New Necklace

Over the summer I put a lot of effort into some new textile necklaces. I recently sold the one I was most pleased with but I thought I would share a couple of images of the piece.

Textile necklace

Detail

Devon Guild Summer Show

The Summer Show, the annual exhibition of work by the Devon Guild of Craftsmen membership is on at their Bovey Tracey gallery until 4th September 2016.

This year’s show has no specific theme and features a particularly wide range of exciting work. Wai-Yuk is represented by her “Taunton Kimono”.

The Summer Show Private View

If you have the chance to be in South Devon over the next month, try to get along to see a very fine selection of the best in contemporary craft.

The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AF
Open seven days a week – 10.00am to 5.30pm.

Antwerp Kimono Show

Last weekend we travelled to Antwerp to see an exhibition of kimono by the late Japanese master Itchiku Kubota. Kubota is one of my favourite artists and the chance to see some of his pieces that I only knew in reproduction made the trip a must.

The exhibition was small with just eight kimono, six from the “Symphony of Light” series (the “Universe” set) plus two from his “Mount Fuji” series. The works were fabulous, which I knew they would be, but sadly the quality of the display was very poor with untidy hanging and lighting totally unsuitable for this type of work. The main light came from an internal paved courtyard but this caused so much reflection on the glass that you could only really see the piece directly in front of you. Fortunately we were permitted to take photographs, which is normally strictly forbidden in Kubota exhibits.

Reflections on the glass made viewing very difficult!

The “Universe” set of kimono represents a mythical dragon within Mount Fuji breathing out flames and magma. They form one amazing continous image which was impossible to photograph but I have put together a set of individual photos to show the effect.

The Universe set from “The Festival of Light”

The complexity of the shibori work is amazing

The subtle areas are among the most beautiful

One of the Mount Fuji kimono

The hand-stitched shibori textures are breathtaking!

The other Mount Fuji kimono

Kubota would spend as much as a year working on each kimono

The exhibition runs until the 19th June at MOMU – The Antwerp Fashion Museum. Antwerp itself is not a city I had ever considered visiting but proved to be a very pleasant and enjoyable destination.

The Taunton Kimono -part 2

This is the second post covering the making of a silk dyed Kimono for the “Imprints” exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.

Detail of the finished Kimono showing the Shibori textures

Stage two of painting the silk involved adding detail and richer colours to the design.

Fossil ammonites were used as motifs to add detail

While the Rhinoceros teeth were my main inspiration, many other items in the museum fossil hall were used as inspiration for decorative details. These included ammonites, crinoids (also called sea lilies), gryphaea (devil’s toenails) and the ribs of an ichthyosaur. Some fossil cabinets had photographs of coral as a background, and these too found a place in the decorative scheme. Even the colour scheme of the Kimono was originally inspired by a picture of a red desert scene on the end wall of a display.

Fossil Crinoids or “sea lilies” were another source. The dye didn’t work as planned, and so some of the fine detail was lost

The long white bars were inspired by a cluster of fossil ichthyosaur ribs

At this point the front of the Kimono was lagging behind the back view

Here the garment is pinned up prior to the second steaming

Some of the detail and colour intensity was lost in the second steaming process. This was partly due to my unfamiliarity with the dyes, but mostly due to fact that the silk was just too lightweight to take intense dye easily. If I make another Kimono like this I will certainly use a much heavier silk.

Adding stitches for Shibori knotting to create texture (click to enlarge)

Stitching a different pattern

Each thread was then pulled tight and knotted before the fabric was steamed again to set the creases

Fully knotted silk ready for steaming

After the final steaming to fix the texture, all the Shibori threads had to be carefully removed before the Kimono could finally be assembled.

Assembling the garment. The main body panels were nearly 4 metres long and everything was hand stitched

Preparing the silk lining material

The Taunton Kimono

The “Imprints” exhibition is on at the Museum of Somerset, Taunton Castle, Castle Green, Taunton, from 10th October 2015 to 2nd January 2016.
The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am to 5.00pm

The Taunton Kimono -part 1

The Taunton Kimono – part 1

A couple of years ago The South West Textile Group arranged a future exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. The long time scale and the chance to exhibit in a beautiful space made me decide to take on a major piece of work. I have long wanted to tackle making a Kimono and this seemed the perfect opportunity. The project proved to be a long and steep learning curve, but on October 9^th I got to see my piece (now known simply as “The Taunton Kimono”) on display at the private view of the “Imprints” exhibition.

