An Alternative Soft Canvas?

18th century Embroidery inspiration from a visit to The Platt Hall Gallery of Costume

I took a trip to Platt Hall Gallery of Costume in Manchester. Here I booked an appointment to view some 18th century textiles in the form of 2 dresses and 2 purses. The staff were very helpful and the pieces were stored so pristinely in tissue paper. I carefully unfolded the paper to reveal works of art. I tried to capture the detail within the photographs but I dont think it does the stitches any justice.

I especially love the goldwork and studied this carefully taking notes and photographs to capture its structure. This is something I want to take forward within my own work so observing it first hand is a priviledge.

“Rooms are autobiographies written by their inhabitants-they hint (in their bookshelves, in their laundry baskets, in their stained carpets) at how and why a particular life took on its particular form”

Tom Morton for Frieze magazine on Marc Camile Chaimowicz 2011

A form of translation

I want to explore their connection between changes within interior styles and changes in society. What fuels my body of work is elements of this interior history.

 I would like to borrow and take forward the clear division in the interior style with a distinctive feminine taste and a stereotyped feminine style of decoration with expressive lighter colours, less robust shapes and a fussiness of ornamentation and exaggerated ornate forms

There was an air of heaviness in decoration and layering of materials. However there is little visual evidence of interiors at that time so literature is very important to me in the form of letters exchanged between middleclass ladies and art history books where opinions can be limited but descriptions are in detail.

Initially preoccupied with technical matters, unfamiliar colours, the texture of the material, the properties of the different threads and the complexity of the weave, as the work develops, the new medium of needle and thread will begin to contribute to the ideologies of what I want to achieve within a contemporary art form, evolving naturally from its historical and representative past.

I want to experiment with this lost world and address themes of translation and transformation with the work posing visual and tactile questions concerning the translation of the meaning.

I am researching and exploring specific textile stitches loyal to the Eighteenth century such as French Knots and couching stitches, retaining both the sheer delicacy and the representative historical narrative.

Some of the technologies I have stumbled across and best suited so far with the textile elements include electroforming, which brings out the textures within the 2D and 3D embroidery work; this is achieved through the use of different threads and subtleties of the stitch including the well chosen canvas initiating the work

Which I have found to be an alternative canvas of manmade netted curtains which demonstrate this the best. The electroforming exaggerates the heaviness in ornamentation and weighs down the feminine threads marrying the two genders.

The intricacy and fussiness of the ‘alternative canvas’ projects the interiors of the time with the layering and heavy gold appearance.

Photographic and image processes are something that I feel could help narrate the body of my work with stills of interiors, designs and portraiture of the 18^th century brought to new and up to date forms of illustration and narrative. Layered and combined with the textile elements fuelling my work this could precede an effective composition. I need to discover how far I can push my work to discover these possibilities.

I want to take the specific characteristics of the interiors and explore through relevant literature and available prints what they represent as I believe they are all narrative to the changes at the time such as the layout, preferred colour schemes, functions and orientation of their views. I would like to follow this skeleton to consider, develop and proceed with structuring the collection expressing the transformation and diversity within this period.

Although I feel my work still holds that sense of assemblage rediscovered through material experimentation 18^th century interiors set standards in taste for the future and used as models of excellancy, having that heir of antiquity about them further reference the past. While the work may have that element of ornateness to it I want to achieve a deeper level of meaning embedded in the pieces which requires a closer look. Although at the moment I feel I am only touching the iceberg of what I want to achieve this is a step in the right direction for me.

I would like to see the body of work narrate within a wearable form revealing the relationship between changes in history and the interior domain. It is important for the work to be wearable as interiors became a personal aspect of life in the past, remembering the fact that they were designed both to accommodate and entertain guests as a status symbol or to hide away in, the sheer multitude of rooms in 18^th century middle class houses could accommodate for both moods. They reflected personalities and attitudes to what was going on in the world. To be able to wear that piece of jewellery and carry it around on a lapel is a projection of someone’s most intimate place. I would like my jewellery to bring these discussed images and ideas into the present and address its influence.