The Stitch Lives of London (so far)
It’s my retelling of history in calligraphy and cloth - a modern day Bayeux tapestry.
A line of garments embroidered in the words of the people who wore them - where history shows up as humanity. In the handwriting of a person is the individuality of line and mark and the message preserved by hand in thread.
Some garments have been donated and some commissioned… Who will be next?
“I’m blown away! Its beyond what I could have imagined….It’s truly a thrill” — Jude Law
‘A boy who loved to run’. The athletic running top belonging to murdered teenager, Stephen Lawrence donated by his mother, Baroness Lawrence.
‘I wish I were with you’ wrote the 16 year old Churchill to his mother from Harrow school. The letter in its entirety is stitched on the right sleeve of a silk satin bodice that his mother might have worn. The pieces belong in the art collection of Fortnum and Mason, London.
‘Mr. Jude Law plays Hamlet’. The costume worn by Law when he played Hamlet and with his chosen quote stitched across the breast of the shirt.
The exquisite drawing of seven-year-old Blaise who sadly passed away from glioblastoma, made large in ‘3-d’ ‘textile-line’ on the back of a lab coat belonging to a leading scientist from the Institute of Cancer Research.
Ernest Shackleton - polar explorer of the Heroic age of discovery loved the poetry of Browning and would recite passages to rouse himself and his men as he trawled across the ice. These are stitched in the style of his handwriting around the lapel - to have the words ringing in his ears. The piece belongs in the collection of Burberry.
The last word goes to Laura. Laura Nuttall’s last letter to cancer stitched on a lab coat belonging to a leading scientist of The Institute of Cancer Research. The coats stand in the entrance of the Royal Marsden Hospital, London.
Standing at the feet of Shackleton to understand the person who became this icon in british history. Royal Geographical Society, London.
‘Waulking jacket’ belonging to Ian the Scotsman and nodding to its materiality - to ‘waulk’ to wool. The tweed was made in the Hebridean islands in 1939 and then made into this kilt jacket by a tailor in Dundee. The jacket has certainly done some walking - through bracken and fen.
“Artist fashions 100 metre tale of our lives”
Robert Dex, Evening Standard