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Contents selv edge.org
INDULGE textiles to buy, collect or simply admire
76 COVER STORY Apolline Into the forest Apolline finds inspiration in fairytales 17 Miscellany Hang ups The history of wire coat hangers 19 COVER STORY A likely notion The prettiest haberdashery around Have nothing in your sewing box that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful 13 COVER STORY Ellie Evans Pick a pocket or two for Mothers Day’s These sweet keepsakes are a gift to treasure 69 Guiding Hand Collecting Katazone Helen Smith of Clothaholics offers tips and advice on the traditional stencil dyed cloth
INDUSTRY from craft to commerce
42 Local treasure The launch of the Blodwen range Denise Lewis and Caryl Terlezki scour the hills and dales to revive neglected Welsh skills 52 COVER STORY Untold stories V&A Curator Sue Prichard reveals the hidden histories in quilts
ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives
38 Domestic economy The money making venture of Welsh miner’s wives How the quilts of village women went from the coal face to Claridges 67 Curator’s choice Laura Beresford chooses from the American Museum in Britain A highlight from one of the finest quilt collections in Europe 44 Centre of attention Welsh quilt expert Jen Jones’ new gallery A tale of revival and appreciation for Welsh quilts
CONCEPT textiles in fine art
32 COVER STORY Natasha Kerr More then meets the eye Detailed contemporary quilts underpinned by layers of imagination 20 Breathing space Slow down, it’s not an egg and spoon race Katya de Grunwald explores the peaceful nature of pale linen
More than meets the eye NATASHA KERR
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At the centre of Natasha Kerr’s ‘At the End of the Day’ is a photo of her grandfather Otto lying on a rug in the garden in front of an empty chair alongside his mother-in-law whose face is covered by her hand. The photo is surrounded by a multicoloured flag. It is, according to Kerr, a ‘displacement flag’ an image of those left behind, those who are missing or do not belong anywhere. This sense of dislocation or searching for the story of what makes sense of individual lives is the theme of much of her work, all of which is deeply considered, controlled and researched.
Kerr’s family has been a considerable influence. Her grandfather Otto, who trained under Freud, came to Britain in 1936 to escape the Nazis. A surgeon and specialist in women’s health, he was the son of a renowned Viennese tailor. Skill with a needle became a family tradition. Raised in a matriarchal household of three generations, Kerr was adept at creating her own style and making her own clothes. She studied textiles at the University of Brighton creating ‘distressed’ fabrics based on Italian frescoes, which always showed the touch of the human hand. (A builder once mistook her work for a cleaning rag.) “I love things with soul,” she explains. “I don’t like broken things, yet I love age and patina. I like the interaction between the human being and the object. There must be care in the construction, which is reflected in the object.
“My granny and great-grandmother both knit and crocheted things that were sold in department stores like Harrods, so maybe the importance of care and investment was instilled subliminally, as neither were doing this in my lifetime. So I suppose it is important to me now that what I make is made with care and attention to detail. The back of the work is neat and properly finished. No one sees it, but I know that it is like that. I was taught ‘if something is worth doing it is worth doing properly’ and I cannot abide slapdash.”
On graduating she designed printed fashion fabrics using ghostly Renaissance imagery and was selected for Texprint in Dusseldorf. The turning point came when her mother gave her a forgotten album of old photographs. She transferred them to textiles, trying to establish the Whys? and When’s? of the family members. Her open workshop show, in the studio she had set up in Cockpit Arts in 1994, attracted gallery interest, resulting in exhibitions at Contemporary Applied Arts and a solo at the Ruthin Craft Centre.
But Kerr wanted to show her work not in a fractured way, but as a chronology of a family, to make it coherent – not just a series of amusing anecdotes. “It is a story of migration, change and the cycle of life,” she explains. A sterile white gallery space seemed inappropriate; she wanted her family to be seen in a house. So her 30th birthday present to herself and to anyone lucky enough to see it was to find a decaying house through the Peabody Trust and with the help of the Applied Arts Agency to create an extraordinary installation, complete with smell, sound, objects and images, that reflected her family’s past. She funded the project herself, but, perhaps because she worked in textiles, the exhibition did not receive the acclaim it deserved. It remains one of the most haunting installations I have ever experienced.
Her career continued with commissions for cruise liners and even a Millennium stamp, which in typical fashion, she researched meticulously,
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Domestic economy
THE MONEY-MAKING VENTURE OF MINERS’ WIVES
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anecdote
Study Centre Collection
05 Craft
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'Mrs Smith, not very needy, aged 45, bold work, stitches rather large, good double twist border.' That was the verdict of Mavis Randolph, the lady employed by the Rural Industries Board (RIB), and Muriel Rose, a craft gallery owner, to tour mining areas on wash days searching for expertly quilted items on washing lines.
