Inspired by the work of Anni Albers, who used the typewriter as a way to create new patterns for woven design, Jen Bervin made the typed studies in the edition Draft Notation following intensive time spent weaving advanced cloth structures on the loom.
The title of this edition of visual poems refers to the pre-weaving design diagrams a weaver creates or consults—a kind of written score for a woven textile. Weaving dates back to 7000 BC and is one of the earliest grid forms. Though both conceptual artists and concrete poets have used the typewriter in this way, Draft Notation was inspired by the work of Anni Albers, who used the typewriter as a way to create material studies and new patterns for woven design; the studies were published in her book On Weaving, where she writes: “These varied experiments in articulation are to be understood not as an end in themselves but merely as a help to us in gaining new terms in the vocabulary of tactile language.”
Each box includes four green books with a total of fifty-seven typed studies reproduced in letterpress; a unique typing mounted on red board; a glassine envelope with facsimiles of studies made on different typewriters; and a typed process note and colophon.