Indholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2024 i Embroidery

■ ONCETHE GRAND old oak I can see from my office becomes even the tiniest bit tinged with gold, my nesting instincts return and I long for the quiet, contemplative activities of knitting, stitching and getting lost in a good book. It’s no surprise then that the run up to (whisper it) Christmas is a key period for book launches and a fruitful time for the latest stitch titles. LOUISE SAXTON cut & pinned is a new monograph from the artist, aka The EmbroideryVandal, so-called because she ‘cuts and pins’ her enviable needlework stash to form reinterpretations of historical paintings. Louise seeks to raise the status of the mostly anonymous makers responsible for her embroidery collection, often tagged merely ‘women’s work’. On page 28 you’ll find her stunning Count Raggi’s…

In her memoir, Iconic, colourful designer Dame Zandra Rhodes shares her life story for the first time. In 2003, Dame Zandra founded the Fashion + Textile Museum, London, in a distinctive orange-hued building. Dame Zandra has spent her life rallying against what was expected of her, both as a designer and a woman. Often perceived as too bold for the mainstream, she fought for creativity and individuality, and continues to achieve both in everything she does. Told through a variety of mementos, the memoir is a vibrant account filled with rockstars and royalty, life-changing friendships and poignant reflections on her personal triumphs and tragedies. Tales include judging Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World with David Hockney and Angie Bowie, which was so packed even David Bowie couldn’t get in. Iconic: My…

Stitching Science Lauren Wright Vartanian & Keltie Thomas During the pandemic, Lauren Wright Vartanian started stitching an ABC book of science, but it soon became clear that the topics she was exploring were too advanced for the average toddler. Out of this was born Stitching Science, a book for anyone who loves science, art and how the two intersect. Scientific topics ranging from atom to zenith come to life at the end of Lauren’s skilled needle, while Keltie’s lively text explains key concepts and delivers interesting facts. Readers will explore physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics and more, such as ‘F is for fractal and fibonacci numbers’ or ‘Q is for quantum’. Lauren’s art has been scanned to show the painstaking detail in each panel. Firefly Books, hardback, £25 Crafting a…

1. Joint overall winner of the Constance Howard award for most outstanding entry and the Valerie Campbell Harding award for best use of machine stitching JUDITH CASTLE WITH ROMEO AND JULIET Judith said: ‘I’m passionate about creating portraits in freehand machine embroidery and explored this for a double portrait tied into the challenge theme without falling for obvious clichés. Romeo and Juliet’s status provided the opportunity to use metallic threads to create a rich and vibrant picture, with thread painting to give the illusion of jewels. I was pleased at how well these metallic threads coped with machine stitching.’ 2. Joint overall winner of the Constance Howard award for most outstanding entry and the Julia Caprara award for best use of colour ALYSSA ROBINSON WITH YOU’RE THE YIN TO MY…

Subscriber exclusive Subscribers receive a 25% discount off a 2nd subscription when purchased as a gift Print only from £27.74 for 1 year UK delivery £41.24 International delivery Better still, print PLUS access to the fully searchable Embroidery digital library £38.99 UK delivery £52.49 International delivery Use promo code FRIEND T’s and C’s – From price is based on a annual direct debit price in the UK, prices return to the standard subscription pricing in year 2. International prices, are based on an annual recurring card payment, paid for online. EMBROIDERYMAGAZINE.CO.UK…

■ EVOKING A SENSE OF the wonder and also the darkness of a childhood spent on a remote farm in South Africa, Aradne creates images taken from nature – figures, birds, insects, flowers and text, saying that she had more contact with the wildlife than other human beings while living there. She believes one of the most important things for a successful embroidery is colour: ‘I spend a lot of time on that, trying different layers, shades and combinations of colour and different types of thread – matt and shiny together. If the colour is not right, it’s never going to work in my eyes.’ The name Aradne is a pseudonym. She likes the privacy and anonymity that it brings. She intimated in a conversation with Linda Davies in 2014…

ROSEMARY CAMPBELL trained at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. A founder member of EDGE and former member of the Textile Study Group, she is inspired by landscape and fascinated by narrative. Her work is often composed of multiple images which evoke a mood and sense of place. Passionate about her craft, she uses traditional techniques in a contemporary way, stitch being a vital element. Teaching has always been important and although retired, she continues to mentor two groups, and occasionally works with EDGE, recently on the Midges project. Her complex piece for Quines uses a double layering technique and was inspired by It’s Aye Sang Wi Me, a poem by Gerda Stevenson, chosen because of the Scots tongue. ALISON KING trained in fine art at Edinburgh College…

