Brendan Joseph Madden

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Stories Woven To Wear

I’ve always been fascinated by how things are made. My first piano lesson involved deconstructing the instrument to understand how the keys and hammers, pedals and strings and even the wooden frame all worked together to create the notes. When it came to what I wanted to do, I always wanted to design, to create, and I have always believed in a way of seeing that goes beyond sight, that involves touch.

My grandfather, who was blind, was a basket weaver, and growing up, it was just natural and normal that it was with his hands that he saw, and so when I went to the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2006, intending to study Graphic Design, I was surprised to find myself switching course and embarking on a Degree in Woven Textiles, but there was something so drawing about it, the way in which the mathematics of pattern creation, the tactility of various fibres, and the blending of colour and surface all came together was exciting and inspiring. I realised I could explore and understand the world around me through weaving.

The very first time I sat at a loom to weave, it just came naturally to me, and so rather than it being something I learnt and then applied, the process of how I arrived here, having business where I design and create woven stories was more a journey of identity and of questioning what it is that I want to say through what I weave.

My signature woven structure is based on the way in which the surface of water in a lake seems interacts with the changing light of the sky, I called it ‘a dance of lough and light’, and I refined and developed this, exploring the rules of ancient Arabic Islamic pattern and structure, and also early Celtic Christian illuminated manuscripts, and what was interesting was that the ratios in all of these were quite organic, despite being heavily ornamented. My first collections branched into two lines: One explored surface and texture through touch in a grid pattern; and the other used this signature structure as the basis to tell stories about moments and places where there were interesting effects of light and colour.

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