Back in the studio

 It’s good to be back in the studio after the Christmas break making lace plans for the new year. I’m very pleased to have work in the current Tansa miniatures exhibition which is currently showing at the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham until 26 March. I will also have some larger pieces of lace in the complementary exhibition at South Hill Park in Bracknell from 26 February until 3 April. The work at both venues is the result of a research visit by UCA textile researchers to Japan in 2019, following which we and some of the Japanese artists we visited encapsulated our responses to the trip in textiles. I feel especially lucky to be able to show some work in the current pandemic when so many venues are closed. The miniature works are also travelling to Japan in April to be exhibited at Gallery Gallery in Kyoto which is also a great honour. As well as the Japanese themed pieces I’m also still working on my unhomely doily series hoping to produce a group of them for exhibiting. I’ve published a couple of papers in Textile the journal of cloth and culture this year, one on the lace designer Amy Atkin (the image above shows a detail of my textile response to that work) and another on textile responses to domestic trauma. I’m currently writing a chapter for a textile book on Belgian war lace and have started the research for another paper on the work of Harry Cross who designed beautiful machine lace curtains and the famous Battle of Britain lace panel. I like to have a mixture of practice and writing so I’m looking forward to the new year and getting back to work.