Lace and poetry

I was reading a book about the textile artist Gerhardt Knodel and was intrigued by the quotations in the book, including one of my favourites, T S Eliot’s Burnt Norton which begins ‘Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future’. Much of Knodel’s work is ethereal even though it is often on a large scale and I will write more about him another day. I also like to reference poetry and literature in my work and the image shows part of a triptych I made inspired by W B Yeats’ He wishes for the cloths of heaven. It’s such a lovely poem and quite short so I’ll repeat it here: 

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths

Enwrought with golden and silver light

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light

I would spread the cloths under your feet

But I, being poor, have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

As you can guess the image is of the blue cloth of night. The lace is free bobbin lace and it's embedded in dyed silk paper fibres to give the impression of yearning for love and finding a space for dreaming.