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ContentsINDULGEtextilestobuy,collectorsimply admire 76 COVER STORY Short Story Writer Amelia Thorpe visits Cameron Short’s printing press and hears why he prefers a lo-tech approach to textiles.

CONCEPT textiles in fine art 72 COVER STORY As a token Jessie Chorley is commissioned to capture memories and is making a gesture with every piece she crafts. WrittenbyBethSmith. 96 Dress code Richard Nott captures the essence of textiles on canvas. BethSmithspeakstothe former Designer of the Year and co-founder of fashion label Workers for Freedom about his passionforpaintingclothes.

INDUSTRY from craft to commerce 42 In Good Company Diane Woolf explores the long history of the Livery Companies and discovers they continue to support students and trainees. IllustratedbyAlicePattullo. 50 COVER STORY Role Models Fashion designers Barbara Hulanicki, Caroline Charles and Zandra Rhodes are dramatically different but they have at least one thing in common – they have been inspiring others for decades. IllustratedbyNikeSchröder. 56 Classic examples This year’s textile graduates identify their sources of inspiration. Nowinits 28thyear,NewDesignersistheplacetoseemoreemergingtalentvisitwww.newdesigners.com

GLOBAL Textiles from around the world 36 Recollecting the past Vintage hunting in Berlin Written by Delia Dumitrescu, author of Secondhand&VintageBerlin,andillustratedbyElisandra.

COHABIT stunning interiors beautifully photographed 48 Sacred Stitches `The Rothschilds’ ecclesiastical textiles. WrittenbyRachelBoak,SeniorCurator responsibleforthecollectionofcostumeandtextilesatWaddesdonManor. 60 COVER STORY Rural roots Katherine Ireland adorns her French home with floral patterns Clare Lewisfindsglobalinfluencesandlaidbacklivinginthisinternationaldesigner’scountryretreat.

ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives 15 Simply the Bast Sarah Jane Downing gets to the core of these natural fibres and marvels at nature’s bounty and the ingenuity of man. Illustrated byMarcinaBusato. 32 COVER STORY Gathering flowers We admire the floral flamboyance of traditional Provençal dress. WriterGenevieveWoodslivesandworksinAlsace,easternFrance,afascinatingregionwhichfirst sparkedherinterestintextiles. 46 Covered in glory Cloaks for the Madonna. Genevieve Woods looks at the time-honoured practice of adorning statues with intricate and costly textiles. ImagesfromNotreDamedelaDaurade. 66 Sewing seeds The cultural significance of flowers OurregularcontributorSarahJaneDowning grewcuriousabouttheuseofflowersasdecorativedevices.

Flax is one of the oldest textile fibres: Egyptian tomb discoveries show that it was cultivated to make fine cloth for the pharaohs. Linen is thought to have been brought from the Mediterranean to northern Europe by Phoenician traders, whilst the Romans instituted linen manufacture throughout their empire.

Flax has a warm lustre, with the finest fibre being pale cream. It makes fine attractive cloth which absorbs and releases moisture well, helping to keep the wearer cool: it also bleaches successfully to pure white. It is stronger than cotton and increases in strength when wet making it excellent for canvas, twine, industrial sewing thread and fire hoses.

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Similarly, jute played a significant role in the British navy, and in the 1850s provided all the canvas tents, tarpaulins and gun covers necessary for the Crimean war. Indigenous to the Ganges delta, jute was first introduced to Britain by the East India Company in 1791. Initially considered too brittle for machine spinning, it was only in Dundee in the 1820s shortly after the town had converted from whale oil to gas lighting that enterprising industrialists with a glut of useless whale oil hit upon the idea of steeping the jute in the oil to soften it. This also made it waterproof, allowing jute to become the essential fabric of the great American exodus west on the covered wagons of the new settlers. 4

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Gathering flowers GENEVIEVE WOODS ADMIRES TRADITIONAL PROVENÇAL COSTUME

As the sparkling river Rhône moves south towards the Mediterranean it splits into two at Arles like legs flung out in an exuberant jig, with the town swinging around them like a flared skirt. Proud of its heritage and traditions, it is Provençal costume that found its apogee in Arles. From Mistral’s poem Mireille which Gounod turned into an opera, to the paintings of local women such as the well known L’Arlésienne by Van Gogh, the styles worn by women captured the imagination of artists.

Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914) made it his life’s work to revive the language and culture of Provence, and he initiated the first “Fête de la costume” in Arles, in 1903. This annual event sees men, women and children, dressed in Provençal costume and parading through the city’s streets. Set against the yellow stone buildings and bright limpid light, Arles shimmers with vibrant coloured outfits in this homage to Arlésien dress.

