Fig. 40. Sheila Hicks. The Principal Wife, ca. 1965. Silk, linen, wool, synthetic 昀椀bers, 96 × 86 × 8 in. (243.8 × 218.4 × 20.3 cm). Museum of Arts and Design, New York, gift of Dreyfus Corporation, through the American Craft Council, 1989 (1989.1.8a–g) per se but, rather, referred to the thread-dyeing process—in the weaver Marli Ehrman. It was not until the mid-1950s, particular the pre-Hispanic tie- or resist-dyeing technique however, that she speci昀椀cally trained in weaving, start- known as ikat, still employed across Latin America. In The ing with a six-week course taught by the Finnish weaver Principal Wife (ca. 1965; 昀椀g. 40), she displays warp threads Martta Taipale at the Penland School of Craft in North 34 still wrapped in certain sections to prevent them from Carolina. Tawney’s artistic philosophy was shaped by absorbing dye. various in昀氀uences, including Taoism, and she often trav- Lenore Tawney did not have contact with Anni Albers eled in South America, collecting ancient samples and as Hicks did, but she did study with two Bauhaus émigrés small fragments for study. She appreciated the primary at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the mid-1940s: structures of Andean weaving and decided to stay with the painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy and this tradition, especially when her work became fully 38