Russell E. Groff Interview (Transcript)
(Note: This interview with Russell Groff occurs 23:27 minutes into the Weavecast: 5.5 BSG Confidential)
Music Intro
SM I'm here at Black Sheep Gathering with Russ Groff of Robin and Russ Handweaving, which was Mecca for weavers down in McMinnville Oregon for years and years, and it is quite an honor to be able to sit here and talk with him a little bit before the show opens, so, Welcome.
RG Thank you, I'm delighted to be here.
SM So, how did you get started in handweaving?
RG Believe it or not, in the US Army, during World War II. I was, ah, paralyzed with rheumatic fever and my knee, couldn't bend my knees and walk, and after eleven months in bed they said, "You're going to learn to walk again by going down to the crafts shop and weaving."
SM Oh, what a cool idea.
RG And I said, "I don't know what you're talking about," so they put me in a wheel chair and took me down to the crafts shop, and sat me down at the loom, showed me how to throw the shuttle and I wove a bath mat, it was a, ah, a chenille, heavy chenille.
SM Oh, and you still remember it? That's amazing.
RG Yeah, it was very, very nice. And I was so intrigued from then on that nothing else mattered. Even when I went to college, I majored in Industrial Arts and all I wanted to do was weave, so I made looms in college.
SM That's really cool. So you were one of those people who knew from the first time that you wove that's what you were meant to do?
RG Yeah, yup. Uh, I made six looms while I was in college, and believe it or not, I sold them very well...
SM Laughs
RG ...so I was surprised. So I've been doing that ever since. And I bought my first loom, which was the same as the loom that I wove with in the army hospital, it was a J.L. Hammett loom from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And that was the only loom that I could find anywhere on the market at that time. But later I found out there were a lot of other looms. At that time there were, down in southern California, there was the Binder and Burnham loom being made, and the Gilmore loom was being made in California also, and the Gilmore was my favorite at that time. I eventually became an agent for about four or five years for Mr. Gilmore in selling his looms, and sold them all over the state. And then he decided he didn't want to have any agents 'cause he wanted some commissions that he'd been paying me, so I went to other looms. And I found another loom in Michigan, in uh, Chicago, which was very similar to the Gilmore called a Norwood...
SM Uh-hm.
RG ...and it was a little better, I thought, a little better loom, a little easier to operate than the Gilmore. So I went to visit them and I actually ended up being a distributor after I left and bought a loom and ah, and sold them. And I was the first person in the, on the West Coast to sell Norwood looms. And I sold those in Santa Barbara, California, and then when I moved to Oregon I was the first one up in Oregon, Washington, to sell them also. And I probably sold two or three hundred Norwood looms over the years.
SM Oh, wow.
RG Then in about 1965 or so, after I'd been in business for twenty-some years or more, I had a chance to try another loom made in California called a Walling loom, (spelling) w-a-l-l-i-n-g. And I liked it the best of all the looms I had.
SM What did you like about it?
RG It was easy to treadle, it folded up very well, and it was sturdier than most looms were. Sturdier than the Norwood. The Norwood wasn't as sturdy as the others, but it was a good loom.
SM Uh-hm.
RG And so eventually Bill Walling had the arthritis so bad in his back he couldn't bend over to work any more and he asked if I'd be interested in buying the loom. So I bought the rights to build them and built the loom for fifteen or twenty years.
SM Oh, I didn't know that you had actually done loom manufacturing.
RG Yeah, I have one loom left at home. I had to change the name, he insisted on that, so we called it the Oregon Trail Loom.
SM Oh, OK, I've heard of those, but I didn't... So...
RG It's a very good loom. It's a rigid model, 46" I love the way it works, so...
SM Is that what you weave on currently?
RG I just finished a tablecloth the morning that I came down to this show. I had about ten inches to go and I wanted to, to finish it, so I wove those ten inches and cut if off the loom and rolled it up and packed it 'cause I'm taking it back to Convergence
SM Oh, cool.