ON SHOW ALDEBURGH Exhibition by Chain Reaction, Pond Gallery, 6–11 Sep. chainreact.org.uk Plus, A Splash of Colour: new textile works from Out of the Fold, 18–23 Oct, Quay Gallery. Snape Maltings, Suffolk IP17 1SP. outofthefoldtextilegroup.blogspot.com ARUNDEL land marked, drawings/sculptures in paper, wood, clay, until 28 Sep. Time Spent: Oliver Chalk & Alexandra Yan Wong 12 Oct-2 Nov. Gallery 57. gallery57.co.uk AYLESBURY Blooming Threads: 400 years of embroidery blooms – an exhibition delving into the Embroiderers’ Guild Collection. Ongoing. Discover Bucks Museum, Church Street HP20 2PQ. discoverbucksmuseum.org BARNARD CASTLE Stories in Stitch until 29 Sep. The Bowes Museum, County Durham DL12 8NP. thebowesmuseum.org.uk BATH Uncanny Visions: Paula Rego and Francisco de Goya, 27 Sep–5 Jan 2025. The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street BA2 4DB. holburne.org BIRMINGHAM Acts of Creation: On Art and…

Jacky Puzey and Beatrice Mayfield were commissioned by HBO to make this stunning 2m sq banner which appears on screen in US fantasy drama series House of the Dragon. Digitally embroidered by Jacky, using her illustrative, flowing style to produce a richly patterned, intricately stitched surface, the banner was then hand-embellished by Beatrice with beads and cords. This added further texture to produce a surface that felt texture to produce a surface that felt ancient, with contrasting areas of dark and light, as if the piece had been handed down the generations. Correction In Sewing the seeds of recovery by Claire Waring (Embroidery May/June 2024), there was a typo in a quote from Sam Miller saying, ‘Because I effectively recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome, I know the secret.’ The final…

■ THERE’S A PAINTING by Edward Hopper from 1951 of the view from the back door of his Truro studio in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The door is wide open. Open to the sky. Open to the sea. Debbie Lyddon’s studio in Wells-next-the-Sea, though lacking the sharp, diamond-like light of the New England sun, has, nevertheless, a similar liminality where interior and exterior seem indivisible. In Lyddon’s case it’s by virtue of an almost floor-to-ceiling French window that opens up on to Wells’ East Quay and the marshy creek that flows in from the sea. Home to oystercatchers, egrets, redshanks, pink-footed geese, the occasional spoonbill and the ubiquitous gull, this muddy tributary teems with life. ‘It’s never silent,’ says Lyddon, ‘there’s always bird sounds. There’s not a lot of man-made, industrial…

■ STITCHING IS AT THE HEART of Latvian textile artist Baiba Rieber’s practice. ‘When I stitch, I bring the past and present together. It’s a gentle connection – a way to mend, to bond, to make things meaningful.’ Lulled as a child by the comforting rhythms of her great aunt’s treadle machine and captivated by her button collection, for Rieber, engaging with textiles is an intimate, tactile, sensory, memory-filled experience. Likening it to ‘puzzle pieces resting in my memory’, fomenting sewing, and more specifically embroidery, into an artistic vocation took some time. It was only after graduating with a degree in cultural management and holding down a full-time job that Rieber began ‘thinking about textile objects’. Rooted in the past, and housed in museum collections, this inchoate interest was initially…

‘I WAS BORN IN Trinidad and Tobago when it was a colony. Looking back at my childhood, the colonial experience infiltrated many areas of life,’ reflects artist Karen McLean. ‘My mother was really a Mrs Beeton woman – the house was the most important thing. She perfected embroidery, sewing and taught me how to crochet and macrame.’ ‘I never did art at school. My teacher told me I couldn’t draw and kicked me out of class. I came to England and did a foundation in Birmingham, at what was then the University of Central England, followed by a BA in art and design and a master’s at Goldsmiths, London.’ She explains that, ‘“post-colonialism is dead” were the buzzwords of the time. I was travelling back and forth to Trinidad during…

‘Visiting the shop was “like walking into an Alice in Wonderland set”, with Chorley at its heart’ ■ SOMETIMES YOU HAVE to retrace your steps in order to find a new way forward. For Jessie Chorley, contemplating her student portfolio from Goldsmiths and the years straight after graduation, plus the closure of her shop and a studio move, has refreshed and reinvigorated both the artist and her practice. She talks of a ‘golden thread’ running through her working life, pulling together the different strands of her practice, perhaps to foster this one moment in time – ‘the most deeply rewarding part of my life as a maker and artist’. Even if Chorley hadn’t pointed to her creative state of flow, one could have guessed as much. Her first book with…

