V I S I ON A R Y LOOM I N ARY
JENNIFER MAYSTER
Rob DeWalt I The New Mexican
Above, the Mayster
Braille Loom, photo
by Armando Espinosa;
right, Heriberto
Gutierrez, a resident
of Friedman Place
(a Chicago supportiveliving community for
the blind and visually
impaired), weaving on
the Mayster Braille
Loom, photo by Judith
Querciagrossa
32 August 12-18, 2011
ach year, the annual Rag Rug Festival & Design Collective, presented
by the New Mexico Women’s Foundation, highlights the outstanding
work of an individual or group. This year’s featured guest is Jennifer
Mayster, an artist, interior designer, fashion designer, teacher, advocate
for the blind and visually impaired, and inventor of the Mayster Braille
Loom. This is Mayster’s third time to New Mexico and her first as an
exhibitor at the festival.
The festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 13 and 14, at the
Stewart L. Udall Center for Museum Resources on Museum Hill. According
to foundation president Frieda Arth, the 2010 event raised roughly $55,000
for weavers who participated in the festival. Since 2001, the foundation has
created cooperatives that allow New Mexico women to create crafts-based
cottage industries and develop business and nonprofit fundraising skills
through seed grants and mentoring.
“The story of how the loom came about follows kind of a wild and
winding path,” Mayster told Pasatiempo by phone from Chicago, “so I’ll
shorten the story for you. I was waiting for a bus in Washington D.C., and I
struck up a conversation with a commuter who happened to work with the
blind and physically handicapped at the Library of Congress. I explained to
him that I was an artist and that I had always had a fascination with the dot
patterns of Braille. From there I was put in contact with one of the library’s
Braille instructors, who fast became a friend, teacher, and partner in what I
like to call my Braille mission.”
That mission, Mayster said, was sparked by startling U.S. Braille literacy
statistics. Only around 10 percent of the blind and visually impaired who
graduate from high school know how to read and write. “If you can imagine
classes full of 6-year-old children who are told they don’t need to learn to read
or write anymore because computers can do it for them — it’s unbelievable!
All children need to be literate.”
Years ago, Mayster worked as a textile instructor for the University of
Chicago’s after-school programs, and the hands-on atmosphere of her classes
reminded her of the work of American educational reformer John Dewey,
who established his laboratory schools at the University of Chicago in 1896.
“He was the first one who took us out of separate classrooms and said, We’re
going to learn by doing, and we’re going to rotate classrooms. The thing that
rotated along with those classrooms was the weaving loom, because with it
you could teach math through the loom’s patterning. The kids would also
learn chemistry by creating dyes for the yarn. Dewey really believed that the
loom could teach anything. I mean, even the IBM computer is a descendant
of the loom.” (Early computers used punched cards, much like those used
in the Jacquard mechanical loom, invented in 1801.) “So I thought, if it can
teach all of that, why can’t we use it to teach Braille?”
HISTORY REWEAVING ITSELF
The mechanical Jacquard loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801,
was an important conceptual precursor to the development of programmable
computers. The first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of
operations, the Jacquard loom greatly simplified the process of creating
complex textile patterns such as brocade, damask, and matelasse by allowing
the weaver to produce many different weaves from one warp. Each row
of punched holes corresponded to one row of the design. Multiple rows of
holes were then punched on each card, and the many cards that composed
the design of the textile were strung together in order.
What goes around, comes around. Modern Jacquard looms no longer use
punch cards. They are controlled by computers and can have thousands of
hooks, unlike earlier models, which used only a few hundred.
— Lori Johnson
Mayster first tested her Braille loom at the Columbia Lighthouse for
the Blind summer camps in Washington, D.C., between 2000 and 2002.
From 2002 to 2006 several of her looms were used at Mayster’s now-closed
Blind Faith School of Music and Art, which was also located in Washington.
In 2006, Mayster met Diane von Furstenberg at an embassy dinner, and
the fashion designer and philanthropist expressed an interest in the loom
project. Eventually, The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation
provided funding for the manufacture of a few of the looms. In 2008 and
2009, Mayster moved her looms to East Meadow High School in Long
Island, New York, where many blind and visually impaired students are
“mainstreamed” into the public school system.
“It’s amazing what’s going on at Chicago’s Friedman Place right now,”
Mayster said. “This amazing nonprofit living community for blind and
continued on Page 34
PASATIEMPO
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Mayster Braille Loom, continued from Page 33
visually impaired adults has started a whole weaving studio using my
looms. A big thing we’re doing right now is weaving the word ‘touch’
in eight different languages to show that Braille is truly a global
communication tool. We’re currently working on creating a traveling
Braille awareness museum exhibit, as well. I’m hoping that many more
people will be getting involved with this in Santa Fe. I know that people
from the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind, which holds a government
contract for sewing the straps onto U.S. military helmets, will be
attending the demonstration in Santa Fe.”
The Chicago-based Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick
Foundation has strongly supported Mayster’s drive for Braille literacy
and has a long record of confronting health issues that Native Americans
often face, such as diabetes. “Together we wanted to see where we
could use the looms in New Mexico, and that’s why we are working to
raise awareness in the state about Braille literacy. With the deep weaving
traditions here among the people of the pueblos, we thought the looms
would be a perfect fit.” Mayster had originally planned to send her looms
to Africa, where millions of people have been infected with onchocerciasis,
a parasitic disease also known as river blindness. “But because it was
much more logical and economically reasonable to do it in the U.S. first,
and with funding from the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick
Foundation, here we are in Santa Fe.”
Mayster holds two patents on her loom — one for the invention
and the method of teaching people to weave on it and another for the
method of weaving Braille into textiles, a process Mayster calls loom
words. The portable Mayster Braille Looms, which are made of maple
wood and manufactured in Canada, are strung with yarn of varying
colors and textures. Each color and texture corresponds to one Braille
“cell,” which is made up of six dot positions.
“The loom has seven levers and has the same profile as the Perkins
Brailler, the ‘typewriter’ for the blind that types the Braille dots,” Mayster
said. “What I did was put the keys of a Perkins Brailler on top of a
loom.” Over the past 10 years, Mayster has assembled fabrics, such as
velvet, with textures than can be easily recognized by the blind. The
weaver can use the Braille alphabet, Braille music notation, or Braille
numbers to lift up different sets of strings and create textile patterns.
Mayster also sequences the fabrics in specific color combinations, which
allows the visually impaired and sighted to decode the weaving patterns
through color recognition. “In one instance, we partnered with the
U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which gave us their shredded
currency. We took the bills, which are made from 25 percent linen and
75 percent cotton, and mixed them with chenille yarn to make interesting
new textiles and patterns.”
Mayster feels her loom has already made a difference in many people’s
lives, but she’s eager to expand the reach and scope of her Braille
mission. The National Federation for the Blind reports that 75,000
Americans become blind each year. There are currently 10 million blind
or visually impaired people living in the U.S. That number is expected
to double within the next few decades as millions of baby boomers
continue to grow older. “There are almost 100,000 blind or visually
impaired school-aged kids in this country,” Mayster added. “At the same
time, there are only 12 colleges in the country that currently offer undergraduate degree programs for the visually impaired. Twelve! More has to
be done to give children who are blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind a
real chance at educational equality. And Braille equals print.” ◀
details
▼ Rag Rug Festival & Design Collective & Mayster Braille Loom exhibit
▼ 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday & Sunday, Aug. 13 & 14
▼ Stewart L. Udall Center for Museum Resources, 725 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill
34 August 12-18, 2011
▼ No charge; call the New Mexico Women’s Foundation (983-6155)
or visit www.nmwf.org