This dissertation exists in relation to the exhibition of design practice at the RCA, November 7th 2014 (documented in photographs accompanying the text); it is structured according to my construction of the exhibition. It therefore integrates the question of describing my practice-based research methods along with the descriptions of my research context, and case studies of other contemporary designers; the history of the Arts and Crafts ethos, as a precursor of modernity, is also reconsidered as of potential use for a crafts approach to textile sustainability. The methods used are a compound of the workshop method of experiments at the desk, drawing board, computer screen, loom and print room, along with a search for existing cases of similar textile-weave practice in current production, some historical
research and some autoethnography1, which documents the subjective experience of
researching sustainability in one aspect of textile design.

The thesis explores aspects of emotional durability through textile design. The meaning of emotionally durable textiles, particularly those using a Jacquard weave design, was encoded in the form of QR code (Quick Response code) patterns, which, when scanned by a smartphone, lead users through the digital portal to digital platforms which inform and network users. Considering the origins of the computer in the digital binary logic of weave and its mechanisation in the Jacquard loom, the use of the weave process as a medium for encoding the meaning of the material is especially interesting for the designer as a means of activating the agency of the maker and the user. The use of textiles in all aspects of everyday life ensures the proximity of textile as an interface between the familiarity and comfort of the material and the designer’s addition of the function of rationality in relation to others and to the world of knowledge, networking and activism. The research concludes with a range of prototype Jacquard designs, which activate the relationship between designer and user through the medium of encoded messages. Using the Jacquard code as a part
of new digital media of twenty-first-century technology is a way for design practice to
celebrate the industrial innovation of mechanised weave and to apply this to the challenges of sustainability.

1 Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2004, p.37