(birds chirping) (loom clanking) - My name is Bruce Engebretson, and I think the best way to say what I call myself is what I don't call myself, but what everyone wants to call me, and that's master weaver.

I am not a master weaver.

I'm Bruce Engebretson, and weaver.

(gentle music) The fiber guilds in America have done some marvelous stuff, but that's not the tradition I came from.

I come out of the ethnic tradition of Northern Europe, Sweden, Norway, Finland, working people, and women who were artistic, but they never considered themselves to be fiber artists.

Those are the people who influenced me most.

I use floor looms that are pre-industrial, and they're made for making fabric, for material.

Saving old looms is not easy.

A lot of people want something new, they want something smaller.

It's an undertaking to try and find use for these, and I love looking at them.

There's a lot to learn, even from little things, bits and pieces of old looms.

I encourage people, if you're out there, realize, these looms are really well-made machines.

I have a loom here that we know a lot about.

That loom was built by Bendik Braseth for Otia Strand in Ulen, Minnesota in the 1890s.

We have a lot of stuff that she wove on that loom.

This piece is taken from the pattern that was woven on this loom by Otia strand.

She wove all that carpeting.

So that's what I like to do, is to copy old stuff.

(bright music) One of the things I appreciate most about these old looms is how well they work.

These people had result in mind.

They were result-oriented, and they wanted something that worked well.

These pre-industrial looms work in this way.

There's two sets of threads.

One set is going one direction.

They're horizontal, and there would be the long way.

And then you wind them around and around a beam.

And so you'll have these many yards on the loom.

That's the warp.

And all those threads, like let's say 400 threads, all have to be kept in order and not tangled.

Each thread goes through an eye in a certain order.

Those eyes are on pulleys and pedals.

So each set of threads will go, you know how you go, under, over, under, over, that's weaving.

Well, half of the threads will be on one set of pedals and pulleys and the other half on the other.

So you don't have to go under, over, under, over.

You push your foot down and they go like that.

And then you hear the warp and the weft.

Well, then the weft comes in, it goes on a shuttle, and the shuttle carries the other threads across.

And that's the basics.

That'll get you a start if you understand that.

(pensive music) I dislike the word just when it's used in a way that would be dismissive.

Like, "I just do this."

Really, nobody just does anything.

Think about cooking or baking or shopping.

"I just do this."

Not really.

And the same with this work.

You have to have good materials, has to be washed well, it has to be prepared well, and then it has to be spun well, and it has to be woven well.

Every step of the way is really important in this and everything.

The craftsman versus the artist is interesting to me.

There's different categories I work in.

The one category is tapestry, and in that I use, it's an idea of feeling expressing something artistically.

Then, I have the craftsman side of me, which I like to make things that are functional, and it depends on what kind of materials are at hand.

If I run into a place where I can find some wool to weave with, I'll use that.

If I've spun something and I have something left over or I decide I wanna make a blanket, I'll work on that.

Working with fiber and with wool has been a great thing for me.

The history and the beauty of it has been really a blessing to me.

Something I can share with people.

People learn.

They enjoy.

They can say they've done something, they can see how things were at a different time.

I think one of the things I cherish the very most is the teachers I've had, the transmission.

That to me is something I wouldn't be without.

There's the ethnic tradition, which I have, and I'm so happy for that.

And there's the family tradition, which I think people need to cherish, and I think that people don't realize quite how important that is.

I don't care if it's making jelly or hunting or weaving, cherish that, really.

Think about the family tradition.

Transmission to me is really something to cherish.

- [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.