Weaving DNA is a collaboration between Icelandic product designer Hanna Dís Whitehead and Scottish textile designer Claire Anderson. Together they re-appropriate traditional Nordic and Scottish textiles, examining the ways in which these represent and shape aspects of national identity.
In the project they go back in time, exploring Scottish and Icelandic crafts, all the way back to their common Viking ancestors. The objective was, among other things, to consider what role crafts have played in moulding the identity of the two nations, and to compare traditions in this field.
The designers have gone on to seek to imbue Icelandic and Scottish textiles with new meaning, by intertwining methods and features of crafts and national identity. The result is a world where the aim is to create a common material identity, using new methods and materials.
From this fusion of visual cultural heritage, the designers put forward ideas of fabrics in which the Nordic and Scottish textile traditions converge into a single “tribe.”
The cape is made out of Icelandic wool yarn carefully put together in tassels in various colours hand sewn into a fabric.
Weaving DNA has been exhibited in the Icelandic National museum & Lighthouse- Scotlands centre for design and architecture.
Photos by Tian Khee Siong.
