CONTENTS

INDULGE textiles to buy, collect or simply admire 31 WILD WORLD Amelia Thorpe discovers the extraordinary animal masks of Gladys Paulus 66 NO ORDINARY FABRIC Kvadrat connects art, design and architecture with textiles. Written by Ptolemy Mann

GLOBAL textiles from around the world 16 SCENE STEALER Jane Smith’s hats make an entrance By Jennifer Levet 60 DEEPER THAN INDIGO Jenny Balfour Paul’s journeys in the footsteps of Thomas Machell, forgotten explorer 70 THE MERCHANTS OF VENICE Patricia Cleveland-Peck explores the fabulous fabrics of Venice

ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives 20 CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK How Owen Morse-Brown became a custom hat block maker By Diane Woolf 22 HEADS UP Claire Strickland is driving modern millinery ahead By Amelia Thorpe 64 RED,WHITE,AND BLACK MAKE BLUE Indigo in Colonial South Carolina By Andrea Feeser 96 FABRIC SWATCH LampasSarah Jane Downing on a technique to behold. Illustrated by Alice Pattullo

ATTIRE critical reporting of fashion trends 26 IN SEASON Clare Lewis looks at the millinery customs of high society Illustrations by Lauren DiCioccio 46 WARP,WEFT AND WONDERFUL TO WEAR Ace and Jig weaves cool-girl style with old world techniques Written by Kate Cavendish 56 VOLUME AND FIT Helen Spencer considers Cristobal Balenciaga’s stellar career Illustrated by Paula Sanz Caballero

CONCEPT textiles in fine art 40 LABOR PORTRAITS What goes on at Mildred’s Lane By Jessica Hemmings 50 INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION The sculptors o f Savile Row By Hormazd Narielwalla 52 RATTLING THE CAGE The history of the crinoline By Dani Trew 58 EDITH’S LIST A rich babel of textile terms By Theresa Munford

INDUSTRY from craft to commerce 10 RE CONFORMATEUR Philip Treacy’s remarkable hat block collection Photographs by Kevin Davies 24 BEST OF BRITISH Lock & Co is a hatters steeped in history 34 OAK, HAZEL, RUSH, STRAW,WILLOW AND BRAMBLE Baskets of the British IslesBy Hilary Burns 38 SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD Sarah Jane Downing on the rise and fall of the straw hat industry

HEADS UP Claire Strickland is driving modern millinery ahead

“My ideas don’t stop,” Claire Strickland says, sitting in her east London studio surrounded by shelves laden with blocks, plaster head casts, twisted aluminium wire shapes and any number of half-formed creations. Today, her hats and headpieces are in demand for theatre, pantomime, opera and films, as well as for private commissions – and her first limited edition collection of designs will launch in Spring 2016.

“I enjoy understanding what people want,” she says of her starting point for each design. While a performance piece may be commissioned with a drawing and detailed dimensions, it could also be a much more abstract brief with simply a description of the character. Then it’s a case of working out the profile in cardboard, especially important to establish proportion in some of the more outlandish designs: on her worktable today is a panto Big Ben-themed headdress for Watford Palace Theatre, but it could just as well be a sci-fi creation for Secret Cinema or a Tudor French hood for the BBC.

Strickland uses a pattern cutting method to sculpt and glue the under-structure, often using Plastazote foam. After a fitting, she will create a skull cap, usually blocked out in felt, and once the shape and structure are agreed, she will begin her decoration, usually with laminated layers of brown paper or fabric with hand stitching. “I love making sculptural headdresses with lots of attention to detail, using a wide variety of materials, including buckram, Paris net, vintage veiling, hessian and tarlatan,” she says. Recent work includes a collar piece for Opera Holland Park with stylized flowers on a golden necklace, finished with beads, gold leaf and French enamel varnish.

When it comes to private commissions, she takes a different approach. “I forget about how I’m going to make the piece and just let my imagination get carried away,” she says. When she has considered how the hat will be worn, the personality of the wearer and how it will flatter the face, and only when she is satisfied with her drawing, does she switch to thinking about making it. And her inspiration? “I often look at flowers and the way they grow,” she says. “I see the seam lines in them, and start imagining how I would make them in 3D.”

