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ContentsINDULGEtextilestobuy,collectorsimply admire
11 A dog’s life Pamper your pet with some of the finest accessories around 13 How to... Knit an Afghan Hound UseourextractfromOsborneandMuir’s‘BestinShow’bookto rustleupaloyalandtrustycaninecompanioninjustafewevenings
INDUSTRY from craft to commerce
01 Marvellous menagerie Makers drawn to wild and domestic creatures. Amelia Thorpe talks to designersinspiredbyfaunaratherthanflora 32 Cocooned Women at the heart of the silk trade. Abeautifulseriesofimagesfromthe1940sthat revealthecareandskilloftheworkersinthesericultureindustry 57 COVER STORY Go with the flow The ancient craft of coracle making is experiencing something of a revival. BernardThomas‘CoracleKing’reminiscesabouthisyouthontheriver
ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives
54 COVER STORY Fisherman’s friend Ganseys have kept seafaring folk warm and dry for centuries. The Moray Firth Gansey Project aims to protect this heritage. ImagesbyGinaLeeBean,winnerofthe SelvedgeIllustrateyourPointcompetition 96 Rich plumage Featherwork in Ancient Peru. Vividly coloured and gorgeously patterned, these ancienttextilepieceslooksurprisinglymodern 54 COVER STORY Feather your nest From fashion finery to fly fishing – but not forgetting shuttlecocks, archery flights, bedding or burlesque... Aroundupoffeathers’fantasticarrayofuses
CONCEPT textiles in fine art
67 Sharp canines Peter Clark’s clever paper constructions. KatieLaw,writerfortheLondonEvening Standard,meetsanartistwhoisnotafraidtoturnthepastintothepresent 38 COVER STORY Death becomes her Taxidermy, morbid or marvellous? SarahJaneDowningunpicks thehistoryofanartformsomefinduncomfortable...
ATTIRE critical reporting of fashion trends
17 COVER STORY Cat’s whiskers Beware of jealous felines. PhotographedbyLonVanKeulen
COHABIT stunning interiors beautifully photographed
61 Land lady The country pursuits of Athene English. Johanna Thornycroft visits the animal friendly homeoftheownerofTheGreatEnglishOutdoors.PhotographybyAndreasvonEinsiedel
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Any dedicated crafter will want one of Christien Meindertsma’s oversized ‘ball of yarn’ seats. Made from wool from New Zealand cross bread sheep in bright colours or natural hues they would be a cosy place to sit and knit. Mendertsma studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and has since started her own design label ‘flocks’. From £1,350, www.thomaseyck.com
Reduce, reuse, recycle is an admirable mantra but few would take it as far as Leslie Oschmann who doesn’t balk at applying the idea to paintings and other artworks. Unwanted canvasses found in markets, attics or antique shops are transformed into functional still lives in the form of shopping bags or tables and chairs. http://swarmhome.com
Creature comforts A ‘pre-loved’ toy – a bear or rabbit handed down from one generation to the next – is a special thing. But if you didn’t save your favourite stuffed animal or can’t bring yourself to part with it yet then Emily's Ark holds the answer. Emily designs, sews and sells handmade original textile animals; fully jointed and made from carefully sourced materials. Many of her creatures have a retro or vintage quality and come in many guises – everything from hares to aardvarks! www.emilys-ark.com selvedge.org
The classic Woburn Peacoat is inspired by traditional nautical outerwear, as worn by the British Navy throughout the 19th century. The embossed anchor buttons are a reminder of these naval origins and the coat has a quilted chambray lining to keep you snug and warm. The pure wool fabric is special too, woven in the UK by British Mill Fox Brothers & Co (see Selvedge issue 19) who have been weaving woollen, worsted, cashmere and flannel cloth since 1772. £398, www.aubinandwills.com
Oak swill baskets are traditional to the southern Lake District and they have been made in this area for hundreds of years. Owen Jones is keeping the skill alive in the 21st century and you can learn too. Oak Swill Workshop, 12-14 March, Acton Scott Museum, Shropshire, T: 01694 781 307, www.oakswills.co.uk˚
Need to know
Circus elephants, prancing ponies and aerial acrobats, London based designer-maker Daniel Heath’s work is certainly eye-catching. The current collection, based on PT Barnum’s ‘Greatest Show on Earth’, is at home as fabric covering a sofa or on the walls of a sophisticated nursery.
