Something Understood

I am very pleased to be able to share my newest hand-woven wall pieces. It’s been a strange and circuitous journey to get here, but as soon as I saw these pieces emerging on the loom I knew they were ‘right’ - for me they somehow have a feeling of coming home.

These are quite domestic scale pieces - ‘modest tapestries’ woven to live with.

The surface of the fabric has a thread-worn quality created with long interlocking warp floats. Colours shift from one to another with a fluidity that suggests brush-marks. These pieces have something of the quality of ikat weaving, but close up appear much more undulating and rippled- the surface created with repeated waves of yarn.

In my mind there is a strong connection in these new works with the warp floats of medieval tapestries as they are slowly revealed through ware and tear over the centuries. These details below are from the wonderful Flemish tapestries at West Dean. They would have been woven at ninety degrees to this - with the image side-ways on as the weavers worked. The warp threads are probably linen, and would have been completely covered by the much finer wool weft. It is only with time and ware that they start to appear. I love the fragility and the sense of the passing of the centuries. You can see meticulous mending below too - I find something very moving in the tiny stitches… an act of devotion through repair perhaps.

Below here is a Flemish tapestry from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. It hangs above the fireplace in the upstairs sitting room at Great Dixter - all the more exquisite for the smoke-stains. I love the faded palette of rusts, and walnut and sage green.

I know that these new pieces owe something too to the wonderful Dovecot at the Tudor manor house of Hellens in Much Marcle. It’s a beautiful little octagonal brick building just across a courtyard from the main house. I love the bold geometric white pattern on the red brick - you can see a clear echo in my piece below. I’ve spent many happy afternoons in this garden and over the years it has got under my skin.

Something is owed too to the little geometric motifs often found in medieval church painting. Here below is the magnificent wall paintings at St Mary’s Kempley, just on the boarders of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. The church is truly extraordinary - wonderful twelfth century scenes of Christ in Majesty cover the Chancel ceiling, flanked by the apostles and views of Jerusalem painted over the arches.

For me though, it is the little incidental patterns that really appeal. You feel that here, in the periphery, the medieval wall painters were allowed free reign to fill in their own patterns. Little rust and cream chequerboards wrap around the window arches to the left and right below, and over the arch in the nave you see a pattern of right angled triangles in the same earth colours. Here you really sense the pleasure and satisfaction of abstract pattern-making. I know the feeling very well.

I will be showing the new pieces next week in ‘Making Sense’ at twentytwentyone. For details of the exhibition please see here.