Category Archive

You may recognize Bob Miller’s name. He is one of our regular blog authors, providing his perspective on Andean-related books and delving into amazing textile techniques such as four-selvedge cloth. He also does a lot for Andean Textiles Arts (ATA) behind the scenes, researching and writing textile descriptions for our auction and helping to select topics and book titles for our Andean Textile Talks and Andean Book Club meetings. Bob grew up in Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech with an an engineering degree. Afterwards he headed to Colorado, where he spent his entire thirty-nine-year career and raised three children with this wife, Jean. He’s retired now. “Colorado was just about perfect for Jean and I, with plenty of nearby … Read More

Cindy Weinstein’s first connection with Andean textiles was in her mid-twenties, when she was apprenticing with a tapestry weaver at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. “Everyone was going to The Textile Museum in Washington D.C. to see a weaving demo by a Peruvian woman,” she recalls. “When we got there, we saw this young woman sitting next to a big tree in the museum’s courtyard demonstrating backstrap weaving. As soon as her hands started to weave, I was so moved that I just wept.” Decades later, Cindy met that weaver again on an ATA Textile Tour to Peru. The young woman from The Textile Museum’s courtyard, she found out, was Nilda Callañaupa, founder and director of the … Read More

Textile tours of all kinds can make a weaver out of you. It certainly did for Andean Textile Arts (ATA) volunteer, Karen Sprenger. In the mid-80s, Karen dabbled with weaving rag rugs on an old two-harness floor loom (this type of loom is still widely used in many indigenous communities). However, a floor loom is anything but portable. So while traveling on a few textile-related tours to Central and South America, she became intrigued with the backstrap loom. The simplicity of the loom was certainly similar to her floor loom, but it’s portability was a draw and one came home with her. Not many U.S. weavers in her area of Kansas City were studying backstrap weaving in the years following … Read More

Andean Textile Arts (ATA) runs 100% on the efforts of dedicated volunteers—individuals like Stefanie Berganini, who was the driving force behind the recent launch of our new and improved web site. Stefanie is no stranger to web design as well as the textile arts and their importance in the world’s cultures. She spent several years at Interweave Press, first as an intern with Fiber Arts magazine, then assistant editor of Spin-Off, and finally as managing editor of Stitch. After she left Interweave, she worked in the non-profit world until she opened her own freelance marketing and graphic design business. Today, Stefanie is pursuing a new career: she recently completed her master’s degree in anthropology and is now working on a … Read More