Charlotte Karin
About
Charlotte Karin is a designer specialising in woven constructed textiles. Her practice is centred around the contemplative philosophy of depicting memory, fabricating this through handwoven textiles using the delicate technique’s leno and painted warps. Translating the narrative through the essence sculptural transients. Articulating a mood through an immersive ambiance.
She has developed a unique and personal approach to her process and concepts in textile weaving and construction, which stems from a highly exploratory focus.
Prior to an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, Charlotte completed a BA in Textile Design at The University for Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey.
Charlotte’s MA dissertation The Memories we Share received a distinction. The writing reveals the importance of Memory. A fundamental narrative, ability, and experience. Elevated by poets and philosophers as a phantasma. Exploring the relationship between recollections, life, and how we construct ourselves around memories. This research continues to support her practice.
Statement
MEMOR
Mindful-Remembering-Unforgetting-Commemorative
The core of my work is to convey a sense of awe one may feel when witnessing natural phenomena (that of memory as metaphor), intersecting with the day-to-day life. The beauty in the tension, weaving to convey this duality.
This project takes a philosophical concept challenging the restlessness that exists in memory.
I have fabricated a sensitive, holistic collection, each piece explores a different narrative, from the material, technical process to the structure from weaving. Each is an individual piece, yet they all speak a similar language. They materialise the immaterial, the fragmented.
My intentions for the textile collection are to convey a conversation between the permanent and the impermanent, the despair and comfort, and the many layers gathered of memory collections.
The pieces communicate the research and sensations through tactility and construction, becoming stories of an instinctual nature where the occasional twist and turns of the weft bring emotions, questions and perhaps understanding to the surface.
This is a collection for the fashion context which I have further developed into garments through a collaboration with Hannah Cooper.
Material Development
Material Narratives
This project began during the wet, moody wither I foraged for materials, harvested flax, roots of dead plants, peeling away bark, nettle, stems and leaves.
I noticed that the materials changed from their collected state into more brittle surfaces when I had left them alone for several days. I further distorted them; twisting, plying, and spinning, connecting with the rawness and dried substance, passing through my fingers, transitioning between conditions.
I questioned whether the materials stories embodied through textile could be made visible? Focusing on the imperfections that can be celebrated in in this matter, this involved experimental compositions that created space for a dialogue between; what the material once was and how it can be preserved, transformed, or re-designed though technical structures. This thereby aims to extend the narrative, contextualising the philosophy.
The Collection
Pampas Grass Material Qualities
Allowing these to encapsulate and lead the design. The structural properties it adds, for embellishment or add form through composition. This highlights the technical process and discovery of the materials possibilities. This brings the material to the forefront of the design. Allowing these not only to act as inspiration but further encapsulate themselves within the sample.
Traces
These abstractions tell stories of their material lives; the falx breaking and processing itself or the roots disintegrating. The person who wears them alters the design overtime. An everchanging textile, the memory of the material and the person become one, creating a new encounter with the material and its memory moving forward.
Using these foraged materials that do not necessarily have a clear function, integrating something that through being worn will change. These pieces therefore offer further development with this abstract medium and simultaneously conceptual samples can be commercial as inspirations. Pushing textiles in new constructive directions developing through adding wires and other materials that lend themselves to these industrial processes to give a similar theme.
Compositions
These designs share the conversation happening through technique and materials. The woven design is similar, overlapping the overshot material, yet distinctively different in tone, dyes, and weft yarns. They communicate with one another through the composition and simultaneously and are completely individual.
Technique
The process of wrapping the yarns, consideration, time, withholding the warps story, concealing areas that are required to stay innocent and white. Unlike others which bring the marks to the forefront of the design. Transformed further through tensioning the warp.
Storytelling Accessories
Fashion Collaboration
Initial designs
To incorporate the designs into my desired context I collaborated with MA RCA Fashion Student Hannah Cooper.
Our collaboration was focused on the material properties. Our vision for bespoke lies in the individualisation of processes and hand craft techniques. The collaboration gave an insight into working with a fashion designer, understanding the way a pattern is produced and how one might construct a garment by engineering the design through weave.
Handwoven fabric designed for Spring/Summer 2024
The jacket is made from 5 meter's of handwoven wool/linen cloth with sections of pampas grass adding structure to oppose conventional tailoring methods. The skirt is woven with a delectate lace technique, spacing the warp and weft to create undulating lines, floating around skirt. Tailored and constructed into ready to wear fashion garment' in collaboration with Hannah Cooper.