Following Threads

The title of the next E.A.S.T (East Anglian Stitched Textile) exhibition is Following a Thread.  I am planning on a body of work inspired by a set of paintings at the National Gallery, but I started out following a very different "thread".

The paintings tell the story of Patient Griselda, a poor country girl who marries a rich marquis, first published in the fourteenth century.  I had researched the paintings as part of an art history course and the more I learnt about the panels, the more there was to find out.  It was not just the narrative illustrated that intrigued but the possibility the panels were commissioned by a woman.  It was a rare thing for a woman to commission art during the Renaissance but not impossible.

However this was not the original inspiration for my E.A.S.T work which began with the story of Elizabeth Blackwell and her Curious Herbal.  My research into Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) had started as a paper I presented at the Foundling Museum last year.  Blackwell engraved all the illustrations as well as all the text.  Her text referred to several sources and it was through this research I came across another botanical illustrator, incidentally yet another remarkable woman. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) who travelled to Surinam, Africa with her daughter in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Her paintings included not only fantastic plants but insects as well.  Her illustrations were often used as embroidery designs.  Blackwell included some insects in a few of her engravings, perhaps inspired by Merian.

My Blackwell research was also following on from the stories of three remarkable women that lived during WWI which I had used for our last E.A.S.T exhibition, Between the Lines.  One of these WWI women (Mrs Grieve) used her herbal knowledge during the war when commercial medicines were in short supply. I was also learning about herbs during regular visits to the walled garden at Cressing Temple Medieval Barns with a local herbal interest group so it seemed a natural course to combine all these herbal threads.

I read up on herbal dyeing both from a practical and historical point of view and it seemed as if things were coming together. I visited Chelsea Physic Garden, where Blackwell had drawn many of her illustrations and I made a visit to the RHS Lindley Library.  This was a trip organised by the Friends of Thomas Coram and included talks where I learnt more about the printing of herbals and the art of botanical prints.

Despite the fact that I had followed this thread of herbals and herbalists, I was more and more drawn in what seemed a different direction towards the story of the paintings.  Eventually I decided to change to this different source of inspiration, though I worried I had no where to use my extensive herbal research.

Then last weekend E.A.S.T member Jenny, gave us a workshop in how to use leaves to print on fabric and paper (see below).  I realised here was a way my research on the herbals could be linked with the paintings.  I need to find a way of contrasting Griselda's simple country origins with her later wealth and the leaf printing has started me on a train of thought that may provide the solution.

Coincidentally the workshop took place at Braintree Museum, where there is a gallery named after the naturalist John Ray (1627-1705).  Ray was born in nearby Black Notley, Essex. He was a philosopher and scholar.  He was also one of the sources of information Blackwell used for her Curious Herbal. It seemed like pair of threads coming together.

Another dilemma I had was about how to represent Griselda's new found riches and a visit to the aetelier's Hand and Lock, has given me some ideas in that direction.  That visit was combined with a trip to the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace in London, and an exhibition called Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden (see below). Amongst the paintings and textiles (woven tapestry and embroidery - see below), I was delighted to recognise works by Maria Sibylla Merian, which I had only previously seen in reproduction.  Perhaps that counts as another linking thread?

I now feel my threads of research are coming together - linking my interests in herbs and natural dyes, remarkable women, fourteenth century paintings and hopefully even include a reference to my foundling research.

Growing Colour

Over the last year or so I have become a regular visitor to Cressing Temple Gardens, in Essex (UK) in particular their Walled Garden.  Created to represent a garden from the Tudor era, it includes knots, a medicinal section, a nosegay garden, a potager and a flowery mead.  One of my favourite sections is the dye garden.  

This is the woad plant (isatis tinctoria) as it is currently (June 2015), in the garden at Cressing.  It has a history as a dye plant that goes back to neolithic times, and until the discovery and importation of indigo (indigofera tinctoria) from Asia was the only way of dyeing cloth blue in England for thousands of years.  For many centuries it was also needed for dyeing green - cloth was first dyed blue and then over-dyed with yellow.  It is one of the reasons that early textiles such as tapestries, change so much with age - the yellow dye is not so fast and as it fades, anything that was once green reverts to blue.

By the 16th century, most blue cloth was dyed with imported indigo.  Woad, although still home grown, was used mainly for the fermenting process needed to create a usable dye (see John Edmonds book The History of Woad and the Medieval Woad Vat.)

One of my special interests is the tokens of the 18th century foundling hospital - notes and objects left with infants brought to the hospital, many of which were fabric.  A large number of the pieces of fabric were taken from the children's clothing and many cottons and linens are blue and white stripes and checks.  These simple, rather plain snippets of fabric are not at first sight, the most interesting of the fabrics, but when you realise how many people and hours of work were needed for the creation of every piece of cloth it is a reminder that their use as tokens is only one small part of their story. Not only for the process of dyeing, but time and manpower was also needed for spinning and weaving, which until industrialisation would have been done on home based looms.  Then there was the peril of the sailors who brought indigo from Asia to dye the threads blue, and of course there is the manufacture of the cotton which depended on the despicable slave trade.

So when I looked at this unassuming plant all this came to my mind, and it was just one plant in a whole garden on historical (sometimes textile related) stories.  The garden has a whole host of other dye plants and the garden is free to visit all year around.  The Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London is the place to visit to find out more about the tokens.