My Kimono on display at the entrance to the “Imprints” exhibition at the Museum of Somerset

All the work in the exhibition was to be inspired by items or displays in the Museum of Somerset permanent collection, so a day trip to the Museum was the starting point for everyone. A tour around the collection begins with the fossil gallery. It was here that I found the objects upon which I wanted to base my design. One was a 55,000 year old fossil Woolly Rhinoceros skull which featured the most amazing teeth. The serpentine graphic shapes of these teeth just begged to be reused in a piece of art, and the fact that the skull had been dug up just a few hundred meters from the museum seemed to make it even more appropriate.

The 55,000 year old woolly rhinoceros skull at the Museum of Somerset

Design work began with sketches based on photographs taken at the museum. (In the end I almost filled a couple of sketchbooks with ideas big and small.) These led on to a large number of watercolour sketches where I began to get an idea of the colour scheme I wanted to explore.

Watercolour sketch exploring ideas for the Kimono design.

Preparatory watercolour sketch

Work on the Kimono itself started with a full-sized line drawing that was then transferred on to the silk.

The final design was drawn out full size on pattern paper

Transferring the design to the silk using a fugitive ink pen

I had originally planned to use exclusively Shibori techniques to decorate the fabric, but the silk I had was too lightweight and too prone to bleed along the satin fibres to be reliably dyed using these methods. I therefore resorted to conventional silk-painting techniques and used Shibori purely for texturing.

The silk was pinned to purpose made frames and the design was divided up using water-based gutta resist

Using a hairdryer to selectively dry the dye allowed the creation of tonal variation

The two halves of the Kimono were developed together to ensure a good match

My husband Alex was heavily involved in the project throughout. As well as helping with both the design and execution, he also made the painting frames with rollers on each end to cope with the long fabric lengths. His other great contribution was in making a really good steamer to fix the colours. He simply fixed an aluminium tube to the top of a large saucepan, with a hollow tube suspended down the centre around which the silk was rolled.

The silk was steam fixed in a steamer made by my husband Alex

After the first round of painting and steaming, the pieces were pinned together to see the effect

The “Imprints” exhibition is on at the Museum of Somerset, Taunton Castle, Castle Green, Taunton, from 10th October 2015 to 2nd January 2016.
The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am to 5.00pm

My next post will cover the remaining part of the Kimono making process.

The Taunton Kimono – part 2

A New Necklace

One of my recent necklaces was a new design (though based on an earlier style.) I was very pleased with how it turned out and think that the gold/white colours work really well.

Some New jewellery Work

Hi, I have not been posting here for a while but I hope to get back to adding regular updates soon.

Meantime here are a few of my recent textile jewellery pieces.

A cuff bracelet

Matching textile necklace

Another, distinctly asymmetric necklace

Brooches are not the fastest sellers but are still my favourite objects

And this winter I have been making a lot of earrings!

More earrings

Yet more earrings!

I have made many more – It has been a long (wet) winter!

New Jewellery From Old

Usually I like to start a new project from scratch. Reworking pieces that I have previously made is always difficult and a little less satisfying than creating a whole new piece of work.

If you make things by hand for a long time, you inevitably end up with a growing collection of odds and ends lying around. These can be from experiments that did not work out, or were abandoned, or even finished works never sold and you were never completely satisfied with. Once in a while I make an effort to use some of these pieces to develop new work and I recently produced a number of things that I am quite pleased with.

The neck-piece shown below is an example where I have combined various parts to make one new work that I think works quite well.

I have also been producing some completely new neck-pieces and have included photographs of a couple for comparison.

New Brooches

I thought I would share a few of the pieces I’ve been working on lately. With these brooches I have focussed on creating lines that flow and echo within the shapes.
We’ve been experimenting with different lighting when photographing, but it’s sometimes a struggle to reproduce the original colours in photos. Let me know what you think!

