Archie Brennan (1931-2019) was a noted Scottish

tapestry Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

weaver. He served his apprenticeship at the Edinburgh Tapestry Co (later to become the Dovecot Studios) and studied at

Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, histor ...

. He went on to work at the College establishing their department of Tapestry and Fibre Arts. He also served Dovecot as their artistic director. Brennan's 1977 work ''Chains'', inspired by the mooring chains of ships at

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by '' Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

docks and measuring , is held in the

National Museum of Scotland The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...

. He was described in 2019 as "possibly the greatest Scottish Pop artist you have never heard of". In 2020 the Dovecot Gallery raised over £25,000 by a public appeal, to support a major retrospective exhibition of 80 of Brennan's tapestries in March–June 2021.

Professional Service

* Acting Chairman of the British Crafts Center * President of the Society of Scottish Artists (1977/8)

Selected publications

* Brennan, Archie. (1978). ''Archie Brennan: tapestries & rugs''. Oxford: Oxford Gallery. * Brennan, Archie and the Scottish Arts Council. (1971). ''Archie Brennan: tapestry''. Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council. * Brennan, A., Maffei, S. M., Stone, S., D'Allessandro, M., Lane, M., & New Jersey Center for Visual Arts. (2003). ''Contemporary tapestry: Archie Brennan, Susan Martin Maffei'' : November 9, 2003 – January 4, 2004.

Personal site

http://www.brennan-maffei.com/

References

External links

The Archie Brennan Project
"a multi-faceted plan to bring Archie’s works to a broader audience" 1931 births 2019 deaths Tapestry artists British textile artists British pop artists 20th-century Scottish male artists 21st-century Scottish male artists 20th-century textile artists 21st-century textile artists Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art Presidents of the Society of Scottish Artists {{Scotland-artist-stub