Once something suitable was spotted (standards were high) and contact made, the quilter's speciality designs were noted, sketched and details of home life recorded: 'Mrs Jones, invalid husband, can do cushions, especially a v.good round one called the whirl with scales around.' Selected quilters were offered constructive criticism and encouragement and work was commissioned. But why was someone sent to skulk through the backyards of Wales seeking skilled quilters?
In the late 1920s the import of cheap Polish coal reduced the export price of British coal. To preserve their profits coal mine-owners closed pits and reduced the wages of the miners. This led to poverty and hardship in mining areas and various schemes were devised by the government to give aid. The RIB, formed to assist in the post-war reconstruction, set up workshops and training schools in the mining areas – quilting especially became a valuable source of income.
Quilting as a practical craft is centuries old and at the beginning of the 20th century quilts were still made in rural areas for local use; quilt clubs existed in many
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mining villages and small weekly payments were made to cover the cost of the quilt. The quilter was paid £1 for two or three weeks work of daily sewing, and this provided welcome income in areas where the price of a quilt could equal two weeks pay for a miner.
But there was even greater potential for a new type of professional quilter – one who worked for the luxury market rather than the local community. One of the first exhibition of quilts created for the London market was held at The Little Gallery in Sloane Street, the high class craft gallery owned by Muriel Rose. She was influential in providing an outlet and a permanent showroom for work from what was known as the 'distressed areas'. Preference was given to those who could not only produce excellent needlework but who had the greatest need for money, and the wealthy buyer received a glow of philanthropy along with their purchase. Commissions flooded in: HM Queen Mary ordered a dressing gown and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester led the fashion amongst the aristocracy for quilted items of exceptional quality. The 'smart set' followed where they led. When the Claridge Hotel built a new wing, all the bedrooms were furnished with wholecloth quilts. Two quilters, one from Wales and one from Durham, were invited by the RIB to London to tour the hotel and see their work in rather different surroundings from those in which it had been produced.
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Local treasure
Do you want to support small makers, to save waning craft traditions, to cherish our dwindling skills and see them passed on to the next generation? Of course you do! What kind of person would say “No! I want to stamp out the handmade and move everything to machine production.” Not a Selvedge reader, that much is certain. But on the other hand filling our homes with the unedited labours of love produced by craftspeople whose ‘enthusiasm’ overwhelms their design sensibility is a high price to pay to keep weavers, woodturners and potters in business.
So it’s a relief to find out that such self-sacrifice is no longer necessary. Denise Lewis and Caryl Terlezki, two Welsh women, have undertaken the task of showcasing local crafts from the Cardigan Bay area and – this is the good bit – making sure each and every carefully commissioned item is designed as beautifully as it is made.
Blodwen’s General Stores (despite its reassuringly solid name, the shop exists only online) can supply you with cashmere knitwear, earthenware made in Wales’ oldest pottery, hand turned wooden vessels or sumptuous ‘carthenni’ (blankets) woven in a 150-yearold mill in Drefach. The list of products couldn’t sound more homely or appealing but standards are uncompromising; baskets are hand-woven from willow, the rosewater distilled from wild roses on a hill in Cilcennin, journals are hand-bound and bespoke clogs hewn from sycamore then hand stitched and dyed. It’s not about a quick fix, a cheap thrill or a disposable purchase. Blodwen joins a growing list of ethical retailers and the company’s principles are high. They aim to kickstart “genuine rural regeneration” and are products will be bilingually labelled in Welsh and English
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Founder Denise Lewis was born in Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire, and is a Welsh speaker (products will be bilingually labelled in Welsh and English). She loves the local area but also knows her country crafts are likely to end up in urban apartments. A marketing consultant and formerly Group Director of Corporate Affairs at Orange plc, where, over a period of seven years, she oversaw the brand’s global expansion,
Denise is perfectly placed to reposition craft in the consciousness of previously uninterested consumers while business partner Caryl, an international interior architect, will no doubt ensure the design ethos of Blodwen never falters. Together they have “sprinkled some contemporary style and design, and added some technology” to an existing resource – centuries of craftsmanship. And although they are modest, preferring to turn the spotlight on the talented makers they represent, they deserve to be praised – cutting and polishing an existing gem is a skill in itself.