Merry Christmas

Hi everyone,

I would like to apologise for the lack of new posts here in the run up to Xmas. We will try to get back to normal in the New Year.

Merry Christmas from Cornwall.

Wishing everyone a safe, happy and prosperous 2013.

All the best

Wai-Yuk and Alex

A recently completed textile brooch

Threads of Silk and Gold

Last weekend we travelled to Oxford to see a groundbreaking new textiles exhibition at The Ashmolean Museum. “Threads of Silk and Gold – Ornamental Textiles from Meiji Japan”, presents textile pieces using traditional Japanese skills but made primarily for a Western audience. (Sadly, there was no photography allowed in the exhibition but I did sneak a couple of snaps to give a flavour of the show.)

Cover of the beautiful catalogue

Japanese art and crafts were hugely popular in the West between the 1870’s and the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912. Textiles were part of this export trade but have been little studied until now.

Although there are token exhibits of weaving and Yuzen dyeing, this is an exhibition of Japanese embroidery. Ranging from superb exhibition pieces and large artworks to examples of what are frankly “tourist kitsch”, the craftsmanship is uniformly superb and shows a level of hand labour that is now unimaginable.

Detail of Cranes and Wisteria – Size 201cm x 279cm (Ashmolean collection)

This screen of cormorant fishing is the star of the show

Many of the largest pieces (up to nearly 4 metres high) were exhibition works for various World Fairs, or were produced for the richest foreign tourists to take home from their visits.

Detail of the Cormorant Fishing showing the free stitching technique

Detail showing the fire basket. This is painting with stitches!

I have long loved Japanese embroidery but always felt that there was a stiffness and very “rules-driven” approach to its execution. With the notable exception of the Cormorant screen, this is still visible here but where the designs are so grand and original the end-result totally escapes any limitation from the fact that every feather on every bird is executed using precisely the same stitch technique. Indeed, the whole exhibition is an object lesson in the possibilities and limitations of craft techniques;  the truly original works exceed the limitations of technique while even the best craft skills cannot rescue the dreadful pot-boilers.

Detail of the peacock shown on the catalogue cover. (Photo of catalogue illustration)

Outside the exhibition was an education exhibit on Japanese embroidery techniques (where photography was allowed) and on the day we visited there were also embroiderers staging demonstrations.

Many exhibits feature 3D embroidery. This is a modern imitation

Demonstration piece showing basic stitches

Techniques for couching gold thread

Modern, embroidered handling-piece

Silk-weaving is now the only affordable substitute for large fully-embroidered pieces

“Threads of Silk and Gold” runs at the Ashmolean until 27^th January 2013. For more information see the Ashmolean website

New Jewellery in Pink and Purple

Recently I have been producing a lot of work in pinks and purples.

Here are  images of just some of the pieces in this very pink theme.

A new choker with lots of pink velvet

A pink and purple version of the blue neckpiece I made a little while ago.

Close-up of the new neckpiece

Back view of the neckpiece

Matching earring for the above

Another pair of earrings in a style inspired by seashells

Rules of Colour

Many of the comments I receive when I speak to people about my work are about colour and the colour choices I make.

The same basic brooch using two different colour schemes

The most common question by far must be “what is your favourite colour?” and people are always seem surprised when I say that I do not have one. I believe that having favourites is dangerous for someone who works with colour as it is likely to restrict the choices you make; if you have favourites it means that you also have non-favourites.

I try to be open to every possible colour combination

Sadly for me, having no favourites does not mean that I can escape from having habits and habit can all too easily dominate an artist’s colour choices.

Apparently, I have a habit of resorting to rust reds and burnt oranges

The workings of colour, both from a technical and a psychological point of view is a complex subject but here are a few of my little rules of thumb.

1) How well colour-combinations work depends on context, for instance colours that look beautiful in a landscape would often look very dull if applied tone-for-tone to a small object.

