Peter Collingwood (1922-2008) brought weaving and abstraction together in works that crossed the art-craft divide, and showed a complex appreciation not only of the structure of his fibres, but of subtle colour harmonies and combinations, and space. He created a memorable woven sculpture, his own architecture, with hangings ranging in size from the relatively modest to mural-like expanses.

After medical training, he resolved to weave instead and spent short periods with Ethel Mairet and other weavers before setting up a London workshop in 1952, and finally settling in Essex in 1964. His show with Hans Coper at the V&A in 1969 showed how skilfully his work interacted with other objects, the essentially linear translucency of his geometric weaves a wonderful foil to Coper's ceramics, and one of the most convincing responses of any craft to the language of modernism.

David Whiting