Heath has a long held interest in craftmanship. He trained in the traditional process of silk-screen printing at the Royal College of Art and set up his studio in 2006 to create bespoke, hand-printed fabrics and wallpapers in the De Beauvoir Town preservation area of London. http://danielheath.co.uk
15: Houndstooth Check What is it? A distinct broken-check pattern with four pointed ends, usually found on wool cloth. The pointed check effect is produced by a two up, two down twill weave in yarns of contrasting colours in groups of four in both the warp and the weft. The pattern is said to resemble the jagged back teeth of a hound, hence the name Houndstooth Check. Who made it? Shrouded in the mists of time, the pattern’s origin is likely to be in the lowlands of Scotland.
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There may be something stately and grand about a mounted stag’s head but who could live with the sad glass eyes? Much happier thoughts accompany these papier mâché versions. Made in Haiti from layers of repurposed cement bags covered with the pages from vintage French books, they help people rather than harm wildlife. £58, www.anthropologie.eu
Who uses it? Houndstooth is a perennial fashion favourite. In 2009 the late Alexander McQueen’s A/W womenswear collection ‘Horn of Plenty’ featured Houndstooth Check in multiple forms. Paying homage to the classic lines and patterns of Dior and Chanel the collection layered printed and woven versions in differing scales. More recently Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga created tunic dresses with panels of bright manipulated Houndstooth Check for S/S 2011. The electric blue, grey and red patterns on wet-look leather fabrics were a far cry from traditional woven wool. www.alexandermcqueen.com
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“Ever since she was a child she had loved the art of making silk, from the moment when the web of tiny eggs, no bigger than the dots of a pointed brush on a paper card, were hatched in the warm silkworm house to the last moment when the silk lay in rich folds over her arms…” In her 1963 novel The Living Reed, Pearl S. Buck describes |silk manufacture in Korea during the 1850s. It was an economically and ritually significant task, “Even the Queen at this season must cultivate silkworms and do a share of spinning…”
Buck's description of sericulture, though fictional, is accurate and revealing, “For three days and three nights the women fed the small creatures every three hours, and in the night again and again Sunia arose to see how her len
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Unable to find gorgeous gifts to buy for her sister's puppy, Lilly Shahravesh started to make them instead. “I couldn't find any quality products that were good enough for Missy, so I started making coats and collars for her and that's how Love My Dog started,” explains Shahravesh, who already had 14 years experience of the fashion world tucked under her belt. Founded in 2003, Shahravesh describes Love My Dog as a “designled pet couture and accessory” business, and she still hand makes many of the dog coats, bandanas, blankets and beds herself in her Hoxton workshop.
Shahravesh favours natural and traditional fabrics, especially tweeds, and has recently collaborated with Harris Tweed on a Red Tartan. Made of wool, dyed and spun on the Hebridean Islands, the cloth is handwoven, before being combined with saddlery fixings to make sturdy collars (backed with washable suede) and leads, as well as beds and blankets.
Shahravesh is now designing a new Harris Tweed fabric for 2011, as well as the new collection of spring/ summer raincoats. “Everything is tested on the studio muse, my half Norfolk Terrier, half Jack Russell, called Rabbit,” adds Shahravesh. www.lovemydog.co.uk
It was while working towards her final show at the Royal College of Art that Donna Wilson began experimenting. Knitting clothes on her machine and making bodies from charity shop jumpers, she began to produce a collection of curious creatures. “I’m inspired by children's drawings and wanted to capture that naïve quality – where an extra leg or eye doesn't look out of place,” she says. “I was brought up on a farm in north east Scotland. Animals have always been part of my life and I wanted to make unconventional versions.” Her latest, Wolfie (bashful, likes collecting spoons), Peanut (keen on his shell), and Puddle Man (whistles when it rains) are as quirky and playful as ever.
The creatures are now knitted at Wilson's East End workshop then sewn and hand embroidered by outworkers in the Orkneys. But Wilson is careful to maintain their homespun look. “I've had offers to mass produce, but I think they would lose their charm,” she explains.
