Florence & Florence other textile histories

Julia Holderness has explored her own textile making alongside that of Canterbury artist and teacher Florence Akins (1906 – 2012). Re-working a range of archive materials from the Macmillan Brown Library & Heritage Collections that relate to Akins and her teaching of textiles at the Canterbury College School of Art, Holderness presents their possible entanglement with the international Bauhaus movement.

The documents include lecture notes by Akins and other instructional resources such as colour diagrams. Connections are also made with Florence Weir (1899-1979), currently the only known New Zealander to have studied at the Bauhaus. In 1936 Weir designed the costumes and sets for a local Christchurch production, and these were said to have been inspired by her time at the Bauhaus. The production was never staged publicly, and in the absence of any surviving documentation, Holderness imagines these designs in both a workbook and textile series.