London Craft Week: Weaving as Structure in the Work of Manuel López
The starting point for Manuel López’s recent work is a series of moves: Mexico City to London, then on to the United States. At London Craft Week, those shifts are translated into woven structures that hold both clarity and disruption. Presented as part of Future Icons Selects, López’s practice spans rug-making, tapestry and double-cloth construction. Weaving operates as both method and framework, shaped by migration and urban experience, and resolved into compositions defined by restraint, geometry and layered form.
Inspiration and ideation for Threads of Departure, Manuel Lopez.
At the centre is Threads of Departure, a body of work reflecting on migration, memory and the emotional capacity of textiles. The project began in 2020, when López moved from Mexico City to London to pursue an MFA during the pandemic. That period shaped a hands-on approach to making, focused on how textiles might foster emotional connection and long-term attachment. His response has been to explore empathy through abstracted urban landscapes, drawing on environments that quietly witness daily life. In 2024, a further move to the United States brought weaving to the centre of his daily practice. Working on a Glimåkra countermarch loom, López returned to the fundamentals of the discipline: tension, density, structure and material behaviour, where time at the loom became both routine and reflection, allowing ideas to emerge through the act of making.
Threads of Departure (Detail), Manuel Lopez.
The textiles unfold in layers. Using seven harnesses and three pattern systems, López constructs a wool ground, a linen tapestry surface and a loose warp left partially unwoven, elements that move between cohesion and separation to create compositions that feel balanced yet unsettled. Across his wider practice, related questions surface. In Shelter, textiles are approached as a means of fostering attachment, asking whether tactile experience might encourage longer relationships with objects. In Environment, woven, embroidered and knitted surfaces explore how textile can shape interior space, creating depth and intimacy through structure and layering.
Threads of Departure, handwoven by Manuel Lopez.
This attention to structure places López within a broader conversation around weaving as contemporary practice. Architectural references drawn from Mexico City and the Victorian details of San Francisco are translated into abstract forms, where rhythm and proportion take precedence over representation. The context of Future Icons Selects reinforces this position, bringing together over forty international makers and offering a space in which textile is encountered alongside other disciplines on equal terms, opening up new ways of engaging with weaving as both material and idea.
Portrait of Manuel Lopez, hand-weaving in the studio.
What comes through most clearly is weaving as a sustained process. Time is embedded in the structure, visible in the layering, tension and subtle variations that come from working by hand. Across London Craft Week, weaving appears in many forms, but here it is understood as a structure capable of holding memory, tracing movement and giving form to experience.
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Further Information:
Threads of Departure by Manuel Lopez will be on show at Future Icons Selects, as part of London Craft Week 2026.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Threads of Departure, handwoven by Manuel Lopez.
All further images as credited in captions and courtesy of the artist, Manuel Lopez.