Traditional Provençal dress was famed for its flamboyance. Women and girls delighted in combining fabrics and colour in original ways. Their exuberant taste in fabric derives from the role of Marseille in the cotton trade, first as an importer of Persian and Indian fabrics, then as a producer of printed calicoes, or “indiennes” as they were known. Later the factory at Jouy – better known for its toile de Jouy – was quick to satisfy the Provençal taste for Persian-style printed cloth, which was not popular elsewhere in France.

Women wore several full, gathered, ankle length skirts simultaneously. It was common to see skirts made up in boutis, the stuffed quilting technique for which the region is famous, and striped underskirts in red or blue. An apron would be worn over the skirts. A chemise, either in hemp or linen, or finer cotton depending on the wearer’s social class, was worn under a caraco.

The caraco was a cropped double layered longsleeved top, either in black or made up in floral prints with a plainer cotton lining. It developed from the “droulet”, which itself was an adaptation of a male garment, the tailed coat worn by men. Taken up by women as an over garment with wider sleeves, the “tails” gradually reduced to narrow lengths of cloth, then to two long ribbons trailing down the back of the outfit until they were finally dispensed with. A ‘fichu’, a fine white or printed scarf in triangle form, edged in lace and draped over the shoulders with the two ends tucked into the waist of the skirt, finished the outfit.

The special feature to the dress, which differed from one village to the next, was the “coiffe”, an individual way of tying the hair and enclosing it in cloth or lace. For Arlésiennes their hair was twisted and gathered on top of the head, secured into a bun which was covered with a white kerchief with the ends wound around and knotted at the front; leaving the tips displayed erect at the front resembling a pair of rabbit ears. One final ornament was sometimes added: an embroidered ribbon wrapped around the coiffe and attached at the back, leaving the ends to fall to the shoulders. In

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Fragonard summer, for protection from the sun there was a wide brimmed straw hat either in natural colour or black. In winter this would be replaced by a felt hat.

Social status played a part in introducing variations to the basic costume. The bourgeoisie, the bastide estate owners referred to as “bastidanes”, the artisans and shopkeepers, and peasants who worked the land could all be distinguished by the number of clothes worn and the richness and detail of the fabrics.

The peasants made up their clothes in hemp, recycled cottons or other coarser fabrics they had available: often the boutis skirts or caraco lining would be a patchwork of material from earlier garments. Artisans dressed in the same way but had finer quality cloth, with a chemise in linen and edged in muslin. For the bastidanes who were able to afford silk, not only was the cloth finer but also the quality of the workmanship – piqué skirts were evidence of long hours and intricate handiwork.

Climate had an impact on the style of dress across Provence. In maritime areas and high alps wool was more prevalent than cotton and hemp was woven to make working clothes. Colours tended to be more sombre reflecting the use of undyed wool.

Men’s dress tended to be more sober, with dark trousers and a light coloured chemise: again the quality of the cloth reflected the status of the individual. The whole ensemble would be set off by a gilet, often an object of pride especially if made in finer fabrics such as silk or satin. Other accessories such as buttons, or a cravat or handkerchief tied at the neck and a hat would give the wearer a distinctive style. Regional variations were found in the fishermen’s red woollen bonnet along the coast, the woollen gaiters worn by the shepherds in the Alpine regions, and the “taiole”, a three metre length of cloth wound around the waist typically by fishermen and those working at higher altitudes.

To see Provençal dress visit some of the permanent collections in the region. The Musée du Parfum Fragonard at Grasse displays fine examples of women’s dress from the upper classes; the Musée Arlatan, founded by Mistral, is dedicated to Provençal culture including dress; and the Musée du Vieil Aix located in a splendid 17th century house also has costume. However, the best way to appreciate Provençal costume must be to experience the Fête de la Costume in Arles where garments are worn and brought to life. ••• Fête de la costume, 30th June, Théâtre antique, Arles, France, www.comitedesfetes-arles.com

Recollecting the past

VINTAGE HUNTING IN BERLIN

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If you want to travel back in time, Berlin is probably one of the best places to do so. Not the authentic Transylvania kind of going back in time: but catching the charisma and glamour of the urban time past, the interwar life and habits.

If you are one of Berlin’s year-round residents adopting the city’s characteristic carefree resilience, you would probably wake up in the morning and drink your tea from a secondhand cup with a gold rim bought last weekend from a thrift store, toast your bread in a toaster that belonged to your grandma, put on a dress from your neighbourhood flea market, ride your used, slightly rusty bike to your creative job and end your day by dancing the Charleston in a bar.

