Marina Contro Weaves Cashmere Blankets Buyers Refuse to Release

Marina Contro weaves her textiles on an antique standing loom six feet tall, threading every string by hand — and the results, according to her gallerist, sell on touch alone. "Once I put one of her blankets in a client's hands they won't let it go," said Roman Alonso, co-curator of her current exhibition at Blunk Space in Point Reyes Station, California.

The joint show with woodworker Noah Cohen runs October 24 to January 2 at the destination gallery near the late sculptor JB Blunk's former home. Blunk's daughter, Mariah Nielson, tapped Alonso and Steven Johanknecht — of the AD100 firm Commune Design — to curate.

How the work gets made

Weaving at this scale is physical, slow labor. "I thread every string through these shafts," Contro explained. "For that, I have to sit inside the loom on the cloth beam, but when I'm tying up the pedals I'll be under the warp on the floor."

On a recent afternoon she had loaded the loom with ochre and brown cashmere, manipulating the yarn in silence while counting out eight picks — stitches — for each square of a gingham pattern. The finished blanket appears in the Blunk Space exhibition.

A path through Cranbrook and JB Blunk's house

Contro grew up in Chicago and Colorado. She entered the textiles master's program at Cranbrook Academy of Art after developing a fascination with liturgical vestments as an undergraduate religious studies major. In Michigan, she asked to use the historic looms in the school's Kingswood Weaving Studio, set up by Loja Saarinen in 1931 and now used by Cranbrook high school students. "You're so immersed in history when you're in that space," she said.

After graduating in 2017, she sought out similarly loaded settings: Andrea Zittel's residency program near Joshua Tree, and the Blunk House itself, where she lived and worked earlier this year.

What do the loom's limits change for the art?

The antique machine constrains her to a maximum width of 48 inches, so she often joins panels to finish a piece. The seams become focal points, producing the stop-and-look-closer effect of an Agnes Martin painting — though Contro hedges on intent. "I like rewarding the viewer for spending a little bit of time with it," she said.

She works within plain weaves and twills, favoring the look, feel and drape of those simple structures over complexity.

The claim of "deceptively luxurious" comes from Nielson; the proof, Alonso suggests, is behavioral — clients gripping the blankets. What no one in the show's promotion quantifies is price or sales figures, so the market verdict will rest on what happens between October 24 and January 2. If the pattern holds, visitors will arrive curious and leave holding cashmere they did not plan to buy.