Silk paper for TB lace

 

I spent yesterday making silk paper for my series on dust, decay and disintegration and it is now in the garden drying in the sunshine, as you can see in the image above. I’m combining lace, silk paper and fabric to make a series of curtains expressing the idea of dust clogging up the curtains and eventually extinguishing life and turning the airy fabric to brittle paper. I started with the first piece yesterday, attaching the lace to the silk paper. I started by adding threads to the lace, to use as anchors, which I could embed in the silk paper (see below).

 

I then laid the lace on a piece of net on a plastic sheet and started adding layer after layer of silk fibres. This is a slow meditative process so quite relaxing, but the threads tend to float about in the slightest breeze so it’s important not to move quickly to generate air currents. Once I had a thick enough layer of fibres I sprinkled dust on them, to suggest the clogging up process, and covered the entire piece with another layer of net.

I then sprayed the whole thing with a fine mist of water and then with a dilute silk fibre medium (see above). Once the spray has been added it’s important to ensure all the fibres have been coated so I use dilute medium and a brush to make sure the piece is wet through, then leave it to dry. By this morning it was dry enough to move off its plastic backing and take it out into the sunshine, because the two outer net layers keep everything in place. With the help of the sun it should be dried out later today and I’ll be able to remove the net layers. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.