Dr Lynn Tandler
- Tutor (Research) Yarn & Woven Textiles
- Textiles MA
Dr Lynn Tandler is a weaver and an academic.
Before the completion of her PhD about the evolving role of weaving in smart material systems and joining academia, Lynn worked as a woven textile designer – selling her designs across Europe and U.S through agents and collaborative work with weaving mills. During this time Lynn also worked as a consulted for companies such as Nike, Phillips, and Unilever on new woven material development.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
More information
Research interests
Lynn's research explores the evolution of weaving – past, present, and future – through the ongoing and changing tensions between craft and textile manufacture. Much of her practice and academic research revolves around the idea of breaking away from behaviourist tuition methods and the effects that such an approach could have on creativity and the production of new cloth structures - as well as textile applications.
Practice
Lynn works jointly as a textile designer, a textile engineer and an academic researcher. She brings scientific knowledge and engineering methods to her work, looking to create innovative materials that will open up new applications and aesthetic possibilities. Lynn works as a consultant for industry and as a Tutor in Woven Textiles and Yarn at the Royal College of Art.
Her work explores new forms of aesthetics in woven textiles through innovations in material structures - be it in fibres, yarns or weaves. Her interest in using unconventional materials in the construction of new textiles began as a postgraduate at the RCA and with the development of woven metal fabrics. Inspired by her brother who is a blacksmith, these collections borrowed their aesthetics and morphology from the art of metalsmithing and the forge.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Dormor, C. & Tandler, L. (eds) (forthcoming) The Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Vol 2: Wovens, Bloomsbury
Tandler, L. (forthcoming) 'How smart are Smart Textiles?', The Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Vol 10: Smart Textiles. Bloomsbury.
Tandler, L. (forthcoming) 'The evolution of weaving technologies', The Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Vol 2: Wovens. Bloomsbury.
Dormor, C. & Tandler, L. (forthcoming) 'The language of weaving', The Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Vol 2: Wovens. Bloomsbury.
Tandler, L. (2018) 'The smart textile problem and its implication for teaching'. ICERI2018 Proceedings, 2018 (1), pp.2618-2624.
Tandler, L. (2016) 'The Role of Weaving in Smart Material Systems'. Doctoral thesis. Northumbria University.
Kapsali, V., Toomey, A., Oliver, R. and Tandler, L. (2013) ‘Biomimetic spatial and temporal (4d) design and fabrication’. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Vol: 8064, pp. 387–389.
External Collaborations and Activities
Lynn works as a reviewer for the ‘Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice’ and ‘Textile Intersections’. She also sits on the editorial board of the research journal ‘TEXTILE: Craft & Culture’. She is the co-editor for Vol.2: ‘Wovens‘, in the upcoming ‘Encyclopaedia of World Textiles’ (Bloomsbury), and more recently has also been working alongside the NCFE for the development of a new T level qualification in Craft and in Design.
