The fine line between craft and textile art: how one Australian artist is weaving her own path

After pausing on her jewellery business and in the midst of raising two kids, Tammy Kanat found the world of weaving not only to be a creative outlet but also her calling.

 

“We were renovating our house and I decided I wanted a wall hanging and I couldn’t, so I decided to make one and I fell in love with it. I felt like it came to me naturally, Kanat tells Vogue over coffee.

 

A Melbourne native, Kanat found her stride at an Australian Tapestry workshop (established in 1976, a one of a kind in Australia) but now hosts weaving workshops of her own.

 

“To me, weaving is like meditating. If things get stressful I go on my loom and it’s like a rhythm and it’s like an escape and I go in the zone,” Kanat says of her art form, her pieces of which are posted and documented on her Instagram account.

 

“It really is just art in three dimension,” Kanat responds when quizzed about the fine line between craft and art, “they’re mini sculptures,” adding that weaving has “really had a rebirth in a different form and I think it’s come at a time when everything is manufactured and there’s no quality, only quantity. I think that bespoke, artistic, personal work is appealing to people again and they want something that’s been given love and care.”

 

If you’re not one of the 36k people following Kanat on Instagram, start now, with inspirational interiors to half-finished and completed pieces, it’s a feed that makes you want to get on the loom and weave asap.

 

 

“I never plan what I’m going to do – there’s literally just a ball of wool and mess on my studio floor and I just pick stuff up and it just evolves and I don’t actually know how you can get a colour wrong?”

 

“When I have my workshops, I say to people ‘there aren’t any mistakes, it’s just something different and I also find the best things come out of something I didn’t mean to do,” finished Kanat.

 

Currently available for commissions and in the process of gathering her pieces for Delicacies, an exhibition in Milan for design week on April 5 with fellow object artists, Katherina Eisenkoeck and Pia Wüstenberg, Kanat has been commissioned from far and wide for her works. 

 

Cadrys, Australia’s leading rug dynasty, has even snapped up Kanat, working with her on a line of rugs – which are an interior addict’s dream.

 

“What drew me to Tammy’s work was that it had the authentic flavour of a tribal weaving, lovingly made with no preconception of what was going to be created, work that evolved from a deep artistic emotion that could not be predefined,” says Bob Cadry of what led the company to begin working with Kanat.

 

The translation of her work into the medium of hand knotted rugs has resulted in a collection that sits comfortably in both casual and informal settings or alternatively a more sophisticated environment,” confirms Cadry. 

 

So what does Kanat believe drives people to her work?

 

“I think in 2017 there’s a big move towards people wanting a work that has been given love and emotion. It’s also not about the quick fix, I think people appreciate that you may have to wait for the piece.”

 

We’re more than happy to wait it out.