Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2022 i Embroidery

from the editor SPRING is traditionally a time of new beginnings in the natural world. Personally, it’s a time of optimism too. I love catching sight of new shoots of colour outdoors, and relish the clocks turning forward at the end of the month – a welcome precursor to longer, lighter days. It’s been a tough two years for both individuals and organisations (and we’re still a long way from ‘normal’) but onwards and hopefully upwards we go, as more events and exhibitions return, along with further opportunities for artists. With this in mind, you’ll find suggestions for classes, workshops and online talks on page 12, whether you plan on getting out and about or are still shielding. I’ve also been reflecting and looking back. Embroidery magazine is ninety years…

DIARY MARCH Inspired by photographs and documents of women held in Stafford Prison 1877-1916, Ruth Singer’s ‘Criminal Quilts’ investigates their stories, and is on show in both galleries at Llantarnam Grange, Wales until 2 April llantarnamgrange.com A new exhibition at Bucks Co Museum showcases recent additions to the Embroiderers’ Guild Collection, focusing on the work of named embroiderers who have contributed to the development of embroidery in their lifetime Sew New! until December 2022 discoverbucksmuseum.org Artists including Celia Pym explore why craft is a radical act as part of the 2022 Harewood Biennial: Radical ActsWhy Craft Matters. Harewood House 26 March-29 August harewood.org APRIL The Royal School of Needlework celebrates 150 years in 2022 with a unique exhibition showcasing its contribution to the world of embroidery. ‘150 Years of the…

preview BOTH SIDES NOW PHOTO PHIL DICKSON, PSD PHOTOGRAPHY. QUILT ARTIST PAULINE BURBIDGE is set to unveil a new body of work at Ruthin Craft Centre next month. One of the highlights of‘Drawing Parallels’, a joint exhibition with her partner Charlie Poulson, will be Burbidge’s Textile Landscapes, a series of 12 large scale, double-sided quilts, which can be viewed from both sides. Over the last 28 years, the pair have lived and worked at Allanbank Mill Steading in the Scottish Borders, where their annual open studio has become a much anticipated event. This exhibition at Ruthin spreads the love, showcasing their work in a gallery setting for us all to appreciate. Drawing Parallels: Pauline Burbidge & Charlie Poulson Ruthin Craft Centre 9 April - 10 July ruthincraftcentre.org.uk…

profile painting in thread IN 2007 ORIEL YNYS MÔN HOSTED AN EXHIBITION OF PATCHWORKS BY EDRICA HUWS, WHICH HIGHLIGHTED THE LIFE AND WORK OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY ARTIST In December 2002, an article in the Welsh magazine Y Wawr featured the work of a textile artist named Edrica Huws (1907-1999). The name was unfamiliar but the illustrations so exciting, I longed to be able to show some of her work at Quiltfest II the following year. I made enquiries and, before long, I was in contact with Daniel Huws, the elder son of the artist. Daniel and the family were delighted that their mother’s work should be given some recognition in this country. Edrica’s work was already well known in France and Japan during her lifetime, and she had staged an…

material matters BLUE DYE THINKING The Society of Dyers & Colourists Collection moved to Bradford College Textile Archive in 2009. Among its many treasures are artefacts, recipes and notebooks that reord the transition from natural to synthetic dyeing IT CAN BE DIFFICULT to shake off perceptions that the past was predominantly monochrome or, at best, tonally subdued. Difficult until you see the richness of colours that light and time have not faded. The vivid hues of historic textiles never cease to amaze. Even after decades working with such material, it’s still a wondrous experience to see the reds, yellows, blues and greens that sing out. Perhaps it seemed wondrous at the time. Dyeing was certainly a complex process. It was a technology that required precision and instinct. There was an…

profile threads of life A NEW SERIES OF WORK REFLECTS THE INNER AND OUTER CHANGES SHAPING THE WORLD OF ALICE KETTLE ‘I always see the world as a thread world. It’s within the capacity of thread to bind things together, to be in tension and to be fluidly potent. Thread has potential to make change, transform the materials and people it engages with and to describe the world.’ ‘Threadbound’, Alice Kettle’s recent collection of work, which went on show at Candida Stevens Gallery at the end of last year, was born out of the 2020 lockdown. ‘I’d been expecting to continue doing collaborative work with refugees but, because of Covid, things changed and we all became located in our own spaces. And I’d just moved house from a place I’d…