RG And then I'm going to give it to my cousin and his wife back in Pennsylvania.
SM What weave did you use?
RG I used my own variation. (Laughs)
SM Laughs
RG I have seven colors in the warp, two inch sections of seven colors, and then I have a twill pointing one way in one color and the next color I pointed the other way. And then alternate that throughout the whole width of the loom, and then I wanted a little more interest so I put a rib in between each color...
SM Oh, cool!
RG ...in the fabric, and that makes it more interesting.
SM Sounds beautiful.
RG And they are very nice, I've got one at home. I have two kitchen towels and one table cloth all woven on the same warp. And I have sixteen more yards to go.
SM Laughs
29:00
SM So what made you want to open a store?
RG Well, I went to college to be a teacher. I did student teaching, I didn't like it because they wanted me to make the same things that they'd been making twenty or thirty years, wouldn't let me use any variety in my teaching...
SM Uh-hm
RG ...in adult education, so I said, "Well, I'm going to try to get an adult education class started, so I went to the principal of the Adult Education and asked if I could teach a weaving class, and he said, "Well, we'd love to have you but we can't 'cause we don't have any equipment, don't have any money to buy it. So I said, "If I furnish all the looms, can I teach the class?" and he said, "Yes." So it took me a year to get fifteen looms together.
SM How did you, how did you get those fifteen?
RG I bought all used looms.
SM Oh, wow...
RG ...for a year.
SM ...you really wanted to teach weaving.
RG And I, and some of them were some I had made, also. I had the looms and I started the adult education class in Santa Barbara, and ah, it's been going ever since. Right now they have forty-five looms...
SM Oh, wow!
RG ...in their class and they have a waiting list to join that class. So something is left behind that I started.
SM Yeah well, you're legacy is all over the place...
RG Chuckles
SM ...I know many weavers who have their stashes all from Robin and Russ.
RG Well, I think one of the biggest kicks I got was, one day, a young girl came in with a baby in their arms, a baby about two or three years old, she says, "I want to meet Mr. Groff,"
SM Laughs
RG and, uhm, so they, the girls, brought her over and introduced her to me. She said, "I wanted to meet you. My grandmother used to buy threads from you."
SM (Laughs) Oh, wow.
RG (Chuckling) That'll be three generations.
SM That's amazing, that's a wonderful story. How long was your store open?
RG Well, I was open in Santa Barbara, for [Sybilla's?] shop in Santa Barbara and opened there in 1952, worked there 'til 1962, and then I moved to, to Oregon. In California, we never sold any wool. As soon as I moved to Oregon we started selling wool, in Oregon and Washington, to people from Oregon and Washington, and, ah, my business almost doubled in one year by moving up to Oregon.
SM Oh, wow.
RG So it's been going strong ever since. I hate to quit, but age and health make me decide I have to quit. And I moved to McMinnville because all the colleges in Oregon taught weaving...
SM Uh-hm.
RG ...at that time, and McMinnville was right in the center. There was Oregon State, south, University of Oregon, still further south, Willamette University had weaving, Minfield in McMinnville had weaving, Western Oregon State University had weaving, I was right in the center of it all, supplying looms and equipment to the different schools and also yarns for the students.
32:00
SM So did you plan it that strategically?
RG Yeah, I chose that place because of that.
SM Oh, that's, that's brilliant.
RG Yeah, well that was McMinnville. Then, I used to live in... I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, I used to live by California State Teachers's College which was in California, Pennsylvania, believe it or not. From Oregon I began to supply them with equipment and looms...
SM Oh, wow, because you had the contacts.
RG ...and other stuff, so it's a small world sometimes.
SM Yeah, well, weaving, weaving tends to be a small world - everybody knows everybody.
RG Well, talking about that, everybody knows everybody, let me tell you my, one of my favorite stories.
SM Oh, please.