Her passion for millinery dates back to 2000, when she made a mask for a mid-winter masquerade, covering her bird-inspired design in feathers and beads. Abandoning a potential career in web design, she went on to study technical effects for the performing arts at the London College of Fashion, took millinery courses with Jane Smith and moved on to working at London’s oldest hatter, Lock & Co. “Working under Sylvia Fletcher, the house designer at Lock’s, has given me an understanding of couture millinery and hats with a lightness of touch and delicate features,” she says.

We can expect her first collection of limited edition to feature jewel-like colours in elegant, wearable shapes, using fabrics from the London Cloth Company. “I like to make everything from scratch, so I don’t use pre-made bases,” she explains. “I think it’s important to develop the shape. I want to push millinery forward by creating sculptural shapes that are flattering. It’s not about making crazy shapes – hats must sit comfortably on the head and look good.” Amelia Thorpe www.clairestrickland.com

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“I like making hats that are going to get a lot of use,” she says.

Claire Strickland is a contemporary milliner fast earning a celebrated reputation for her sculptural and exciting designs.

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SCENE STEALER Jane Smith’s hats make an entrance

“I never wear hats!” This might sound a little bit odd coming from a woman who spends all day everyday surrounded by bowlers, bonnets and boaters. However, perhaps it is to be expected of Jane Smith, whose hats are generally worn by Tudor kings and fictional wizards… Having worked mainly as a theatrical milliner to the stage, film and television industry for over 40 years, one or more of Jane’s hats has undoubtedly appeared in front of you at some point. And yet, with commissions ranging from Harry Potter to the King of Tonga (bicornes for his coronation ceremony), you may imagine that Smith’s was a straight-forwardly ambitious and studious career progression. You’d be wrong. In fact very little about Jane Smith or her hats fits into a neat narrative.

Although Smith studied sculpture at art college and evidently has always had a feel for the three-dimensional, a career in hat making came about by chance. “I did sweet f* all for many years; chief cook, bottle washer, and plaster mixer at four in the morning for years and years,” she explained of her years post Camberwell College of Art. Until – through her father who was a production manager on films in the 1930s – Smith began working in the storeroom of Nathans (a then major costume supplier of film and television) and soon found herself replicating a French hood. The hood would go on to appear in the 1969 film Anne of a Thousand Days and Smith would go on to make countless other hats, both replicas and originals.

Smith soon found herself working freelance in film and theatre hat making. She went on to design and manufacture contemporary hats for the then hugely fashionable Laura Ashley for 14 years, finally owning her own hat shop. She sold her business and hat shop in 1990 and returned to working in theatre. “The difference between my designing contemporary hats for a client or designing for the Laura Ashley Collections, and working on Theatre or Film productions, reproducing the designer’s ideas,” she explains, “is mainly the materials and ability to be as versatile as possible.”

Theatrical millinery as a craft to learn has its basic foundation skills and materials. Materials are mainly buckram, felt & straw. Incidentally Smith has a wealth of knowledge about strip straw, from the Laura Ashley years, a beautiful4

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Jane Smith to me is a one in a million lady, inspiring, humble & incredibly talented. She works mainly as a theatrical milliner to the stage, film & tv industry and has also taught her craft to students wanting to learn at many colleges in London, all over the UK and across the world.

I’ve known her ever since I took a summer course on nineteenth century millinery way back in the summer of 2006 at Kensington Chelsea College, right after graduating. I then went on to study with her again a few more times and have been lucky enough to assist her also on various weird and wonderful hat commissions since.

Jane is an incredibly humble, passionate & intelligent person. As a teacher, she’s one of the ones that everyone remembers and treasures, who is normal, down to earth and reassuring. She always seemed to know the special ridiculously simple way to solve a hat making problem & can fill you with confidence to carry on, not belittle you for not knowing a technique. I’ve spoken to countless people in the costume & theatre industry who have trained with or worked with her and they all only have good wonderful things to say.