The colours of a pretty landscape are usually very subdued

The great American artist and educator Hans Hofmann taught generations of young artists that no colour exists independent of its neighbours; that the effect of a colour, both perceptually and emotionally, is determined by the colours it is placed next to.

Equinox – Hans Hofmann – UC Berkeley, Berkeley Art Museum

2) When looking at objects close-up, our eyes (and our minds) find it hard to distinguish colour as a completely separate experience from tone and texture.  A flat area of colour is perceived very differently from an area where that colour has tonal variation, particularly rhythmical tonal variation.

This photograph is virtually monochromatic but we see the colour as attractive because of the rhythmic tonal variations

3) For a safe rule when creating colour schemes, use contrasting colours of similar tone or use closely related colours with contrasting tone.

4) Beware safe rules – Harmonious colours are calm and satisfying but nothing excites like an unexpected combination.

The black areas here give sparkle but they break the easy colour rules

5) Take risks – You will sometimes end up with a colour disaster but it is the secret to avoiding repeating yourself endlessly. (Amazingly however, I have found that no matter how weird the colours I use, it is likely that someone, somewhere will like them!)

6) Colourful is not the same as bright. Sometimes very subdued schemes can yield the most interesting effects.

This brooch used very subdued, even dull colours but the scheme received lots of praise

7) While there are lots of useful guidelines, the truth is that if you want to have a chance of really surprising yourself – there are no rules at all!

For anyone interested in learning more about colour in art I recommend the WebExhibits.org pages on Colour, Vision and Art

Embroidered Dragons

I love Chinese dragons! Unlike the fearsome dragons in the West, which must be battled and slain, the Chinese versions are, if not friendly, at least not threatening.  Here a few representations of Chinese dragons in embroidery.

Imperial court robe (V&A museum)

Most of the dragons here are imperial dragons, symbols of the Emperor himself. During the final Chinese dynasty, the Qing period from 1644 to 1911, the dragon could be found on almost every piece of Imperial clothing and regalia. This may have been due to the foreign Manchu rulers feeling that they had to constantly assert their legitimacy by using this very Chinese symbol of rule.

Dragons on an Imperial Parasol (Forbidden City, Beijing)

Many of these textile pieces are Imperial clothing and accoutrements from the V&A museum and the Forbidden City in Beijing. While these dragons vary in colour there is a sameness running through them as if the makers were very careful that the forms and expressions of their creatures matched the required type.

Imperial court robe (V&A museum)

Other dragons that are not from the Imperial household are much more varied, often with wonderful, mad expressions as they manically chase their flaming pearls.

Dragons chasing a flaming pearl (Taoist priest’s robe, V&A museum)

Dragons on a tubular banner (Forbidden City, Beijing)

Dragon chasing a flaming pearl (Taoist priest’s robe, V&A museum)

Dragon chasing a flaming pearl (Taoist priest’s robe, V&A museum)

Dragon on a court robe (V&A museum)

Dragon (Taoist priest’s robe, V&A museum)

Dragons on an Imperial Parasol (Forbidden City, Beijing)

A strange little dragon on a wall-hanging (V&A museum)

Dragons chasing a flaming pearl (Taoist priest’s robe, V&A museum)

Dragon on an Imperial wall-hanging (V&A museum)

Imperial court robe (V&A museum)

Imperial court robe (V&A museum)

Imperial court robe (V&A museum)

New-style Necklace

I finished a new necklace a couple of nights ago that is a little bit different from any I have done before. Instead of one main textile form, this one has repeated elements going most of the way round the choker wire.

Here I am wearing my latest creation

The individual textile elements are based on an earring design. The size of the fabric pieces gets smaller towards the back though this is hardly noticeable looking at the finished item. At first I just planned to use beads between the textile shapes but then I thought that a little bit of variation was needed, so I added some elements embroidered on soluble fabric just like my experiments at the Sue Rangeley workshop I attended.

The complete necklace

This was just a simple idea that I decided was worth trying but it has already got me thinking about how I could develop it further – watch this space!

A detail view showing the strands made using soluble fabric

A view of the reverse side of the neckpiece

This necklace has just been added to my Etsy shop

If you have any thoughts on this new piece I would love to hear them.