90 years on HISTORY IN THE MAKING 2022 marks the 90th anniversary of Embroidery magazine, and the launch of our new online digital archive When you hold this magazine you hold a journal that traces its lineage back nine decades. Launched as a quarterly in December 1932, Embroidery The Journal of the Embroiderers’ Guild was, as its name suggests, predominantly an in-house publication aimed at its members. The Guild was founded in 1906 when needlework was still a popular domestic pastime amongst the general population, yet there was little original work being produced. Like the Arts and Crafts visionary William Morris (1834-1896), who had championed Art Needlework as a style of embroidery in the early 20th century, the Guild’s aim was to raise standards in design (like Morris it also…

history CLOTH & BELONGING An exhibition in early 2011 at The Foundling Museum in London revealed the heartache and hope encapsulated in a collection of 18th-century cloth swatches unearthed from the London Metropolitan Archives THETINY FRAGMENTS of cloth pictured on these pages reveal a part of English social history both painful and poignant. For they illustrate the terrible moment of separation between mother and child. In the 18th century, thousands of desperate women relinquished their babies to the care of London’s original Foundling Hospital in hope that their child would survive in its care. Of the 16,282 infants, or‘foundlings’, who entered the institution anonymously, between 1741 and 1760, a shockingly small number – around four thousand – were left with a small identifying object or token, usually a tiny piece…

bookshelf The Mending Directory OVER 50 MODERN STITCH PATTERNS FOR VISIBLE REPAIRS WHEN ERIN EGGENBURG began volunteering at a local charity shop, she was shocked to discover the amount of textile waste created just within her local town. Wanting to make a difference, she learned how to mend garments and began dabbling in denim repair. Before long she was teaching visible mending workshops. Erin fell so deeply in love with needlecraft she turned her passion into a business that’s reached thousands of people. Now she’s poured all her love and expertise into her new book, which focuses specifically on visible mending. In The Mending Directory she explains how to repair both woven and knitted fabrics, whether by darning, patching or needle-weaving. Beautiful photography reveals the wide range of possibilities for…

profile BORDER CONTROL The focus of a new solo show in the Netherlands, Tilleke Schwarz’s hand embroidered works are as distinctive as her eclectic subject matter PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB MOSTERT COURTESY TILLEKE SCHWARZ Tilleke Schwarz is a conundrum. Now seventy-five, the Dutch textile artist delivers her opinions in such a deadpan way that one wonders if she is, in fact, joking. There’s certainly wit there, as her current collection of work reveals. ‘Stitched Stories’, a solo show, is due to be exhibited at the High Five Gallery in Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands. Put together with a kind of anti-order, anti-sense Dadaist approach, Schwarz’s embroideries – at a glance akin to short, hybrid snatches of poetry or graffiti – are a gloriously random hotchpotch of text, drawings, appliqué and found textile. However,…

reading STITCH BETWEEN THE LINES References to stitch, fabric and thread within literature, lyrics and poetry are legion. As metaphor or commentary, they reveal the history of cloth and our changing relationship with fashion ELIZABETHLOVEDAY.CO.UK Of the multitude of references to textiles within literature, the examples contained within nursery rhymes, songs and chants for children reveal how deeply embedded textiles remain within culture and consciousness. In O Dear, What can the Matter Be? Johnny promises to bring his sweetheart a bunch of blue ribbons from the fair (not an ungenerous gift in the 1770s, when this rhyme was first recorded) but one wonders whether her anxiety at his tardy return has less to do with her concern for his wellbeing or the desire to get her hands on such a…

what’s on On show ARUNDEL Fibre: Structure and Surface until 19 March. Gallery 57, Tarrant Street, West Sussex BN18 9D. gallery57.co.uk BARNSLEY We Are Commoners: Creative Acts of Commoning until 24 April. The Civic, Hanson Street, South Yorkshire S70 2HZ. barnsleycivic.co.uk BELFAST La Belle Epoque Fashions of the 1870s-1910s until 4 September. Ulster Museum Botanic Gardens, Belfast BT9 5AB. nmni.com BIRMINGHAM Under the Vast Sky: Britta Marakatt-Labba until 29 May. Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace B1 2HS. ikon-gallery.org BRACKNELL Tansa: Japanese Threads of Influence Process and Making until 3 April. South Hill Park Arts Centre, Ringmead, Berkshire RG12 7PA. southhillpark.org.uk CHERTSEY Blooming Marvellous Flowers in Fashion: 1700s-2000s Costume until 3 September. Chertsey Museum, The Cedars, 33 Windsor St, Surrey KT16 8AT. chertseymuseum.org CIRENCESTER Shoes Have Names until 2 April.…