Why is that? Why here? The city itself is accountable. “Street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and secondhand furniture of a bankrupt middle class” is how Christopher Isherwood described it in Goodbye to Berlin. Has much changed? This is still a transitional city. People from many nations come to live here for ‘a while’ and then move on to their next stop, leaving heaps of personal belongings behind. Only those material things remain. No wonder some started to make a business out of it. The secondhand and vintage market has developed organically because of Berlin’s lifestyle, becoming one of Europe’s top destinations for aficionados of the style.

The secondhand experience in Berlin is one-of-a-kind mostly because of the coming together of the two existing cultures: the East and the West. Yes, one can still feel it. Westerners (and not only) are keen on tasting Eastern life or at least using their designs. Berlin is one of the few places where real history is strongly attached to secondhand objects and this, but not only this, means everyone owns at least one secondhand object, no matter if it’s furniture or a vinyl record, a dress, shoes or all of the above.

The city has many styles. It can be bohemian, yet still keeps something from the mysterious GDR era or the burlesque shows and the glamour of the 20s. The secondhand scene here strives to keep this feeling alive with its material but also cultural offerings: the shabby-chic look of bars, the swing music you hear inside a café, old refurbishment, lindy hop courses, swapping parties (where you exchange the clothing you wear with somebody else’s clothing from the party), the lavender bathroom soap that reminds you of grandma’s cure against moths, people’s outfits on the street or even the new shops with retro designs and dandy wear or Interpicnic’s 4

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Back to her roots TERESA MARTINS’ ORGANIC DESIGNS

Teresa Martins’ creative energies flow from the sea to the earth. The Lisbonborn founder of TM Collection, who earned her university degree in marine biology, designs clothing, accessories and home furnishings that are grounded in the natural world and distinguished by their attention to texture, embellishment, and fibre.

Her collections, with evocative names like Rootsor Vegetal, suggest the “original” philosophy behind Martins’ vision. “TM Collection is all about creating beauty within a textile universe,

away from the established standards of fashion trends,” Martins said via email correspondence. She has ten maxims, which begin with using the textiles, such as natural fibres and hand-loomed fabrics, as the base for all her designs.

She treats her cottons, linens, silks, and wools as a “canvas” upon which she paints with vegetable dyes or embellishes with pattern and embroidery. “Their energy and vibration create a safe and balanced synergy,” she remarked, “one that matches our own skin.” Indeed, for Martins, “clothes act as a second skin,”

so these natural fabrics become an extension of the body; the garments merge with the individual as if one was born to wear them.

Certainly Martins was born to design, as she recalls her earliest memories of engaging with textiles. “The need for creation and the passion for colours were always there,” she said. When Martins was young, she couldn’t find the shapes and combinations she desired, so she’d sketch her own looks and have them made up by a local woman, fondly remembering that both her mother and the dressmaker would go “a bit crazy” with the young designer’s ideas.

Her signature look comprises what she calls “simple, loose, and versatile blocks” of fabric that show off the material’s qualities and free the body from restrictive seaming or cinching. Martins’ clothing floats over the body, as a whisper-thin linen tunic grazes patterned cotton trousers, a cardigan shrugged over the shoulders. Her clothes move with the individual, never weighing her down, but revealing, with each gesture, the prettiest glimpses of an unexpected texture or print.

Layering is an important concept in Martins’ aesthetic, a sensibility that complements the designer’s varied experiences in different cultures: she lived in Mozambique as a child, studied painting and drawing in Brussels, owned a decorative shop in the coastal town of Cascais, Portugal, and drew on her master’s degree in biochemistry to teach at the Science University of Lisbon. And she regularly travels to India to develop fabrics with a textile company near Delhi.

“Layers,” Martins said, “allow various looks within the same selection of items.” This concept germinated during her childhood designs and was, she noted, “just waiting for the right moment to bloom.” Her floral metaphor is apt, because Martins’ layered silhouettes often suggest the look of a rose gently opening its petals; she even names some of her garments after flowers, such as the tulip dress from her Roots collection, constructed from colourful bands of raw silk, which she layers over baggy, cropped silk trousers.

Martins’ accessories, which she considers an “intimate” part of her layering aesthetic, exemplify one of her ten maxims: to minimize and reuse fabric wastage. Her nubby, knotted wool necklaces, intertwined with smooth beads, or her detachable embroidered collars are miniature sculptures that frame the clothing. She makes tiny fabric-andleather bags, worn in pairs, to wrap around the waist, or oversize satchels, decorated with textile pockets. Martins works on a large scale with these pieces, creating visual impact from leftover fabric. Her technique of salvaging the selvedge demonstrates commitment to an organic ethic, her eco friendly act of ensuring that every last bit of material is put to good use rather than being discarded.

