Keats, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever".
The next development of her work was customer-inspired and led to the venture of carpet making and the famous carpet town of Arraiolos. Gudrun explains how this happened: "Up until this point I had only ever worked on smaller pieces with natural, un-dyed wool, but this customer wanted to commission a sizeable coloured carpet. I accepted the commision, not knowing where I was going to get the wool from or how to make a carpet on such a scale." The craft of Arraiolos rug making has survived for more than three hundred years here in southern Portugal. Even today in some of the more remote villages of the Algarve, such as Monte Vascao and Currais, rugs are created in traditional design using an oblique cross-stitch, which gives a plaited finish to the work. In the town of Arraiolos, just north of Èvora, Gudrun found wool already spun and dyed with a choice of 350 colours. She purchased the raw material for her commission and, probably for the first time ever, the famous Arraiolos wool was about to be locker hooked.
In order to support the carpet whilst she was working on it, she had to build a full-scale rig, a daunting challenge in itself. Four months later the commissioned carpet was successfully completed. Gudrun now had a carpet rig and the choice of 350 colours for her creative skills and locker hook. She enthuses about the possibilities of colour co-ordinating carpets to furnishings, emblazoning family crests onto wall hangings and making runners to precisely fit her clients' corridor requirements.
She frequently demonstrates her skills and shows off her finished items at 'Feiras de Serra' around the Algarve and has created a great deal of interest. "Portuguese ladies, especially, seem extremely keen to learn how to use the locker hook", she says. "This gave me the idea of writing a book which I have recently completed."
Gudrun's work is on sale at 'Home and Things' in Vale de Parra, Albufeira. If, however, you happen to have a couple of kilos of pet hair waiting to be spun, you should contact her direct!
Gudrun Robinson, Tel 289-991159, email gcrobinson@netc.pt
Good Life Magazine, August 2002
*Photo shows Gudrun spinning.