This year there will be new creatures to join the growing family. “I sometimes think if that one had a baby with that one, what would it look like?” she says, adding that Ralf and Rill are the offspring of Cyril Squirrel Fox and Rudie Raccoon. Given that her work now sells in 25 countries and she's just been named Designer of the Year in Elle Decoration's British Design Awards, it's good to know that weird can sometimes be so wonderful.
www.donnawilson.com
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EiderdownMEGLUKENSNOONANTAKESA SOFTLY SOFTLY APPROACH TO BEDDING
My romance with fill power and loft started years ago, with a stint as a cashier at an Eddie Bauer store. The reversible vests, the diamond-quilted bathrobes, the mummy bags – all plump with down. A ski trip to Austria introduced me to the joy of sleeping under only a duvet, and made obvious the redundancy of top sheets and blankets. And one day, while enjoying a meandering Google search through luxury bedding websites, I happened upon the holy grail of down: a rocky blip of an island called Lanan, just below the Arctic Circle, off Norway's northwestern coast.
Lanan is the summer home of several families, all related, who return every year to carry on the centuriesold tradition of eiderdown gathering. In spring, Common Eiders, large sea ducks, come ashore to nest in simple shelters made by the islanders; when the ducklings hatch and the nest is abandoned, the pillow of down which cushioned the eggs is left behind for the taking. The hooked construction of its individual plumules makes eiderdown the lightest and warmest of fills; the labour-intensive harvesting process also makes it the most rare and, alas, the most expensive. I’m not the only one who has coveted the stuff: Viking Age tax collectors accepted it as payment and Medieval aristocrats asked to be buried with it. In 1651, King Christian IV had Norwegian eider colonies protected by royal decree, in part so he would never be without a personal supply.
The Vega Archipelago of which Lanan is a part, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004: birds get protection from predators, humans get the down, nobody gets hurt. The designation brought some funding, but the islanders' website made it clear they need more. If I sent them $100, for instance, to ‘rent’ a stone duck house, I would be emailed photos of ‘my’ bird while she sat on her nest. Well, that was a must-do.
Then I noticed this: “Would you like to experience the life of an eider keeper? Sleep under a genuine eiderdown duvet? Now is your chance!” It didn't take long to hatch a plan. I'd adopt a duck and pay her a personal visit. All I had to do was fly from Boston to Oslo, Oslo to Trondheim, Trondheim to Bronnoysund, hop a ferry to Vega Island and look for a little boat called the Lanan II which would be waiting for me at the end of a long wooden dock.
I am speeding northwest through a mosaic of 6,000 mostly-uninhabited rocky islands in the Norwegian Sea. Mountains, with patches of late spring snow, are visible on the mainland, but out here, it's all horizontals: the barren skerries, the silver sea, the ragged stratus clouds. Lanan's few white houses and red shacks come into view, and when we tie up at the weathered dock, Hildegunn Nordum, my host, greets me. With cropped white-blonde hair and glacial-blue eyes, she has the glowing good looks of someone who has never missed a day of omega-3 consumption.
“Do you want to see your duck?” she asks after she has shown me to my room in the ancestral farmhouse she shares with her husband, Erik. I follow her across the treeless island, past dozens of low A-frame coops and stone nooks, each housing a nesting eider. We stop in front of a boxy shelter on which a painted sign reads, ‘Meg’, and I crouch down and peer in at a mottledbrown duck on a black seaweed nest. She looks happy with her accommodation; I consider introducing myself as her benefactor, but decide to remain anonymous.
I spend the next few days trailing Hildegunn. She and her cousins, who grew up on Lanan back when families stayed year-round, share 600 eider houses, which are checked daily. We traverse plank bridges, hop over wet rocks, and row across inlets to get to the shelters. Hildegunn coos something at every duck and I ask for a translation. “I say to them: How are you today? You are so pretty. I'm just taking a peek.” When she finds an abandoned nest, she removes the springy clump of plumage and puts it in a bag. Later, she will clean it entirely by hand – one of the key things that distinguishes Lanan eiderdown from the machine-cleaned down produced in Iceland, Greenland and other polar regions. It takes 65 nests worth to fill one duvet; by winter's end, the islanders will have stitched eight to ten of them. The comforters sell for $7000-8000 each; some are purchased online and others are sold to visitors who arrive after nesting season on regularly scheduled tour boats from Vega.
It is a lovely thing to be sitting in the late evening arctic sun picking bits of seaweed out of a lap full of eiderdown. The fluff plumps like rising dough and warmth radiates through my thighs. The gulls cry, the ducks sit, the tide turns. In the morning, after I have slept one last time under the weightless magnificence of an eiderdown cloud, I will head home. But first, I will walk to the little driftwood shelter that bears my name and I will get down on my knees to bid my duck farewell. And she will be gone, leaving only her imprint on a puff of perfect down.
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