Angel Of Love

 

   So, in 2017 I began a small wasps nest in raised needlelace. It was a bit of a challenge with the circular chambers and the angled formation of the nest. How I made the base was crucial to the overall stability of the piece but there was no way of doing a practice piece I just had to do it.

When a piece of work really tests you it can be like a banana skin in your mind, it just keeps slipping away when you think of it! So the following year I did some more but by this time I was fully involved in my medical residency and the making of the surgical models. I was filmed making the piece but actual progress was slow. It was still unformed in my mind and therefore hard for me to come back to with much certainty of whether it would actually work out properly. There is no small amount of anxiety when you invest so much time in a piece.

   

Then, after much upheaval in my life I came back to the piece in 2024. I picked up where I had left off with the top nest section and quickly realised that it was all okay! I had been so close to resolving in my head and hadn't realised it. The branch followed and then early this year I made the smaller section and there it was.

What drew me to doing this was a photograph of a solitary wasps nest and a long term fascination with the paper that wasps make themselves. To reproduce the making process of another being was key to the whole work.

I found that I had to think like a wasp, think how I would construct pod shapes from the inside and how they would link together. Each construction section be it the base, the pods, the lids or how I moved (stitched) from one area to another was only solved by doing it and being it.

It is the second piece in a series called Angels of Heaven based on a text in the gospel of the Essenes; the quote I worked from here is  ''Loving words are as honeycomb''. The first piece is featured on this blog and is called "Angel of Eternal Life" under the search term 'angels'.

 

  Post Hoc Exilium (after this exile). A line from a very early Christian hymn, Robert MacFarlane talks, in his book 'The Wild Places', of monks who chose to live on remote Scottish Islands building tiny cells and living in harsh conditions in order to be closer to God. They felt that they were in exile from heaven.

  

In a remote Cornish bay in the idyll of my childhood I would stand in the clear water and try to touch the ferny seaweeds that floated there. Their texture was beautiful but I could not touch it, I was of the earth and air, they of the water. I could only try and touch them with my mind.

 In 2016 I began a residency with the vascular surgery unit at St.Mary's hospital in Paddington London (see the Thread Management blog in the side menu). Whilst working there with Professor Colin Bicknell I could not touch I could only look but I saw him train a young surgeon by allowing her to put her hand on his as he felt his way through to where he needed to be. 

 

Between the seaside holiday and now I have learned many techniques with textiles, the most obvious involve touch, the less obvious are about sight and visual texture.

The piece that you see here represents all that I know of my craft mapped onto what I know of the surgeons. 

The vascular system of the hand is made using the needlelace cordonnet technique, the glove has seams which mirror those arteries. Both pieces have cuffs, one in a sturdy reticella style lace with branching arterial pattern, the other is a freestyle needlelace.

I took particular care to retain the 3D quality of the arteries where the deep palmer arch seperates from the superficial palmer arch.

 Though there is the obvious parallel between our knowledge what it also speaks of is the extension of touch that I already understood and the extension of empathy that I had to make to understand the world of surgery.  

New in the shop

 

 Well, after moving home and studio, it has taken a while to unpack and find everything! Here now are a few new items in my shop...

The first is 'The Attached Spool', above. An antique spool of hand spun linen which has become mysteriously attached to a long couronne chain.

 These chains are found in the Italian technique called Casalguidi stitch, a branch of stumpwork techniques, and are made using a couronne stick. The beauty of them is that the rings are properly linked together which inspired me to try attaching them to existing objects.

Next are two hand stitched ring brooches. They are both early 20thC. pieces in brass or silver coloured metal, one has couronne style embroidery and the other a little needlelace edge. 

All can be found on my shop HERE

Trace

 In his book 'Underland' Robert Macfarlane says

'sometimes, in fact, all that is left behind by loss is trace - and sometimes empty volume can be easier to hold in the heart than presence itself'

This piece from Evidence consists of a ribbon winder card, the tattered remains of lace shelf edging, two old snail shells and a web of single stitch needlelace.

   I have collected a lot of antique and vintage haberdashery over the past thirty five years. A lot was not really valued by the world until recently. I saw not just the quality of the material in the trimmings but also in the simple packaging; the winders and reels that ribbons were wound onto, the card mounts for buttons and even the thread that attached them...all good quality and yet discarded. I picked up my treasures for 10p or 50p, the prices often crudely written straight onto the paper in felt tip pen. 

  At my great grandmothers' home I found many more treasures and among them were packets of shelf edging which have paper lace borders to make decorate the shelves of larders and dressers. Many were untouched with pretty bands of paper to secure them but the packets that were opened I allowed myself to use on my shelves. Over time they wore away and like the old lace they emulate started to yellow and disintegrate.

