Embroidering the Everyday

Travelling gently

My fraternal grandmother talks about her everyday life on the road as a Romani child. The places where her family stopped and worked are part of my history. The fields where she once picked fruit and hops are part of my regular cycle route in Kent. I often walk along the North Norfolk coast paths and the broad estuary of the Wash when visiting family, and have visited the back lanes and markets of Norwich where my great-grandmother once touted crocheted table mats and lace ware, as part of my route home from school. I live in a small house on the outskirts of Maidstone, and by any description may be perceived as a 'settled' member of the community. However, my art practice and lifestyle choice contradicts this. I travel in pursuit of my work, drawing, stitching, collecting and collating things as I go. I don't own a car; you could say I 'walk the world'. My main mode of transport is on foot or by bicycle. This immediately connects me to the places I travel through, taking in the stories of people, culture and place along the way. My way of thinking and my approach to my work is constantly in motion and being challenged by this daily exchange with the 'world outside'.

Pied Wagtail: Pani Kekkavva (one of a triptych)
64 x 164 x 0.5cm (25 x 65 x ½ in)

This work portrays my great-grandparents, referencing the last photographic evidence of my immediate family. The ancient ties to India are represented in the colours and the reclaimed sari materials used in the making of the artwork. In printing the images for this series I used oil paints retrieved from a bin. My father trained as a sign-writer and decorator and used oil paints for his beautiful painted shop signs. A detail of the wagtail appears here.

We travelled gently along the road and lanes by our two horse-drawn caravans, the vardo and the Leeds wagon. Usually we made our way from village to village, our stops were made on 'pull-ins' in the quiet lanes or our regular Stopping Places. I remember picking spring daffodils and tulips in fields near Spalding, the area called Little Holland. In Kent we picked apples, plums and hops. We saw the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the Wash and the Channel, the Cheviots, the Pennines, the Downs and the Lakes. Romanis still travelling follow the same routes, gathering in the old familiar places.

From 'Memories of a Romani Childhood', Mary Holmes (1994). Share Your Memories writing competition, Norfolk County Council, Library and Information.

Folding book forms. Lavender and Tan-Place both use materials reflecting a walk, through a field and alongside a road respectively.

Lavender (background)
15 x 13 x 0.5cm (6 x 5 x ½in) closed
15 x 20cm (6 x 8in) open

Cloth and paper, with marks created using lavender stalks and sticks printed on location.

Tan- Place (foreground)
14 x 14 x 0.5cm
(5½ x 5½ x 5½in x ½ in) closed,
14 x 110cm (5½ x 43in) open

Uses an old cloth shopping bag and metal button found on a footpath.

The Walking People

A traditional name for a traveller in Ireland 'An Lucht Siúil' translates as 'the Walking People'.

The places and landscapes I 'walk through' are reflected in the imagery and materials I collect and use. The connection to my family is represented symbolically in these pieces through the image of a kettle. Pani Kekkavva is the traditional term for an iron kettle in the Romani language; it was hung over an open fire as they settled down at the end of the day on the road. 'Putting the kettle on' is a welcome sign of companionship and discussion, carrying with it, memories of my grandmother's house and childhood stories told over a 'cuppa', igniting my imagination and a thriftiness in what I use.

As I matured I began, as Gran would say, to 'grow into myself' and found new confidence in drawing upon my Romani cultural background. Research in India helped with a greater understanding of the roots of my heritage. Re-purposing things is in my blood, salvaging items from wherever I can find them. We have become careless in our care of this shared world.

The stories and imagery to be found in the everyday and commonplace are a constant source of inspiration for projects and collaborations. As Moira Vincentelli said about my process:

Her work often contains snippets of text or discarded materials that have associations or conjure up memories. There is always a dialogue with the materials she uses. They bring their own history which is woven into the work. These collections of ephemera might seem meaningless but their apparent banality is open-ended. They are available to stimulate the imagination through the poetry of ordinariness. Everything has a connection and each viewer makes their own connections.'

From an essay written for 'Reflections'
(an early exhibition by the author),
Moira Vincentelli.

Pani Kekkavva Rose 2019
59 x 160 x 0.5cm
(23 x 63 x ½ in)

Roses from an old sheer scarf are echoed in the machine and hand embroidery. Nestled within this arbour of roses is an image of family members beside their vardo printed onto a fine silk cloth. See also the detail on here.

The representation of flora, fauna, the paraphernalia of daily life, landscape and seasonal changes draws its own associations with nature and freedom. Throughout her life, my grandmother always had roses in her garden and in the decoration on much of the beautiful china in her house. These memories of her objects resonate with the decoration of traditional caravans and barge art of many travelling communities. Similar imagery is still to be found in the décor of Romani homes today.

The references we make to the familiar, to personal histories, are a rich resource for us all to work with. The black-and-white images, of my own family, faded with time, echo a bygone age. I wanted to capture that sense of time and place in transferring these images to cloth.

Sketchbooks and research materials for the 'Pani Kekkavva' series, showing the sampled images and layering methods used. The portrait of my grandmother, Mary Holmes (nee Cunningham), has been printed directly onto heavyweight Japanese tissue attached to cloth. The handwriting is my fathers, noting down the stories of the family with some key words picked out in red hand stitch.

Image to cloth

I employ a number of approaches when applying images onto cloth, depending on the outcome I want to achieve. Many of the images in the 'Places, Traces, Spaces' series used oil-based printing and paint mediums to transfer the printed image to cloth. The process is messy and unreliable yet, after lengthy experimentation, it produced the degraded image I was after. One of the simplest ways to obtain an image is to use commercial photo transfer paper, which you can run through a printer and then iron onto the cloth. Alternatively, you could use a transfer gel medium such as Dylon Image Maker.

In the series 'Shadows' the photographic portraits of my family were run through a printer and transferred directly onto cloth or strong but lightweight Japanese papers, which were later attached to the cloth with glue paste or stitch (as described opposite). Conservation tissues or Tissuetex also work well. Before printing, the text and portrait of my grandmother are digitally reversed and enhanced through software to bring out the contrasts.

Napkins ('Shadows' series)
Each 28 x 28cm (11 x 11in)

A series of portraits of my family transferred and stitched onto my grandmother's napkins.

Method for printing onto tissue

1. Attach your tissue to a sheet of photocopy paper using a glue stick along the outer edges of the paper.

2. Leave to dry and carefully trim off any excess tissue so it matches up with the edges of the backing paper.

3. Set your printer to the economy setting for your first trial to see how much of your printer ink is absorbed by the tissue.

4. Mark a test page and run it through the printer so you know which way to place the paper.

5. Place the photocopy paper with the tissue attached through your printer at the photo-quality printing setting.

6. Leave the tissue to dry thoroughly after it has been printed.

7. Once printed, paste the images onto the cloth - either face up or face down, depending on the image intensity and your preference - and allow to dry. Once dry, the image is ready to stitch.

8. Alternatively, paste the freshly printed images face down directly onto the cloth. Leave the paper in place for around 30 minutes and remove before the paste is dry. The ink from the printer transfers to the cloth leaving a softer 'ghost' image.

Note

Printer inks are dye- or pigment-based, permanent, gel or water-soluble (as is found in most home ink-jet printers), so results will vary. Soaking pigment-based, ink-jet prints in a plain white vinegar bath for 10 minutes and allowing them to dry helps to make the print more water resistant. Ensure the print is thoroughly dry before soaking. The vinegar smell should...