Ethel Mairet’s Textile Biotechnics and the Aesthetics of Materials

Abstract

Scholars have generally analyzed the weaver Ethel Mairet’s work in terms of her craft practice and textile objects but have generally neglected her written work. More than a practitioner, Mairet read contemporary architectural and social theory, and her written work responds to discussions of design, technology, and biology found in Lewis Mumford, Sir Patrick Geddes, and László Moholy-Nagy. This engagement is most clearly signalled by her adoption and extension of the concept of “biotechnics.” In this article, I argue that this concept allowed Mairet to mediate between embodied and historical knowledge, tradition and modernism, and, by positioning the craft workshop as a research laboratory, between hand craft and industrial production. This article begins by surveying discussions of biotechnics among leading architects and designers, highlighting Mairet’s unique appropriation of the concept for the histories of materials, and textiles in particular. I then examine two sites of Mairet’s engagement in biotechnics: the school and the workshop. Mairet developed teaching programs for primary-school students based on the idea that the study of textiles and their biotechnics offered a method for understanding how materials were shaped by historical processes. In this way, she used textiles to connect students to history, geography, biology, and other subjects of study in science and culture. Research in biotechnics was thus not limited to scientific spaces, but had been practiced throughout the history of craft by sheep breeders, spinners, dyers, and, finally, weavers. Next, I examine how Mairet conceived that the weaver would use this knowledge in determining how to “express” a fiber’s biotechnics. I compare Mairet’s approach to that of Bauhaus weaving, demonstrating that despite considerable agreement on approaches to the craft, Mairet’s approach is distinctive in its treatment of history and materials. Finally, I suggest how Mairet’s approach to materials positions her as a modernist, yet one who remains connected to historical and traditional knowledge. Biotechnics allowed Mairet to mediate between her Arts and Crafts values and roots and the imperatives of modern industrial production so persistent in the debates of her period and subsequent scholarly literature.