RG I had a, a good friend, his name was Clarence Weaver and he was picked by the, by the federal government to go down to, to Peru and open a dental lab. He was a dental teacher from Stanford University until he retired. He went down there and his wife went with him and they worked for a year at this dental lab down there, teaching them how to make things and then ah, he decided, when his contract was over, to explore Peru. They bought a Fiat and they went exploring and they went up into the mountains eleven thousand five hundred feet high to Vianco, where the alpaca and llamas were, and there was an Indian woman weaving in their open-air market. And they went over to talk to her and said hello, and finally Dr. Weaver said, "Well I have two good friends in Oregon that are weavers." And the Indian woman said, "Oh, you mean Robin and Russ."
SM Laughs heartily
RG So, it's a small world.
SM That's amazing.
RG So I've been, I've really enjoyed my business, and I've looked forward to it. Also one nice thing is that I got to travel because of my business. I discovered that I could buy yarns in England much more reasonable and get a greater variety, so for about fifteen years I went to England once every year and bought a container of yarn.
SM Oh, wow.
RG And brought it back and then sold it for the year, then went back and bought another one.
SM Uh-hm.
RG And ah, now you can't do that because the mills have all closed down in England but for a long time I did just that.
SM Well, your store had always carried things that you just can't find in the US.
RG Well, I always look for strange things. A couple of trips I went, started in Providence, Rhode Island and went clear down to South Carolina, visiting every mill along the way trying to find yarn, different yarn. And ah, I did, and that's how I kept my, got my business going.
SM I'll speak for weavers everywhere, we really appreciated you scoutin' out the cool yarns.
RG Well, I really enjoyed doing that.
34:50
SM So you've had a long career and watched handweaving evolve. How has it changed since you started?
RG How has it changed? Well, weavers are lazier.
SM Laughs
RG Ah, they only want to use the big threads for warp now, and when I started, 20/2, just in cotton, was the most common warp thread.
SM Ah.
RG 20/2 cotton. And now, few weavers, very few weavers will try it, you know. I had a line, ah, about 60 colors of it just in cotton, and I had a stock of every color.
SM Uh-hm.
RG And I think I sold, I probably sold ten to twenty-thousand pounds of that yarn over the years. It came on half-pound tubes, and I'd go to the shows and it would uh, always be one of the most popular things. Now, I went to one of the first Northern California conferences, they've had fifty-two, and I've done forty-nine of them.
SM Oh!
RG So that shows you how long I've been in the business.
SM Laughs
RG One of the first ones was in Stockton, California. When I went to buy Norwood Looms, they also, I wove samples for their magazine for a couple years, and then they decided they weren't, uh, weren't able to do it anymore, and that's when I began, so I bought the magazine "Warp and Weft" and published that for forty years.
SM Now that was with samples...
RG Yes, that was with samples...
SM ...in each issue
RG ...in every issue, so I had to weave twelve to fifteen yards every month...
SM Oh, wow.
RG ...for, for forty years. And then about, after about two years I started another magazine called "Crafts and Designs for Multiple Harness" from five to twelve harnesses, and I published that for thirty-nine years. And then after that, I figured it was time to quite.
SM Laughs
RG Because that was on a, it was a, a rat race, you kept going all the time, you always had something to do.
SM Well, I mean, having a store would be a full-time job, and publishing a magazine would be a full-time job, so it's like you had two.
RG Yeah, and then I had to weave twenty-four yards the last forty years.
SM So did all that weaving for the magazines really hone your technique?
RG Yes, you, I learned a lot of different techniques, and I tried to demonstrate as many different techniques in my magazine as I could and, ah, that was how I learned weaving. Also, I went to Canada and studied with a man called Stanislaw Zelinsky...
SM Umm.
RG ...who was a very able weaver, and he had a magazine published every month, and I subscribed to that, of course, there, and studied weaving with him for two months. Then I went to the Banff School of Fine Arts before I bought Norwood Loom company "Warp and Weft" I went to the Banff School of Fine Arts and took a six-week class in weaving. I became the editor of the school bulletin while I was there in order to learn how to print and write "Warp and Weft" and that was a good start and good help. And they were two wonderful teachers there, Ethel Henderson and Mary Sandin. And I met Josephine Estes...