TM Collection subscribes to what Martins calls a “continuum process”, so pieces from each new collection can easily be mixed with those from earlier seasons. The result is a sophisticated overlay of shape and pattern, as in the Vegetal collection, where a silk peplum shirt caresses a pod-printed linen skirt, anchored by a leather corset belt and the whimsical glamour of tassels. This interplay between delicate and strong, playful and elegant, situates Martins’ clothing as an aesthetic sanctuary from the influence of trends; her looks are timeless because they are so beautifully, engagingly beyond fashion.

Indeed, Martins’ creative vision extends beyond clothing to the home, for which she designs furniture wrapped in her distinctive fabrics, as well as cushions and lampshades, and also the interiors of select hotels and other businesses. She has created costumes for the Edna Ballet and offers bespoke bridal designs. Both her clothes and her designs for the home employ the same sophisticated ethnic glamour, based on Martins’ organic principles of textile and shape. And fittingly, for a designer who is engaged with the natural world, Martins looks to her childhood roots of playing with silhouette and layers as she nurtures the seeds that will grow into future collections. ••• Kate Cavendish s e l v e d g e . o r g

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In good company THE LONG HISTORY OF THE LIVERY COMPANIES

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What do modern-day insurers, water conservators and security professionals have in common with medieval fanmakers, basketmakers and goldsmiths? Answer: they all have their own livery company, along with 102 other professions ranging from coopers and cooks to tylers and tax advisers. Of these 100 plus companies, twenty-one are directly linked to the textile trade, reading like a Who’s Who of the medieval industry with names such as Feltmakers, Woolmen, Framework Knitters and Dyers alongside Drapers and Merchant Taylors. And of the twelve most powerful companies in the Middle Ages, five were linked with textiles, underlining the economic importance of the cloth industry in medieval London – as does the Lord Chancellor’s famous woolsack.

Today these livery companies, all based in the City of London, have a mainly charitable role. However, their origins were far more practical as the majority started life as a medieval guild or trade association. Each trade, often based in a specific area of the city, had its own regulating organisation, acting as a quality controller by checking weights and measures (the 13th loaf in the baker’s dozen was their insurance policy against breaking such rules). The guilds set wages, controlled imports and oversaw working conditions. There was a strict hierarchy in each guild, with apprentices at the bottom of the pile; after seven years training they became journeymen who then in turn became Freemen or Masters (once they had completed their ‘masterpiece’), craftsmen who had obtained Freedom of the City and could therefore legally practise their trade. At the top of the company tree were the livery men – full company members who were entitled to wear the company uniform or livery (hence the name ‘livery’ company).

Trade fraternities or guilds probably existed in some form before 1066, but the first company to be granted a Royal Charter was the Weavers Company in 1155. This was followed by other companies and as the number grew the different companies began to jostle for position, eventually forcing the Lord Mayor to draw up a fixed order of precedence in 1515, ranking what became known as the Great Twelve Livery Companies. The Merchant Taylors and Skinners were so concerned about their positions on the list that they refused to agree to who should take precedence and were forced to take turns being sixth every year. This rotation between sixth and seventh place is reputedly the origin of the term ‘being at sixes and sevens’.

As well as their regulatory role, the early livery companies were closely involved in their members’ welfare – both spiritual and material. Many had links to a local church with this religious element lingering on today in the ‘Worshipful’ adjective still used in the companies’ titles. Materially, members were helped when sick or elderly with many companies setting up almshouses and funding funerals. It is this charitable element that is the raison d’etre of today’s livery companies; it’s gradually increased in importance as their influence over their specific trades has declined. And in spite – or perhaps because – of these companies being strange historical remnants from the City of London’s medieval glory days, they are surprisingly wealthy: the 108 companies gave an impressive £41.85 million to charity in 2010 with over half going to education and a third to welfare.

So where does all the money come from? Each company is financed slightly differently with income mainly coming from past benefactors, although members still pay fees. Benefactors range from the famous mayor of London Dick Whittington, who left property to the Mercers Company to finance an almshouse for 13 poor men and women in 1423, to Robert Aske who left the Haberdashers money in 1690 to found a school, today’s Haberdashers Aske. Over the years they’ve also been bequeathed an extensive property portfolio; for example the Drapers own the global asset management firm Black Rock’s HQ in Drapers Garden, while the Mercers own several blocks in Covent Garden’s Long Acre.

Given that both history, traditions and funding varies from company to company, it’s not surprising that their spending policies differ too. The majority of the eleven companies connected to the textiles industry are keen to keep these ties by either funding education or research in their specific areas. Among the many areas covered by the Drapers’ Charitable Fund are textile conservation and technical textiles; the Woolmen support the wool industry (as well 4

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