Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Gueronprez, and Their Students, Michael Beggs and Julie J. Thomson

Weaving at Black Mountain College invites readers into the intimate looms and communal studios of the legendary mid‑century art school. This lushly illustrated catalogue, emerging from the 2023 exhibition at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, reveals weaving not as a peripheral craft but a radical design pedagogy—one that shaped form, material insight, and creative thought across disciplines. Through archival essays by Beggs, Thomson, and other scholars, alongside voices of Anni Albers and Trude Guermonprez, the book traces how humble fibres became conduits for modernist innovation, influencing students from Rauschenberg to future textile-makers, and echoing through contemporary weaving practice.

The volume is a tactile feast: nearly every page features richly hued textiles, workshop photos, and candid moments that speak to the college’s ethos of “weaving literacy.” It honours the program’s Bauhaus roots—rooted in Albers’s pioneering method of teaching structure and material—and amplifies the collaborative spirit of communal living, interdisciplinarity, and craft-led inquiry that made Black Mountain’s weavers agents of change in the design world.

Our thoughts on this book: read here

About the Author
Michael Beggs, designer‑artist and independent scholar based in Berkeley, CA, has been researching Black Mountain College since 2010. A former staff member at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Beggs brings both personal intimacy and academic breadth to the weaving narrative—linking Bauhaus roots to the college’s rural experiment.

Julie J. Thomson, educator, curator and Black Mountain local, directs the weaving programme’s legacy from inside the museum. Her role as co‑curator of both the exhibition and catalogue ensures archival depth and curatorial coherence—giving voice to long‑unseen weavers and material artefacts.

Publication date: 2023
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780300273564