Scottish Sampler Exhibition

Above and Below: Isabella Cook 

This week I managed to get a rushed peek at the exhibition 'Embroidered Stories' at the National Museum of Scotland it is on until 21st April 2019. It features a collection of Scottish samplers gathered over many years by Leslie B Hurst. They were even more incredible in their fineness and detail but also the wonderful stories of the creators often very young girls. I have to go back again and read more stories and wonder further at the incredible skill of these young women. 

The two samplers above were most probably inspired by the Queen's Zebra gifted to her by George III in 1762.

Above: Artist unknown The London Magazine 1762

Above: A McGilly 1815. Below: Mary Robert 1767

Helen Storey

Professor Helen Storey has been announced as the first Artist in Residence at Za'atari Refugee Camp for 2019 to cocreate fashion and design projects with Syrian women and their children. 

Top and bottom are images of a dress for our time, a gown made from a UNHCR refugee tent in 2015. 

Louise Gardiner

Louise Gardiner's responce to the The Womankind Pukka project is a cape of empowerment. A visual representation of the ingredients in womankind tea and a meditation on what we put into our bodies.

"Stitched from the ground up and inspired by 21 natural, health giving ingredients, the centrepiece for the campaign has taken the form of a beautiful cape and aims to capture all that is feminine, powerful and potent about woman kind. This isn’t about superficial beauty, it’s about nurturing individuality and about taking a step back from the norm and thinking about what we’ve all got to contribute. To encourage a gentle more charismatic femininity, it’s not about sex and celebrity, It’s about the essence of being female and being in touch with your own true nature and creativity.

Having been deeply influenced by teaching women all around the world, tapping into this amazing sisterhood and realising how much we all have in common, this cape is a joyful celebration of all those women that have been and all those yet to come. Anyone and everyone was welcome to try the cape on and feel like that queen, warrior, nurturer, rockstar; any and all of those wonderful roles that we play."

Marie Lieb

An assemblage of torn fabric strips from the bed sheets of Marie Lieb. Little is known of this woman, who created this startling display on the floor of a psychiatric ward where she was interned in 1894. The two installations are on two different floors, possibly public spaces in the hospital as they are larger than an individual room for someone interned. they include gradations of fabric sizes from strips to thread and include writing.

This leads to the assumptions that Lieb wanted to make a statement not only for herself but also for others, and that this statement was not only about claiming space but also about sending a message, if unreadable to others. In this quality these floor pieces remind me of secret rituals, like witches’ writings on the ground. It is imaginable that the patient was convinced what she did exerted magical power. Thomas Röske

Teresa Byszewska

 Surreal textile collage portraits by Polish Graphic designer Teresa Byszewska (1929-2018) who died just 2 months ago at the age of 99.

In 1950 Teresa commenced her studies at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts initially in the studio of Henryk Tomaszewski, and then Józef Mroszczak until 1956. On graduating she worked designing film posters and illustrations for children She also collaborated with Jan Lenica in creating animated films.

Teresa Byszewska from daniel bird on Vimeo.

Later she specialised in her textile portraits. In the 1980's she then turned her focus to drawing and frottage taking rubbings from her textile work.

Jen Nollaig

“We glamorise the tree, why not glamorise ourselves” Jen Nollaig 

This is Jen Nollaig's second Christmas collection repurposing seasonal decorations into amazing costumes.

“I have always been fanatical about Christmas so I have used this as the inspiration for my work. I look at decorations and think how I can wear them rather than how they will look on my tree.”

Britta Marakatt-Labba II

Swedish Sámi textile artist Britta Marakett-Labba's embroidered renderings of Sâmi life. Britta's life story is quite amazing as she was one of nine children born into a reindeer herding family. She is now married to a reindeer herder from Saarivuoma Sámi village and is resident in Övre Soppero. Her work is from the heart, from memories and her culture, it has the wonderful space of snow-covered tundra and a white crispness that makes you feel the ice on your breath.