CADCAM: the continuation of craft embroidery traditions

My theme is the connections between research and the taught curriculum. I will be using case studies of staff and student research to consider the embedding of the study and use of the archive to enrich learning.

London College of Fashion was founded in 1915 as one of three trade schools and has a long tradition of teaching embroidery skills to support the fashion industry. There is a rich college archive of oral history of alumni staff, university photographic reference and physical textile samples that are referenced through linked taught units within the curriculum.

Rapid technological innovations within the textile industry have informed fashion development opportunities allowing for increasingly more varied and intricate surface design. By allowing for faster less costly production processes surface design is now more readily available and embraced across all market levels. Previous research has documented key developments within CADCAM embroidery that have informed textile embellishment influencing design aesthetics.

Such technological developments have provided greater possibilities to transform embellishment design both across industrial production scale and small start-up model enterprises. In addition, there has been a resurgence of interested within fashion for maintaining craft skills and safeguarding tradition. Within both education and industry such skills and knowledge continue to be maintained and nurtured.

Case studies will illustrate how technological innovation can be explored to support conventional methods of textile design with consideration to the use of the archive to support and transcend tradition, developing textiles that aim to lead rather than follow fashion.