Always winter but never christmas...

....through the fur coats , past the lampost , snow under foot in the deep winter that has engulfed the museum for objects of vertu. Here we find some turkish delight..............

...and then a cosy corner with tea and presents. Thankyou to all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who ventured through ( and also to Rachel and Louise)

Oliver Postgate

alas... the mice will quiet their pingling for a while as we all mourn the passing of a lovely man. There would be no Glass Pingle without him.

sons of Adam and daughters of Eve....

...soon the Museum for Objects of Vertu will only be reached through an old wardrobe. If you are a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve you are welcome on the 7th of December.
contact museumforobjects@tiscali.co.ukfor details

a christmas pingle

...just a little look at christmas things on their way to Prick your Finger...

little knot gardens

These are some of the most absorbing buttons to make. I use hand dyed silks and just knot and knot ! (about seventy or more)
....and they end up like this

Time flies....

Many thanks to Prick Your Finger for allowing me to do their window , alas now all over. This picture is of the Goblin Market corset which hung 'in flight' above the nest I made . Inspired by Christina Rossetti's poem I made a pristine duchesse satin corset complete with little hand sewn pockets , some edged in pearls.In the pockets are a nice clean handky , a watch and a silver sixpence. THEN I savaged it like a goblin and stained it with berries!! Inside, the seams bristle with fur and owl feathers poke out from the rips. One berry pip hides inside one of the pockets and a broken silver backed comb hangs at the front.
I can, of course, make a less ravaged corset for anyone who is interested...............
As for the poem , follow the link !

'Come buy , come buy'

...'just a sample of what is available at Prick Your Finger at the moment !
Above is the Millefiore button , a mass of french knots in a lovely hand-dyed thread , available in two colours at the moment. Next is a card of Heaven buttons , inspired by cow parsley and Dante !! These are made with fragments of antique lace , silver threads and beads ( and there are sets for Hell and Purgatory ! )


Lastly , a card of Hollyhock buttons. Embroidered with another hand-dyed thread and inspired by domestic embroidery from the 1930s.



...and many more at the shop , plus cards.

Get it to fit , love it forever !

I will be running a class at Prick Your Finger once a month to help you resuscitate , recreate or resurrect your clothes. If you always find that things just don't fit right or maybe you've a project that you need help with , Rachael and I will be there to show you how to do it . We both have a lot of experience in making clothes and I have a passion for 'make do and mend'.
What you learn in the class will be literally tailored to your needs and you can then go away and apply it to all your outfits forever more !!
All the details can found on the PYF blog , just follow the link above.

Creating a black hole.

Now that the Hadron Collider has been shut down we may go short of black holes so I have made one as back-up . All you have to do is take a pair of colliders ( knitting needles) and with some super string you can rustle one up in no time ...........which is very apt considering this is quantum physics. Once created I simply folded space ,as you can see in the picture, to prove that there are indeed such things as symmetrical particles. I think I may have created a couple of small worm holes in the process but that was to be expected. If it turns out that this one is surplus to requirements I will carry on using it as a hot pan holder.

a new window.......

........at Prick Your Finger

Prick Your Finger

On September 4th I will be launching my new range of handmadedashery at Prick Your Finger(see links). There will be hellish buttons ,forlorn ribbons and pingles ! The window will feature a new corset.............



Dante's 'Hell' button



' Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense' button



' Goblin Market ' ribbon

The Tulip Faery

In the shop window today there is a length of trimming from a new range I am working on. This is my Tulip Faery ribbon , inspired by old fashioned paper cuts she is made from several layers of organdie and vintage lingerie ribbon. The shape comes from a tulip I pressed in my sketchbook.
The whole range will be launched soon at Prick Your finger.

.....more 'Dust Jacket'

......the window in the museum . I made a papercut of the ascent of man ( he eventually turns into a lady) to filter the light. Here are the others who took part , see the links list to see more of everyones work.










Rosie Cooper












Tim Spooner

























Piers Jamson







Audrey Reynolds

Dust Jacket , a cover for 'The Voyage of the Beagle'

The second exhibition at the museum was inspired by my old copy of 'The Voyage of the Beagle' by Charles Darwin. It has no dust jacket so it seemed a good opportunity to make one !
I was fascinated by a passage in the book about his silk handkerchief so I recreated one from paper silk . I then turned this into a fortune teller , the creases being marked by writing the passage along each fold in ink.


Here are some images from the other artists in the show......

Rachael Mathews ( Prick Your Finger)
































Richard Gray










Matthew Robins


















more images to follow.....

Memento Hominem

The first exhibition at the museum was called 'Memento Hominem'. I have always been fascinated by the private collectors cabinets of the 17th century and in particular those that had personal objects, ones that only had meaning to the owner.The museum has been heavily influenced by these so I asked five artists to respond with their own 'living' artefacts.................

Piers Jamson

'Untitled'
(current piece can be viewed here)






Richard Gray

'Rosa'










Rosie Cooper


'The Forsaken Woodland Show'







'Barbra'
Matthew Robins











' a trip to the Virgin Islands...'

Rachael Matthews








The next exhibition will be on the 12th and 13th of July.

The Museum fo Objects of Vertu

The Museum for Objects of Vertu is possibly the smallest museum in the world ! and it's in my studio. The museum is 2m square and holds my collection of other peoples' memories and possesions . It is candle-lit , mysterious and not everything can be seen properly. This is exactly how a museum should be.
I have been collecting objects which were once loved or well used for a long time now. It is the intimacy of some of these objects which I find compelling ;the bits and bobs that get pushed to the back of a dressing table drawer, that then find their way to a flea market (still in the drawer) ,or small lengths of thread carefully wrapped around paper for when they might be useful. All the seemingly unimportant bits of ephemera that we keep , and the reasons we keep it , form a framework to our lives which is hidden to the rest of the world. The museum is like a modern Memento Hominem ,a collection of objects that remember us.


The Powdered Dress
poison bottle,textile fragments,childs spoon

from "Sweetest Tongue "
jewellery box,wasps nest,pen nibs,pins

"we will find it , we will bind it..."

I have been making cards for several years now using all the lovely old bits of jewellery and trimmings that are too small for my other work. Much of the decoration is antique or at least fifty years old ! I spend hours at fairs and markets collecting my treasure together , some of it I can't bear to part with but most goes onto cards. Up until now I have only sold them to friends but now they are on Etsy.
Today in my shop window are some new ones.These are from a particularly lovely haul I got at the weekend from a lady who brings stuff over from France. Old lace motifs , handmade silver stars, scraps of beading and lots of little beauties !! I've decided to make some really special 'large' cards which would look wonderful framed..... Each one is ,of course, unique .

'Here's a pin and here's a pingle......'

Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted my own small shop , bow fronted with a window display of curious objects. Since then I have also been to art college , developed an obsesssion with anything from 1870 to 1937 , become a corset maker and maintained a passion for small interesting objects. And now I want the shop !!! so a virtual one will suffice.



The first item in the shop window is a corset......

This detail is from the Faerie Corset , inspired by the Yeats poem 'The Stolen Child'. It is an organdie corset , Edwardian in shape , and decorated with the remains of a gold embroidered Victorian mat. The satin background had all shredded so I carefully remounted the trimmings and metal embroidery onto the corset along with some 1920's glass bubble beads, ribbon and feathers. I'm thinking of putting something inside as a half lining , possibly in paper .
The full size images can be seen on my website http://www.fleuroakes.com