Laura Adburgham is a multi-award-winning weaver whose work spans across art, craft and design. Her practice offers bespoke textile design services for industry and a fashion and interiors swatch collection. A range of one-of-a-kind handwoven scarves are available from the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery in London.
Inspired by intricate structures and irregular details found within the natural world, designs are developed through a circular working approach between expressive drawing, haptic model making and sampling on the loom. Syncopated patterns and architectonic geometrics create striking visual effects, exploiting the potential of material properties and woven techniques. Starting with natural yarns such as linen, wool, paper and silk, every stage is done by hand, from setting up the loom to applying finishing techniques.
Sponsored by the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, her Master's project resulted in a series of craft-based artworks. These reflect on perceptions of textiles by challenging conventional boundaries and technical limitations of the dobby loom.
Her collaboration with the UAL Bio-Inspired Textiles research project explores how biological structures can inform sustainable textile design. Focusing on auxetic and cellular structures, she has developed a series of woven prototypes that offer adaptive properties.