  Old empty snail shells do not last forever, I collect them from around the garden and use them on top of garden canes but was surprised to see that they fade. Always a collector of organic packaging, shells, seed pods and galls, to me they are just like the ribbon reels.

  The web is a single Brussels stitch needlelace mesh made in the finest lacemaker thread I could find. I would have put a spiders web across them if I could but instead I made my own.

Grey Moth

 

A little grey moth for a special occasion, commissioned to sit in a place of honour.

 A complex cordonnet, wired for resilience and covered in a hand dyed grey cotton. The wings are what I think of as skeletal needlelace in that there is no infill between the veins of this creature's wings. The design was taken though from a peacock butterfly as the structure of the veining is very suitable for this technique.

  The body was a tufty one, more hand dyed silk in Turkey stitch or Ghiordes knots with a secret design of gold initials amongst the grey.

initials on the reverse

  After the body and wings were joined he was mounted onto a simple nettle shaped silk leaf and the stitches hidden by beading. The leaf was chosen for its appropriate shape under the wings giving just enough contrast to lift it out. It was nature's genius really though as the peacock butterfly lays its eggs on the underside of nettle leaves.

He fastened to a special dress by the simple ruse of a hair slide and there he stayed all day.

(I know he's supposed to be a butterfly but he was always a moth to me)

 

 

Angel of Eternal Life

  At some point in the early C20th Edmond Bordeaux Szekely  claimed to have discovered and translated lost gospels from the Bible called the Gospels of the Essenes. In the second gospel Christ describes fourteen angels and their tasks and I was very taken with the beauty of the descriptions. 

  Many years and several version later I have started a series of needlelace pieces reflecting on the angels and here is the first, the Angel Of Eternal Life.

                                                          

 

 My inspiration is often from nature and this time it is the lace lichen found in California, Ramalina Menziesii. A hanging lichen which grows in the most extraordinary shapes, no two are alike, their looping web shapes are intricate and full of wonder.

  This piece is about 20x20cm and is made in hand dyed silks. From start to finish about fifty hours work, it took an hour just to unmount the lace from the backing. It has a pleasing 3D effect as it was designed in the round and so hangs from any point in a curl.

  The design started life several years ago as part of another piece, still in progress, and it was an epiphany when I realised that it should be entirely separate. It quickly came into being after that which goes to show that some ideas take a long time to brew before you get the right one.

 

 Angel of Eternal Life,

Here and now

Is the mystery revealed.

Here and now

Is the curtain lifted.

link for the angels here

link for information on the lichen here

Wasp's nest

 This has been ongoing for a while now! I am trying to make a wasp's nest in raised lace. The stitches aren't difficult in themselves, it's trying to think like a wasp that is hard. Do I work across the surface in layers or do I make each cell completely before I move onto the next? I am trying a staggered surface because of the risk of crushing each part as I go with my fingers.

I was given some coarse linen thread a while ago and it has a good 'chewed paper' colour and is robust when stitched. The down side is that it wears very quickly.

 It is starting to build quite nicely though..

Studio stuff

It's getting very warm in the studio and it's not always easy to sit and do white work with hot hands!
One little tool that I've been given does make things a lot easier, a pair of toothed tweezers. They are a medical tool, inexpensive, but they are brilliant for getting rid of bits of fluff and holding the thread securely when you are doing fine work. The ends have tiny 'teeth' which grip but do not damage,perfect for needlelace!

..and this is why. I am doing a large piece of raised lace with lichen like growth and sometimes I just need more grip. This one is being done on vellum in the traditional way but there is nothing else traditional about it. The threads will be unusual and so will the presentation. However, it will take a while to get this one made so in the meantime I have several small pieces on the go to stop me going mad!

Gleipnir, a magical rope

 The rope to bind Fenrir the wolf is complete and now becomes the next piece in my series of charms,the first being 'Sheela-na-Gig', a charm against crazy people. Gleipnir is a binding charm for beasts of all kinds.

more charms to come..........

Happy Christmas to you all!

Gleipnir: a bear's nerves

Nerves look more like white elastic but here I made a furry bear coloured twin stemmed piece.

Now the set is complete and the rope to bind Fenrir is ready to be made.....

Gleipnir: a fly's saliva

'difficult not to be a little disgusted by this one! But then I got to use some super fine stainless steel thread and my favourite off centre beads.

The steel thread is caught into the stitches all along the stem, gathering in the bends and meanders.

(if this is you first sight of this piece please read the previous posts to make sense of it all!)

Gleipnir: a fish's breath

  Embroidering a fish's breath ...........air passing through red gills,bubbles rising.

Gill red thread stitches between each silver bead as it loops around,some grow into gills of their own.

Gleipnir: a cat's footsteps

and so we come to the footsteps of a cat. A silent thing, an invisible thing. Four little shadow paws grew from the stem using chaining buttonhole stitches and they don't make a sound.