Part of her work involves commissions for London based tailors such as Ede & Ravenscroft or Gieves & Hawkes. I once assisted her as part of a small team on a lovely commission making bicornes; sometimes known as a ‘chapeau-bras’; for The King of Tonga’s coronation, which I believe was commissioned by the latter. We made the foundation of the hats from buckram and covered them in black fabric, and trimmed them with white curled ostrich feathers and complet-

CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK How Owen Morse-Brown came into custom block making

Owen Morse-Brown took over the family hat block business founded by his father, Guy, eight years ago. Contrary to appearances, this was not a pre-ordained case of son succeeding father: Owen had been happily running his own successful business as a luthier for several years. However his father’s retirement in 2007 forced Owen to consider his options and he and his wife Catherine eventually agreed to take over the business. “It took us a while to decide to take it on but I am very glad that we did as it’s been fantastic,” he says.

Hat blocks – also known as hat forms – are the hat-shaped blocks a milliner uses to shape a hat. The milliner pins or ties the material – usually straw or felt – over the block when wet (and pliable) and then manipulates it into the required shape, before trimming. When the material dries it can be removed from the block without losing its shape, the block effectively acting as a mould.

The Guy Morse-Brown blocks are hand-carved from wood, using chisels, spoke shaves and gouges. The company is one of the very few traditional hat block makers left in the UK – mass-produced hats are made using aluminium moulds – and mainly sells to amateurs, although designers such as Philip Treacy have commissioned work from the company in the past.

After studying music at Bath Spa University, Owen started his career as a luthier because it combined the two things he was most interested in at the time – music and wood – and he spent the next 15 years making instruments. This was to prove a surprisingly good training for his second career. The woodwork skills required to make a lute, for example, and a hat block are similar, particularly the hand carving elements. “There’s a lot of carving with the chisel in musical instrument making and this translates very well into hat blocks,” he explains. A knowledge of geometry and proportion are also required for both crafts, areas which Owen has always been interested.

Once he had decided to take over the family firm, Owen spent a period working alongside his father, revising the skills he learnt as a child and in effect carrying out a mini hat block making apprenticeship. His father, who Owen describes as “the most methodical man I know”, also left him detailed records of how to make every block the company produces. A natural teacher (he was awarded an MBE for services to millinery and skills training in 2007), Guy is still available for advice and clearly father and son have an excellent professional relationship.

The company has an extensive catalogue of styles – ranging from a simple cloche hat to men’s trilbys and bowlers – but Owen is also happy to make one-off blocks to order. Customers may send him a photograph of a hat they want to make or an actual hat that they would like to reproduce and then Owen will design a block specifically for them.

It’s often a fairly collaborative process, with Owen and the customers discussing how the hat will be made, and either altering some of their generic designs or making a completely new block as required. If it’s a one-off design Owen may well carve the block free-hand; but for a design he will repeat he has to work out how to reproduce it using a series of templates and exact measurements, a design challenge he clearly relishes.

All in all it’s a surprisingly complex process and Owen illustrates the point by telling me of a recent commission for a New York milliner who wanted to make a series of beanie hats out of felt, not wool. Owen had to work out how to create a block which would replicate the floppy look of a traditional bobble hat. “It involved a lot of measuring and working out each profile and then making a separate template for each dimple,” he explains.

As well as the designing Owen loves the actual making process. He will however leave the repeatable designs to his assistants, reserving the more stimulating one-off projects for himself. “I love the hand-carved stuff. You start with a piece of wood and gradually see the shape come out of it – it’s so satisfying seeing a chisel go through the wood and making a nice shape,” he says.

Eight years on from his father’s retirement and the Guy Morse-Brown business is booming under Owen’s leadership. He now employs four assistants while his wife Catherine helps with the office work, and this summer he was awarded the Heritage Crafts Association Maker of the Year award, ‘in recognition of outstanding craftsmanship and for contributing to Britain’s rich craft heritage in doing so’. It comes as no surprise to learn that he collected the award wearing a hat made to one of his own designs using one of his own hat blocks. Diane Wolf www.hatblocks.co.uk

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