SM Uh-hm.
RG ...with her miniature patterns, and she had two folios with twenty-four patterns in each, and I wove every one of the forty-eight patterns over the years.
SM I'm actually weaving from her book right now, I'm weaving Star of Bethlehem bookmarks, in your 140 over 20 silk.
RG Good.
SM Laughs
RG Wonderful, well, that will be very pretty then.
SM Yeah, they're beautiful.
RG Then I went to England and bought a lot of neat yarns, and I also found out that if I bought directly from the producer I could sell the yarns at much less than what they were selling for in America.
SM Uh-hm.
RG So I went over to England and bought uh, spinning fibers of all kinds, right from one supplier for thirty years. I bought from him. I had yak, and alpaca, and llama, long before it became popular here in America.
SM So, what's your favorite thing to weave?
RG I think tartans, tartans are, tartans and silk. Tartans because I love to see them grow...
SM Uh-hm.
RG ...from the minute you're weaving. And I designed a couple of tartans that I thought were just fantastically beautiful. One of them had nine colors in it, so I had nine shuttles. It was hard to keep track of the...
SM So, so you're carrying the threads up the side as you weave, you're not...
RG No, I was carrying them on the side, yes.
SM Right, oh, wow.
RG So the selvedges would be cut off when, for making clothing and ties and so forth.
SM Right.
RG And I had a line of forty different colors of 2/18 worsted to weave tartans with that I had manufactured for me in England.
SM Uh-hum.
RG And for twenty years I stocked those, and now that, then that mill went out of business so gradually I had to discontinue the yarn. About five years ago I had this little odds and ends of all many different colors left of that, so I sent, all up, packed it all up and sent it to the dyer and had it all dyed black. And so I've been selling black 2/18 worsted ever since. Laughs
SM Laughs.
RG I still... there's some of it right there.
SM Well, I, I have bought a bunch of that off of eBay recently, actually. So, what advice would you give to people starting in weaving, or thinking about opening a weaving store?
RG Well, only a weaving store. First of all you've got to learn a little about weaving before you do that. You've got to weave ten or fifteen projects so you know what you're doing and how to do it and so forth, and then I think you're qualified to open a store. Now, I've sold looms to probably ten different people that have opened a store after they've wove a year, or two years, or three years. I think it's important to get the experience, first of all. And then you learn what kind of shuttles and type of equipment you like the best. Now, I wasn't always an advocate of sectional warping because it's about fifty percent less time to do sectional warping as it is to do chain warp. I looked for directions in many different books and couldn't find any, so finally I wrote my own book and published it called "Sectional Warping Made Easy" and I've sold probably ten to twelve thousand copies of that over the years.
SM That's a great little book, I just bought one recently.
RG On camping trips we used to tie ourselves to a pine tree every evening and design a new card weaving pattern, and uh, so I wrote a little book on card weaving. And uh, believe it or not, I, in forty years I've sold thirty-two thousand copies of it.
SM Oh, wow.
RG So, that was our bread and butter money from that particular one.
SM It's fun to think of you designing the patterns while camping.
RG Yeah. Just to give an example on my card weaving, I wanted something for Easter, so I designed, this one's for Halloween,
SM Uh-hm.
RG And that one of pine trees - I lived in Oregon, there was a duck flyway over...
SM (Laughs)
RG ...so I've done the wild geese flying.
SM Wow.
RG So you can see how where I lived influenced what I did. These are reindeer, and there was a Santa Claus, even.
SM Yeah, I was amazed at all the figures you were able to get out of card-weaving. I didn't know you could do that.
RG Well, it was fascinating. One time I did a, a half-hour TV program on card weaving, it was for educational TV at the University of Oregon, but that was a long time ago. (Chuckles)
SM Thank you very much, it's been delightful talking with you.
RG You're more than welcome. I love to talk about my business, I've enjoyed it for fifty-seven years.
Music