My story starts not with a textile item but with a bundle of
old letters that have taken me on an amazing textile journey, and one which is
by no means complete.
In 2006 I bought a bundle of old letters from a Cheshire
antiques centre. The letters were tied
together with a faded pink ribbon and at £3.25 they were a real bargain, so I
gave them a home.
My initial intention was to cut the stamps from the
envelopes and use them as collage material in my artwork. However when I got
them home and started to read them, somewhat guiltily at first, I realised that
I had discovered a treasure trove and my scissors were not allowed anywhere
near them.
The letters were dated from 1923 and 1924 and had all been
written to a Frances Lightfoot who was living away from her family with her
aunt in Mossley, Manchester, The letters were written by various members of her
family who lived in Farnworth, near Widnes, and they told the story of everyday
life for a working class family. Mostly the letters were written by Frances’
mother, Ada Lightfoot, who kept Frances informed of all the local gossip, the
antics of her younger brothers and sister and wrote copiously about the ordeal
of doing the washing in the harsh winter of 1923. Other letters were written by
her father Peter, her three brothers (Willie, Peter and Vincent), and her two
little sisters ( Ada and Dorothy), although the latter were written on their
behalf by their parents. The letters included stories of trips to the dentist,
ice skating on frozen ponds, Christmas parties at school, killing pigs, mending
boots and having to use a knife and fork at a hotpot supper whilst preferring a
spoon.
These letters provided me with much inspiration for my
textile art as I created art which was based on the stories I discovered in these letters. As
I read the letters certain phrases jumped out at me and it was these phrases
that informed the work I created. I was moved by the numerous accounts of the
minutiae of everyday life ,in particular the arduous task of doing the laundry
and keeping her children clothed and warm, which Ada shared with her absent
daughter. Instead of making the actual collages I had originally intended I
created digital collages from the scans of the letters, incorporating lines from the letters, images from my own
personal photographic archive and items such as buttons, lace and stamps from
the period. For example, I used a photograph of my own mother, taken in 1925,
to represent little Dorothy, of whom Ada writes “she is delighted with the
photograph of her with the nice frock”
Doing the family’s
washing in the harsh winter weather took up most of Ada’s week, suffering from
what I now know to be bronchitis, she had to get help from her sons to put the
clothes through the mangle and sometimes Peter, her second eldest son would
stay off school to help her.
“The Washing Gets Me Down” is inspired by Ada’s references
to the ordeal of doing the laundry which took her the best part of a week, and
for this work I have used a image of my husband’s grandmothers, one of which
was never seen without an overall.
The next part of my story recounts a series of events that
cumulated in a chance meeting, and an amazing coincidence. My work was being
exhibited in 2010 at Macclesfield Museum where it was seen by someone who was
looking for a textile artist, who worked with text, to be an artist in
residence at an event for creative writers and poets. At this event I met a
poet called Angela Topping with whom I made an initial connection, partly
because she had included me in one of the poems she had written on the day, and
partly because we realised that we were both interested in the condition of the
working class woman and that we shared a common creative language. Angela’s
poems made reference to the singer sewing machines, knitting, handbags, gloves
and dresses, which also appeared in my textile art. Our decision to collaborate came quite soon
into our acquaintance, she sent me her poems and I sent her images of my work.
“Make me a Dress” was initially an unfinished sample
depicting my grandmother sewing at her Singer Sewing Machine. Angela had just
written a poem called ‘Paper Patterns’ which was inspired by an image of a
corset I had made from sewing patterns. The first line of her poem, “Make me a
dress the colour of the sky just after a June sunset” finished my work off
nicely.
Angela and I met up again a few weeks later as I wanted to
show her my work which was now being exhibited in Frodsham, and it was there
looking at my work, answering Angela’s questions that we became increasingly aware
that our connection was becoming more intertwined. As I talked about the
letters and the family in them, Angela realised that I was talking about her
own family and the letters had been written by the grandparents to her Aunt
Frances. There were even a couple of letters written by her father to his elder
sister. The atmosphere was electric, cold shivers ran down our spines, as they
still do even today when I recount the event to people.
Once we had recovered, over a cup of hot tea, our decision
to collaborate became set in stone,. We planned to stage an exhibition that would
be a fusion of textile art and poetry, telling the story found in the Lightfoot
Letters. We approached the Brindley Arts Centre in Runcorn, as this was the
nearest gallery to Widnes, where the letters had originated, and received an
enthusiastic response to our proposal. The exhibition ‘’The Lightfoot Letters”
was held in August 2011, just one year after our initial meeting and my body of
work grew from 8 pieces of work to 60, each one recounting a particular aspect
of the story to be found in the letters and responding to the Angela’s poems.
As I was still particularly interested in the stories about
the washing and clothing I decided to explore this theme further and create an
installation based on Ada’s washing line with garments, each one recounting a
particular aspect of Ada’s story. I began researching into the type of garments
which would have been worn by working class families in the 1920’s and realised
that their garments would be far removed from the ‘flapper’ styles we think of
when we think of the 1920’s , In the particular the garments worn my children
would not have changed much since the Victorian era. I derived much of my
research from the pattern cutting books, used in schools at this time, to teach young girls the skills of home
dressmaking, such as Needlework and
Cutting Out by Agnes Walker and Needlework,
Knitting and Cutting Out by Elizabeth Rosevear. Since I wanted to cut text
into the garments on Ada’s washing line I used these books to re-create
garments from the period which I could them cut into without a guilty
conscience.
Another exciting aspect of our collaboration was that I was
now able to use Angela’s images of her family in my artwork. Imagine my
excitement when I was able to re-unite a photograph of the each of the family members with their actual
words.
I particularly enjoyed re-uniting Peter Lightfoot with his
words about preferring a spoon to a knife and fork at a hot pot supper he was
attending, and Ada Lightfoot with her moving words to Frances. “Doesn’t a pussy
cat even cry if one kitty is lost? Is not a Mammy lonely when the girlie is
away?”.
I have now made over
sixty pieces of work and my body of work is still growing. There is not space
here to talk about every piece of work but there is an opportunity for you to see the exhibition again at Sale
Waterside Arts Centre , Sale, Manchester from the 18th May to the 28th
September 2013.
Maria Walker, Textile Artist
This is a wonderful story Maria. I am wondering if there was a catalogue for the exhibition? The textile pieces featured here are wonderfully diverse.
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