Mountain Looms and Tidal Threads: Ós Textile Residency in Iceland

In Blönduós, on Iceland’s northwestern coast, textiles seem to belong to the landscape as much as to the studio. The Icelandic Textile Center sits beside the glacial river Blanda in a former women’s college where weaving once formed part of everyday education. That legacy lingers in the long corridors and in the presence of hand looms that have anchored the building for decades. Today the centre hosts a residency that draws artists, researchers and textile practitioners from around the world, each arriving with a personal question and leaving with new threads of enquiry.

The Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, located in the historic building, Blönduós Women's College. Image: Textilmidstöd Islands. 

The facilities support both tradition and experimentation. The weaving studio forms the heart of the residency in a generous room lined with Glimåkra and Öxabäck floor looms, table looms, warping mills and winding equipment. The steady movement of treadles and shuttles gives the space a quiet rhythm.

The Loom Studio at The Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós

Across the hall, a dye kitchen offers stainless steel vats and burners for work with natural or synthetic dyes. Some residents bring pigments from home; others harvest colour locally from seaweed, iron-rich earth or hardy Icelandic flora. A making studio houses sewing machines, felting equipment and cutting tables, while a small library provides books on Nordic textiles and fibre history for those working in theory as much as in thread...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Hélène Magnússon (The Icelandic Knitter), from 'FIRE AND ICE AND WOOL: Hélène Magnússon takes us on a tour of Iceland', Selvedge Issue 80, Craft

All further images as credited in photo captions.