Join us in a celebration of Welsh craft. On May 8th we will be visiting The Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre for a private tour and lecture on Welsh Quilts (see pg 44). After lunch, Denise Lewis will speak on the history of Welsh crafts. Guests will receive a Blodwen ‘goodie bag’ worth £10 and all Selvedge readers are entitled to a 10% discount on the Blodwin website. Tickets £45 including transport between the local station and the Quilt Centre, coffee, cake and a buffet lunch, T: +44(0) 341 9721, www.selvedge.org, Blodwen, T: +(0)797 901 6292, www.blodwen.com selv edge.org images Kristin Perers selvedge.org
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Centre of attention WELSH QUILT EXPERT JEN JONES’ NEW GALLERY
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Pete Davies
It can take an outsider's eye to appreciate something we take for granted. Back in the 50s when I had a lowly job at the Metropolitan Museum New York, I was amazed to see quilts lit and hung like paintings on the walls of the American Wing. The patterns looked Irish to me, but were American made and much treasured. In rural Ireland at that time quilts were often sad things piled on beds, slung on the hedge to dry and even covering a stack of turf.
I had a similar epiphany in Jen Jones' new quilt centre in Lampeter, Ceredigion. This is the first purposedesigned gallery and museum in the country devoted to Welsh quilts and was converted by Jen's husband, architect Roger Clive-Powell, from its earlier incarnation as town hall and law court. There you can see the cream of Jen's collection. Her choice is graphic and strong, a tribute to the landscape and the skills of local women.
Jen, an acknowledged expert, lectures, writes and campaigns for her beloved Welsh textiles. Her dream – thirty years in the making – of creating a centre in the heart of Wales that would give her textiles the status of art objects was achieved last year, opening with a display of quilts in a jewel-like setting. The effect, with lighting worthy of a stage, is of the Rothko gallery at the Tate . Here blacks and reds in geometric flannel quilts dominate, side by side with cubist flashes of colour in patchwork. True quilt fanciers look for single-colour wholecloth quilts with exquisite stitching in low relief on matt surfaces. This is where expert lighting and hanging are essential so that the raised surfaces and fine stitching may be studied. "Always look sideways," is Jen's advice.
There are intriguing echoes of Amish quilts as so many Welsh emigrated to the Pennsylvania area in hard times. Pioneering women shared their skills and as Sheila Betterton, former textile and needlework specialist at The American Museum in Bath once said: "What is an American quilt but a pattern that once emigrated from Ireland or Wales and Scotland?"
Jen, an American who travelled the world with her diplomat father, is a graduate of Bennington College. She became an actress, married a writer and emigrated to Wales. She began dealing in bric a brac and, with an eye trained by her family's American quilt collection, began to take notice of the, then marginalised, Welsh quilt. A determined person, she succeeded in making the Welsh quilt as highly regarded as its American counterpart and in giving the ladies of the valleys a pride in their once overlooked sewing skills.
It was while driving round the valleys of Wales, peering into farmyards and byres, that Jen found her calling in the early 70s – the rehabilitation of Welsh quilts. Newly married with a young daughter, Jen needed to earn a living and began dealing in local artifacts. "My bed at home (in Massachusetts) was covered in a beloved American quilt. These pieces were revered. Imagine my horror, when driving the lanes of Ceredigion, seeing a perfect patchwork quilt on an old tractor or a wholecloth protecting the potato bed from frost!" Traditonal Welsh quilts had fallen out of favour and fashion. Among the images Jen treasures is a snap taken years ago, of a proud farmer and wife with a beautiful local quilt draped over their best cow. "The salvage operation took over my life," she says.
Jen wrote articles, talked on radio and TV, toured the country researching, studying and persuading people to see the light – and restore their quilts. She alerted Welsh Americans to what was happening to "the handiwork of their ancestors".
Her enthusiasm is contagious: now Welsh women bring their quilts for her attention – "It was found under a mattress... "and proudly supply photos of the women that made it. Jen is used to having an effect on people, Roger sums it up: "When Jen moved in with her bright textiles and mirrors, her six year old – and we had a new baby – it was an explosion!" But he’s still there in their cottage... along with a poodle, a cat and thirty ducks. "I get up smiling," Jen claims.
The public is beating a path to the door of her centre on the pennant stone High Street in Lampeter. The airy listed building offers changing exhibitions, quilts, shawls and blankets for sale, together with local designer fashion, Jen's books, bric a brac and hand sewn replicas of early geometric patchwork sewn by a woman's group in Ethiopia, a favourite charity of Jen's. Jen's daughter and son-in-law even run a café on site offering visitors delicious locally grown food, Welsh cakes included.
Jen says "In the town I feel I am – with my family – in charge of something special... we are here to educate, to give love, to rally the forces, to spread the word." Deirdre McSharry Unsung Heritage: The Quilts Of Wales, 6 March 31 December 2010, The Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre, The Old Town Hall, High Street, Lampeter SA48 7BH T: 01570 422 088, www.jen-jones.com
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