Tag Archives: history

Intelligent Hands: Why making is a skill for life

I’ve been writing a book with co-author Charlotte Abrahams, that will be out this autumn, published by Quickthorn.

Recent years have seen a decline in craft and creative education in schools and a shift from practical to theoretical learning models in higher education. Young people are leaving school with no idea that craft-based careers are even possible, and graduates of craft-based degree courses are entering the workplace with so few hand skills that their employers must train them from scratch. 

The cover of our new book features the intelligent hands
of Mosaic artist Cleo Mussi, photo by Carmel King

The book includes the personal stories of ten people who have discovered that working with their hands has improved their quality of life. Through the three sections of the book, we look at how physical labouring became separated from academic study, how we became divorced from the materials that surround us and the important role that the crafts and creativity play in education, not just for the lower streams, but for everyone. In short, how making is a skill for life. 

Rowan Day Out at the FTM

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Liberty in Fashion. Photo: Daniel Lewis

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Zandra reviewing some of the Free Spirit fabrics she designs for Rowan

It’s time for another day out with Rowan. Last time we went to the Clothworkers’ Centre in Kensington. This time we’re going to the Fashion and Textiles Museum in Bermondsey to see the new Liberty in Fashion exhibition. The exhibition celebrates the 140th anniversary of the iconic design store. This is the first major retrospective of the 21st century on the pioneering retailer and design studio Liberty. At the cutting edge of design and the decorative arts since 1875, Liberty is celebrated throughout the world both as a department store and for its distinctive textile prints.

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Hat and scarf combos never look this good when I wear them. Photo: Daniel Lewis

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Intarsia design by Dee Hardwicke

We’ll also be meeting and hearing from the indominatable Zandra Rhodes, designer extraordinaire and founder of the museum. Her studio is next door so she won’t have far to come.
Coming all the way from Herefordshire is artist Dee Hardwicke who will be giving us a workshop on designing an intarsia pattern with Rowan Tweed (all materials included of course). After all that inspiration there has to be an outlet (and some knitting). I can’t wait, which is okay as it’s on November 24, so really soon.

Read my article in Rowan Magazine 58
Book a place on trip here Rowan website

Hepworth at the Mall

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Hepworth’s studio at No 7

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Stephenson at No 8

mallstudiosI enjoyed seeing the Hepworth Exhibition at Tate Britain last weekend and was interested to see photographs of the studio where she lived and worked in Hampstead. I’m happily staying in Parkhill Road a stone’s throw from Hepworth’s studio and lived next-door at No 8 the Mall Studios for a year.
At the bottom of our garden in Parkhill Road is an old gate that would have opened onto a terrace of Victorian artist’s studios. Hidden away in down a shady alley, the Mall Studios were purpose-built by Thomas Batterbury in Cecilstephenson1872 with high ceilings, skylights and huge sash windows to let in as much light as possible. At No 8, No 8, Mall Studios was home to Walter Sickert (1860–1942) and the lease was taken on by John Cecil Stephenson (1889–1965) and then lived in by another painter. Up some steep stairs was a balcony with racks for storing stretchers and canvases – it still smells of turpentine.
 Barbara Hepworth lived at No 7, Mall Studios, 1932 with her first husband John Skeaping and then with Ben Nicholson. Hepworth had triplets while living there though managed to continue to produce some work. The studios are quite small for a couple working at home with 4 children, though Hepworth shows great pragmatism in her letters that show she rented two other studios in the same row, one for Nicolson and another for the children and nanny.Biog-3 Photographs show her working in a low extension in the garden with a corrugated-iron roof, which is no longer there. Other neighbours on the Mall were sculptor James Oakley (1878–1959) at No 5 and writer and art critic Herbert Read at No 3.

Just around the corner were Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Agatha Christie, László Moholy-Nagy and Jack Pritchard in Wells 6955777935_9c4a2af3e3_bCoates’ Isokon Lawn Road Flats (1933). Alexander Calder and Naum Gabo, CRW Nevinson, Roland Penrose and Paul Nash were locals too. Hepworth’s cousin Jack Hepworth (1911-2003) lived at 22 Parkhill Road, exhibiting under the name Arthur Jackson. When Piet Mondrian left France, their artist friends found him a space to live and work in 60 Parkhill Road backing onto the Mall. Henry Moore also lived at 11a Parkhill Road and took over the No 7 when Hepworth and Nicolson left London for St Ives.

In 1940 the Mall Studios suffered bomb damage (you can see the location on Bomb Sight ).

The silence of knitting

IMG_2383This is Dawn Cole at an In the Loop study day at Winchester School of Art. Her performance piece, The Silence of Knitting, is based on the life story of her Great Aunt Clarice Alberta Spratling, a volunteer nurse during WWI. Dawn showed us some slides of her solar plate etchings that make beautiful patterns out of the writing found in Nurse Spratling’s diaries and letters. Then she sat down and began to knit. The audience weren’t sure what to expect, some music perhaps or a narration, but there was only the ‘cacophony of silence’. The trouble with quiet is that you start thinking about what those women must have been going through as they made socks and clothing for the men folk at the front. All those unspoken messages and thoughts being sent to brothers, fathers and husbands, woven into every stitch. The audience felt rather awkward and there was some shuffling in seats. Dawn worked a shamrock lace pattern, and didn’t stop until she had finished a whole pattern repeat.

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Men had eyes removed. Reading Between the Lines, Solar plate etching, Dawn Cole

This autumn’s Rowan magazine is out with an article about knitting in WWI by yours truly.

It has been a moving experience looking into the hardships of the period. You can recognise the same generous and stalwart spirits who inhabit the knitting world today.

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“When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrows these gave their today.”  John Maxwell Edmonds