Shantona Women’s Centre in Leeds are celebrating after two of their communally sewn artworks have been included in the Harewood Biennial. The artworks were made as part of Common Threads, a women’s collaborative embroidery project initiated in Pakistan in 2019 by textile artist Alice Kettle. Artisans from the Ra’ana Liaquat Craftsmen’s Colony started the artworks, which were then developed by women from the South Asian diaspora in Burnley, Bristol and Leeds. In Burnley, textile artist/teacher Rabia Sharif showed her group new stitches and prompted them to draw their motif ideas on the panels. More recently, as the project moved to Leeds, the British Textile Biennial commissioned embroiderer/teacher Elnaz Yazdani to support the completion of the embroidery panels. Elnaz recalls: ‘I instantly thought of the Shantona Women’s Centre, based at the…

Uncanny Visions at the Holburne Museum in Bath from 27 September examines the influence of Francisco de Goya on the late Dame Paula Rego. On public view for the first time will be the Goya etchings Rego owned and which hung around her bed, making these the first and last images she gazed upon every day. Rego often made three-dimensional studio props constructed in mixed media, such as textiles and papiermaché, but did not consider them ‘art’. However, in 2019, she produced three sculptures: Pride, Gluttony and Prince Pig (initially a prop). All three will be at the Holburne – each as unsettling as the next. The figure in Pride, pictured, has been described as a cross between Marie Antoinette and Miss Haversham. Fingering a gaudy necklace, with a bouffant…

TRICKS & TREATS PICK’N’MIX 1. Study online for an innovative new diploma The Hand & Lock School for Embroidery and Creative Arts’ latest exciting innovation is the Hand & Lock Diploma in Contemporary Hand Embroidery. A series of five cutting-edge, contemporary hand-embroidery online courses has been designed by expert tutors to introduce students to industry-standard couture embroidery. Learn contemporary goldwork, haute couture fashion, jewellery and wearable art, three-dimensional contemporary hand-beading and embroidery, and embellishment for interiors. Units can be completed in any order. You’ll need to complete at least three units for a standard diploma and five units for a complete diploma. No formal qualifications or training are required but it is recommended you take at least one Hand & Lock course before signing up. handembroideryshop.com/pages/hand-lock-school-diploma 2. Draw inspiration from…

Jeffrey Gibson is an artist who has always challenged us to look at the world differently. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, he is the first Indigenous American to represent his country in a solo show in their pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Pavilion commissioner and curator Abigail Winograd says: ‘I am convinced that audiences will be changed by their encounter with [Jeffrey’s work].’ Jeffrey, what do textiles mean to you? This might come as a shock, but I didn’t realise I was working with textiles for a long time. As a painter, I was looking at the way fabric and baskets were woven, and I started painting on animal hide as a way of shifting how abstraction could be read. Then I…

Louise Saxton’s process entails rescuing hand-crafted fabrics – materials that are imbued with intimacy and profound personal meaning for both the maker and the receiver – and creating a place of sanctuary within her work for those precious but imperilled textiles. Jason Smith, from the foreword of LOUISE SAXTON cut & pinned ‘EMBROIDERY AND LACE, patiently hand-crafted in the home, for the home in bygone eras, is on the brink of extinction and so too are many of the plants and animals that inspired its creation. Discarded and disinherited needlework, which I have reclaimed for almost 20 years, has come to me through my love of foraging in opportunity shops and flea markets and through the generosity of friends and family, or in parcels sent from people I don’t know.…

■ AFTER MUCH DEBATE among the judges, on 11 June the Embroiderers’ Guild announced the winners of the Members’ Challenge 2023–2024 on the theme of ‘opposites attract’. The judges congratulated all entrants and said: ‘The range of work submitted encompasses a variety of techniques, makes interesting use of stitch and colour, and imaginatively interprets the theme.’ A selection of the prize artworks are pictured below in our ‘Gallery of Winners’. The Members’ Challenge 2024–2025 is on the theme of ‘colour rhythms’, with the Guild announcing that the competition will be sponsored by JANOME. Embroiderers’ Guild trustees said: ‘We are very pleased to welcome JANOME as a sponsor and have added a new award, The JANOME Award for inspired use of machine embroidery stitches,​ to reflect JANOME’s involvement in and passion…

The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, London offers inspiration around every corner, the chance to meet up with like-minded makers, to discuss new ideas, learn new skills and shop for annual supplies among a wide selection of exhibitors. Textile gallery highlights include Geeta Khandelwal’s Indian miniature costumes, 1750–1950. Based in Mumbai, Geeta decided to recreate miniature versions of the costumes worn by the maharajas of the northern states of India. Holly Searle, aka the Subversive Stitcher, will exhibit her entire oeuvre of subverted vintage tea towels – which number 139. Catilin Hinshelwood presents banners exploring the connection between textiles and resistance. Harriet Riddell focuses on the theme of re-wilding, while as a performance artist she will create ‘live stitched portraits’ with free-motion embroidery. Cas Holmes brings her well-loved…