The blog is a place for Karen’s family and friends to post news and updates relating to her legacy and the textile world.

If you’d like to contribute a piece to the blog please drop us an email.

Please feel free to join the discussion by using the comments section at the bottom of each blog post.

Posted by
Katrina Finch
on 2025-01-21 09:04:48
at 2025-01-21 09:04:48
0 comments
It is with great sadness that we must announce the death, on 16 January 2025, of our friend Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen, weaver, ethnographer, museum curator, textile researcher, author ... Tove’s article on Gerda Henning, Karen Finch’s teacher of weaving at the Copenhagen School for Decorative Arts in the 1940s, can be found here. Up to the very end of her life, Tove was engaged in a research project about Kirsten and John Becker, two of Gerda Henning’s most illustrious students, who were at the School at the same time as Karen, during the early 1940s. Tove had made extensive use of Karen’s artistically designed lecture notes from that time, which we had been very pleased to lend her from Karen’s archives, knowing how much Karen respected and admired Tove. We intend to publish a more developed tribute to Tove’s life and work in due course, but for now we want to convey our deepest sympathy to her husband Svend and her daughters Cecilia, Amanda and grandson Vilfred. [Read more]
Posted by
Katrina Finch
on 2024-05-08 08:42:07
at 2024-05-08 08:42:07
0 comments
It is now six years since Karen died and today we celebrate what would have been her 103rd birthday. Karen loved to celebrate her birthday which is why each year we mark it on her website. For her birthday this year we are publishing an article by Dr Philip Sykas about Karen’s treasured collection of historical loom reeds. She kept them with her for many years, apart from a brief stay in the Horniman Museum. We now have them in our house. But are hoping to donate them to a museum this year. We have continued the work of transcribing and publishing the lectures she gave annually to the students at the TCC. Where possible we have included the images she used to accompany her lectures, knowing that she very much enjoyed researching them and showing them to the students. [Read more]
Posted by
Philip Sykas
on 2024-05-07 10:26:57
at 2024-05-07 10:26:57
0 comments
A group of six weaving reeds preserved by Karen for many years was uncovered during the house move from Ealing. Their precise origin had become forgotten, but it is likely that these old and fragile reeds would have been discarded if not for Karen’s recognition of their historical value. All six reeds are constructed from natural materials in the time-honoured way. Halved dowel rods enclose the narrow splits that are evenly spaced by the winding of twine wrapped around the paired half-dowels. At each end, the reeds are finished with a narrow slat of softwood notched to take two or three wrappings of twine that cross each other in an X-shape to firm up and buttress the whole. [Read more]
Posted by
Philip Sykas
on 2023-05-08 12:14:23
at 2023-05-08 12:14:23
0 comments
A series of photographs of the Bolton Heald and Reed Works thought to date around 1913 was the subject of a short article that appeared on this website last year. At that time, it was difficult to find anything more than cursory coverage of heald and reed making in historical, technical or craft literature. However, two small volumes have now come to light, both part of the Textile Manufacturer Monographs series and by the same author, Ian Laird: A third volume on the ‘Technique of Entering-in Healds and Reeds’ was planned but never realised. Little is known about the author. He contributed a twelve-part series of articles to the Textile Manufacturer on the subject of ‘Mechanical Warp Stop Motion’ between October 1944 and May 1946. This suggests that he may have been over the age of fifty-one during the war, and not subject to conscription. Given the depth of his knowledge on the subjects he covered, it can be conjectured that he had spent part of his working life in a firm that manufactured industrial weaving equipment. [Read more]
Posted by
Katrina Finch
on 2023-05-08 11:27:18
at 2023-05-08 11:27:18
0 comments
It is five years since Karen died on 15 April 2018 but we still miss her powerful presence. In that sense what we wrote when she died: "We shall forever miss the extraordinary person Karen was, whose smile and enthusiasm for life shone a radiant glow over even the most mundane”. remains true. We try to live our lives as she did – that seems to be the best way of showing our enduring love. Her apartment in our house remains very much as she left it, with her books, box files of writings and subject papers, journal collections, textile and slide collections and correspondence files still in place. We consult her box files frequently and wish that others could enjoy the rich mix of material which so well reflect her diverse interests and her ability to make unique connections. Once again we extend our invitation to anyone who would like to consult her archive with us while it remains in our house. [Read more]
Posted by
Alan Cohen
on 2022-05-08 09:33:31
at 2022-05-08 09:33:31
0 comments
Karen's centenary

Last year we announced that we would be marking Karen’s centenary on May 8 2021 by publishing new material on the site. We haven’t published as much as we would have liked but the arrival of what would have been Karen’s 101st has acted as a spur. We are pleased to draw attention to: We will also shortly be publishing the second of Karen’s lectures from her course at the TCC at Hampton Court, focusing on the history and uses of wool. [Read more]
on 2022-05-08 09:20:37
at 2022-05-08 09:20:37
0 comments
Karen's centenary

Katrina Finch suggested this article for the website and I will take on the task. In the beginning of the 1990s, I met Karen Finch for the first time, and in the years to come we met once or twice a year in Denmark or elsewhere, for instance in 1997 the memorable conference for the 50th anniversary of Platt Hall in Manchester. Karen was always so interesting and kind. She connected people in her own subtle way. [Read more]
Posted by
Philip Sykas
on 2022-05-08 08:43:11
at 2022-05-08 08:43:11
0 comments
Karen's centenary

As important as healds and reeds are to the weaving process, little has been documented about their history or production. Alfred Barlow cursorily encapsulated the developments in heald making: ‘Healds were formerly made by hand by means of a reel, &c., and many are still formed so. […] Heald-making machines are often of very complicated and ingenious construction’. Alfred Spitzli pronounced the metal heddle to have superseded those made of twine, but admitted: ‘Twine harnesses are still in use; the twine is heavily coated to make it smooth and durable’. [Read more]
on 2022-04-07 16:02:41
at 2022-04-07 16:02:41
0 comments
Karen's centenary

In many ways my auntie Karen was like a female Peter Pan. Very modern and with the capacity for seizing the right moment in her own very visionary, clever way. What she believed in, she aimed for, and turned into reality. And like Peter Pan her arena was the whole world, with all the people who believed in her and her creative and timely skills as a professional weaver, and who witnessed her inventing textile conservation as a new worldwide profession. [Read more]
Posted by
James Bulman-May
on 2021-05-20 22:22:31
at 2021-05-20 22:22:31
0 comments
Karen's centenary

On the 100th birthday of my aunt Karen Finch née Sinding Møller, I would like to honour her achievements and independent spirit. I was fortunate to have Aunt Karen in London, and more so because she shared her home with family and friends. To me, these sentences still resound with the magic of holidays, a sense of freedom, and the inspirational sensibility that was Karen’s. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s in rural Denmark, in the village of Rødding near Meldgaard, my mother and Karen’s ancestral home. In 1910 my grandmother’s three brothers emigrated to the USA, and a generation later my mother as well as Karen and some of my uncles married into the anglophone world. A global outlook became part of their DNA. One of these fabled mythical elders was Karen, my mother’s older sister by 10 years. [Read more]

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