Artist at Work: Columbus Weaver Scott Hanratty Focuses His Craft on Home Textiles
Hanratty explains the intricate technique behind a wool blanket on display in an Ohio Craft Museum exhibit.
Scott Hanratty views himself as a craftsman. The Columbus weaver creates what he describes as “useful textiles for the home”—everything from rugs to blankets. Other local weavers, however, see their work as artistic expression, using textiles to comment on political or social justice issues.
The many sides of the craft (or art) are on vivid display in an exhibition, Traversing Textiles, on view through March 30 at the Ohio Craft Museum. Not that Hanratty’s contribution—a 74-inch-by-54-inch blanket titled “A Field of Flowers Growing in the Woods”—is anything less than aesthetically pleasing.
Hanratty, who trained as a musician and plays the bassoon with the Worthington Chamber Orchestra, prides himself on his objects being both useful and beautiful. “If you have to use something like a towel, why can’t it be a really beautiful towel?” he says.
For this piece, Hanratty first began thinking about how a blanket would live in an environment. He prefers neutral colors; he tries to imagine how it might look slung over a chair or sofa.
He settled on a pattern using brown wool bought from a shepherd off the coast of Scotland, and cream-colored linen purchased from Sweden. “There’s a 19th-century blanket that I found [with] this really unique weave structure that is not done much anymore because it’s pretty clunky,” Hanratty says. “I thought I’d do that.”
At the center of the blanket are flowers—inspired by motifs common in Pennsylvania Dutch blankets—and at its border are rows of trees. After completing the blanket on his loom—a handmade behemoth, standing about 7 feet tall and acquired from a weaver in Maine—Hanratty wove the fringe to the blanket separately. “I have to hand-sew the fringe to the blanket . . . on all three sides,” he says, noting that the top of blankets are usually without fringe so as not to irritate the sleeper.
And where will it end up after the exhibition? “I spent quite a bit of time on it [so] I couldn’t put a price on it,” says Hanratty, who worked on the blanket for about 60 hours. “It will be kind of living in my home.”
This story is from the March 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly.