Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Eat & Work Together


Eat & Work Together
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Prue Cooper offered to let me make a charger in her studio. The process involved rolling out a slab of clay, pressing it into a mold, trimming the edge, extruding a strip of clay for the rim, pressing it with my pinky finger to make the "pie crust," then painting on several layers of black liquid slip.

We talked for awhile about what to write on the border, and finally decided on a phrase that originates from Gerard Wynstanley's quote "Eat together, work together, and make the earth a common treasury."

So Winstanley was an important figure in an early 1640s movement of landless peasants to squat on waste and common lands and cultivate them collectively. He established a colony on St. Georges Hill to take symbolic ownership of the unused lands there and came under a great deal of attack.
Read more...

Riches and Muck


Holding Hands
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
In her East Putney studio, Prue Cooper showed me lots of examples of her work and we discussed the use of slogans in the history of slipware. Sometimes these are meant to commemorate a special occasion, but most often the expressions you might find are about friendship and togetherness, ostensibly because the plate is used at gatherings to serve food. This idea, interpreted politically, has lead Prue to write statements with a social bent, as in the example described in the previous post. Another slogan she has used is "Riches and muck are best spread around."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the pieces she makes with this kind of message are not big sellers at the craft fairs. More popular are pieces with this signature motif of holding hands. And since she needs to make a living from her work, the more radical messages end up tucked away in cardboard boxes between sheets of newspaper.

"Get them out!" I said.
Read more...

Anarchist Poetry Charger


Anarchist Poetry
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
This slipware charger was made by Prue Cooper and has a great story attached.

Prue happens to be the sister of Heathcote Williams, the legendary anarchist poet and one-time organizer of the Ruff Tuff Creem Puff Estate Agency for squatters, founded in 1974 in the Notting Hill section of London.

Upon the happy occasion of selling one of his poems (for £100 which in those days was a lot of money), Heathcote had an idea for how his earnings could be shared with the other residents of his squat. He took the money to the bank and exchanged it for a sack of small change. When he got home that day, he poured the change into a large bowl on the kitchen table. And this is the sign he posted on it: Take what you need, the rest is greed.

(In case you are wondering, the money was gone by that evening.)
Read more...

Art Workers Guild

The following blurb from the AWG website is worth reading:

The Guild is a society of artists, craftsmen and designers drawn together by a common interest in the interaction, development and distribution of creative skills. Together they represent and uphold a variety of views on design and stand for authenticity in a world increasingly uncertain about what is real. Authenticity is expressed in many ways, irrespective of political and stylistic ideology.

Founded originally by the leading lights of the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1890's, many of its current members uphold long established traditions of workmanship and a desire to contribute to the community. The Guild believes that art, craft and design should be invigorating and positive in outlook, at a time when much art remains alienating and self-indulgent.
Read more...

Slipware


Prue Cooper
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
I spent a lovely day with Prue Cooper, a potter in East Putney specializing in slipware, the name given to ceramics decorated with trails of liquid clay, called slip. I found Prue by looking on the Art Worker's Guild website (see next post).

I visited Prue in her studio, and we had a great conversation about books and museums and things that make our hearts leap. For her, it is 19th century brass love tokens in the shape of a shoe, and for me, it is often, well, slipware ceramics. The dribbles, dots and delicious chocolately marblizing just kills me.

Prue brought in her beautiful vintage copy of Barbara Jones's The Unsophisticated Arts (1951), which like the other books I have mentioned from the same period, describes English popular and traditional arts and is filled with drawings by the author. A special characteristic of this book for its age is that includes examples of unexpected things like tattooing and candy sculptures.
Read more...

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Pilot Poster


Pilot Poster
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Amy Plant and Ella Gibbs brought their Pilot Publishing project to the tea party, inviting visitors to help draw and color a poster advertising the project. As a fundraiser, they also offered a "lucky dip" in which winning visitors could walk away with a set of color pencils.
Read more...

Memory Plasters


Memory Plasters
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Davina Drummond offered to stitch your memories onto bandages.
Read more...

Campaign Rations


Emergency Biscuits
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Paula Roush distributed emergency biscuits, for use in crises real, reenacted, imagined, or invented.
Read more...

Mathematical Quilts


Louise Mabbs
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Louise Mabbs demonstrated her quilting skills and showed her portfolio of amazing quilts based on mathematical formulas and numbering systems.

In the background you can see a pile of pom-poms for sale by Joe Scotland.
Read more...

What Are Sewing Notions


Debbie's Sewing Notions
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
In the U.S. we use the word "notions" when refering to sewing items like buttons, thread, needles, etc. Debbie Flatt brought some wonderful notions to the Notion Nanny tea party, including a set of red buttons presented as the contents of a Notion Nanny-esque lady's tray.
Read more...

Sock Darning


Debbie Flatt Darning
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Sarah Carrington's mother Debbie Flatt demonstrated how to darn socks using yarn. Sarah wore a jacket Debbie made in the 1970s out of WIlliam Morris fabric.
Read more...

Jill Stitching Today


Jill Stitching Today
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Jill Wignall also offered to stitch words or phrases onto cloth-covered notebooks. This is the one I requested for the Notion Nanny basket, with Ruskin's motto "TODAY".
Read more...

Old Clothes to Mend


Jill Wignall's Patches
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Jill Wignall offered a patch sewing service to anyone needing to mend their clothing, which was quite popular, despite the lack of holes, rips, or tears. Liberty of London fans will understand why the patches were requested for primarily cosmetic reasons.
Read more...

Group Effort


Weaving with Anne
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Weaver Anne Ogazi brought her loom and demonstrated how to weave. Throughout the day, over twenty different people participated in making a woolen scarf for the Notion Nanny project.
Read more...

Knitting is Rad


Knitting
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Maureen Power demonstrated knitting and peddled her wares at the tea party.
Read more...

Trade & Barter


Bartering
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Lots of bartering was going on at the tea party. I traded a horn spoon for a tiny painting on cigar box wood from Nicaragua. This visitor traded the belt and bracelet she was wearing for a knitted cushion cover and a decoratively carved wooden pipe.
Read more...

Stitched Cakes


Stitched Cakes
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Lisa Finnegan Smith was making and peddling tea party-themed cupcakes, pin cushions, change purses, and light switches.
Read more...

Tea Party Treats


Tea Party Treats
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Delicious cakes were served at the Tea Party, some of which were donated by Clapham Commons's Esca Café. Thanks Esca!
Read more...

Cozy Slogans


Cozy Slogans
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
Sophie Hope and Lucy Wilson stitched slogans onto scarves they found at charity shops.
Read more...

Flowers for a Cause


Flowers for a Cause
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
At the Notion Nanny Tea Party, Kelly Wright demonstrated the art of flower arranging. Each arrangement was for sale, the proceeds of which would benefit Studio Voltaire.
Read more...

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Tea Party


Tea Party
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
We had a fantastic turnout at the Notion Nanny Tea Party. Over thirty different makers showed up to demonstrate, barter, or peddle their wares to an audience of participating visitors. The next few posts will give you a sense of the day's activities.
Read more...

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Notion Nanny Tea Party

If you are in or around London this Saturday 15 October, come to the Notion Nanny Tea Party from 2-9pm at Studio Voltaire. This event will launch the Notion Nanny exhibition with a day of activities and refreshments.

See the life-size peddler doll and her basket of wares made in collaboration with the makers I have met. Like 19th century porcelain dolls, it has ceramic limbs (made in a ceramics atelier in France), glass eyes, and a hand stitched wig. Her costume, made with historical costume designers, includes a woolen red cloak and a black bonnet made in London with Jane Smith.

I will be peddling the wares of several of the makers I have been working with, including Peter Hodgson's carved horn spoons, Dorothy Horsfall's straw love tokens and intricate straw work earrings, Elizabeth Prickett's books and postcards, Rebecca Purcell's "tokens of identity", and smocked dresses from the Etafani Day Care Center.

This gathering of makers will include skill demonstrations, performances and peddling, including Paula Roush's Emergency Biscuits, Davina Drummond's embroidered memory bandages, Nicola Chambers' knitted animals and Joe Scotland's pom-poms, plus darning and commemorative needlepoint with Debbie Flatt, quilting with Louise Mabbs, weaving with Anne Ogazi, Pilot Publishing with Amy Plant and Ella Gibbs, exploring Risk and climbing skyscrapers with Lottie Child and a fully costumed rendition of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by Sean Parfitt and Barry Sykes, and much more.

Hope to see you there!
Read more...

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Traditional and Contemporary


Etafeni Dress
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
I recently made a friend in London who turned me on to the important work of Stephanie Kilroe, director of fundraising for the Etafeni Playgroup Project of the Nyanga township in Cape Town. It is a non-profit daycare center for children whose lives and families are affected by HIV/AIDS.

In order to empower the community economically, the Income Generation Project trains HIV-positive men and women in making beaded crafts, smocked dresses, and patchwork fabric. The makers are paid for the items they make, which are then sold internationally.

For more information, see Bee at Marcos and Trump, 146 Columbia Rd., London E2 7RG, where you can purchase one of these lovely smocked dresses for £45, £40 of which goes directly to Etafeni.
Read more...

Traditional and Revolutionary


No Stamp Act Teapot
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
In the permanent collection of a museum at Colonial Williamsburg, one of the largest open-air museums in the States, there is a tea pot made by an English ceramicist during the 1760s that bears the phrase "No Stamp Act." Its maker had apparently followed the developing political crisis in the American colonies regarding parliamentary taxation without representation.

Was this a clever entrepeneurial invention, capitalizing on current American desires and sentiments? Or was it the creation of someone expressing sympathy with the colonists by providing them with a vehicle for protesting the British government? Maybe this enterprising maker had their own axe to grind.

In a colonial marketplace in which dependency on Britian was an issue, familiar imported goods such as cloth and tea had the potential to become symbols of imperial oppression, and private acts of consumption could be seen as public declarations of resistance.

In "The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence" (2004), T. H. Breen puts forward a new interpetation of the American Revolution in which ordinary people of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds overcame vast differences in order to form an imagined national community based on their shared experience as consumers. This provided them with the cultural resources needed to develop a bold new form of political protest, the consumer boycott.

Yes, it's true. The U.S. is a country founded on consumerism. But what about this tea pot? It provides an example of how an everyday object can express political ideas, communicating across cultures in times of crisis, giving us something to discuss, over a cup of tea perhaps, or a protest.

In fitting irony, you can brew up your own Boston Tea Party using an authentic reproduction of this tea pot, available for purchase at williamsburgmarketplace.com, or in the U.K. from leedsware.com.
Read more...

Friday, October 07, 2005

The Unassuming Pedlar Doll


A Peddler Doll
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
In the introduction to Laurence Fontaine's "History of Pedlars in Europe" (1996), the ways in which pedlars have been defined is outlined as such:

"In France, the word was first used to mean one who traversed the town selling pictures and loose printed sheets. Secondly, by some linguistic twist, it was applied to the itinerant rural tradesman who had been known up until then as 'petit mercier' (petty trader), 'porte-balle' (packman), 'marcelot' or 'mercelot' (wandering trader). The first meaning refers to a recognized trade -- albeit an unimportant one -- whereas the second meaning of the word is nothing more than another way of saying 'tramp' or 'trickster.' [...] they were tricksters who wandered from town to town, buying and selling copper and pewter crockery and other similar merchandise which should normally only be sold in the open marketplace."

In France, "the pedlar remained a disturbing figure who was on the fringes of sociey and someone to be guarded against." [...] 'the guilds always viewed them suspiciously', worried that 'they sought, in this manner, to sell off defective merchandise of suspicious origin'.

"In England, the word developed in the opposite direction. 'Chapman' (cheapman) was originally a generic term for anyone who bought and sold merchandise (dealers). [...] In the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century the 'petty chapmen' were described as those who 'buy up commodities of those that sell by wholesale and sell them off dearer by retail, and parcel them out.'"

But "as shops became established in the towns and villages, 'chapman' came to mean [...] a synonym for pedlar or hawker. This term had an equally perjorative connotation: 'Hawking...has its derivation from the spying, thievish habits of the bird and man. They also acquired the reputation for ruffianism and brigandage.

"Right up to the end of the nineteenth century the pedlar was depicted in literature as a rogue, or trickster, half merchant and half thief. He was someone who belonged to another world, who sold both the stuff of everyday life and the stuff of dreams. He came from far away, possessed some secret knowledge and his misdeeds were compensated for by his clever trickery.

"In the nineteenth century, when the profession was dying out, the literary representation of the pedlar underwent a radical transformation. In Britain, in the eyes of the educated Victorians, he ceased to play his traditionally ambiguous and disturbing role and became instead a national hero, embodying the morality of the conservative countryside as opposed to the corruption of the city. In France, religious literature used him in two diametrically opposed fashions; he was either a figure of Evil, an embodiment of temptations to be repudiated, or, because of his freedom, humility and wisdom, he represented the Christ figure."
Read more...

Bonnet in Progress


Bonnet in Progress
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
This is the bonnet-in-progress I am making with London-based milliner Jane Smith. It is comprised of sturdy wire-edged buckram, covered in stitched calico, and will be finished with a black glazed cotton.

I decided on a wide-brimmed style of bonnet from the 1840s, which, though appropriately in keeping with the peddler dolls I have seen, will be slightly anachronistic in terms of the more American Revolutionary War-era style of the rest of the Notion Nanny costume.

Jane and I talked about anachronism, and the difference between a historical reproduction and a prop. We shared our experiences of working with historical re-enactor clothiers, whose standards of authenticity require an attention to detail so exceedingly time-consuming and laborious as to render it stressful beyond its worth in pay per hour. Here again, these economies rear their heads. Whereas it wouldn't be financially feasible to make hats to re-enactor standards in the film world, it is however the norm to make multiple copies of any given actor's costume, the same couture garment made over in various states of wear: one new, one rumpled, and one worn completely to shreds. (And the job of distressing the costumes is a whole job that belongs to someone.) Then again, I should say that I have heard that re-enactors are increasingly called upon in the film industry, for both their clothing expertise and acting. The re-enactors have done their homework, often teaching filmmakers how to tell the story accurately.
Read more...

Jane Smith, Hat Maker


Jane Smith's Studio
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
I spent this afternoon making an 1840s black bonnet under the tutelage of milliner Jane Smith.

Upon entering her studio, I was struck by the sight of several hats-in-progress befitting of Nelson and Napoleon. But I guess with the anniversary of Trafalgar, that's all people are talking about in England these days. (Just kidding, ONE of the things.)

Jane started making hats when she asked her father, who was in film production, for a part-time job. He obliged, getting her a job "at the bottom" in the costume department. What started as a spontaneous request to whip up a hat in an on-set emergency eventually evolved into a full-on business.

For over a decade Jane worked with Laura Ashley, not just the company but the woman herself, designing and making hats for collections that traveled around the world. Sarah Ferguson was an early client. Jane later opened a shop called Jane Smith Straw Hats in Battersea, employing up to twenty assistants at a time. Jane has also worked as a teacher at several colleges in the region, and did a short stint at the BBC.

However, Jane has found her most comfortable niche in the theatre and film world, where her hats have graced the heads of celebrities in countless productions, including several of the Harry Potter films, and currently, "The Davinci Code."

This picture gives you a tiny taste of Jane's workshop, choc-a-hatter's-block with as many stories as hats, including one about the tiny hat she recently made for a monkey, and pictured at right, the red-feathered hat worn by a Playboy centerfold (yes, just the hat, nothing else.)

Fellow self-described workaholics, Jane and I talked about working hard, and how we love to stay up all night. Jane was planning to do an all-nighter in order to finish some fezzes, and it looks like I have just done the same. I think I heard a bird chirping outside the window just now...
Read more...

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Phrygian Cap

Today I went to see the exhibition "Nelson and Napoleon" at the National Maritime Museum on Greenwich. There were several amazing things in the show, including N & N's bi-corn hats and the bloody uniform Nelson was killed in.

To see the most beautiful image of a real live Phrygian cap, copy and paste this link into your web browser. It really blew me away.

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conMediaFile.7986

This wool, linen, and leather cap, whose maker is unknown, was made in the late eighteenth century and was either worn by an active supporter of the French Revolution, ceremonially used to parade on a pike, or as part of the costume of a statue representing "Liberty." Accordingly to a wall text, the rioters and demonstrators of the Revolution, the "sans culottes," so-called for wearing trousers rather than breeches, were from the "lower orders" of society but included shopkeepers, skilled workers, and craftsmen.
Read more...

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Trench Art


Masonic P.O.W. Pendant
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
This is a pendant I saw at the Museum and Library of Freemasonry last week. These elaborately detailed jewels were made by French Prisoners of War during the Napoleonic wars from the early 1790s to 1815.

Although it appears to be made of much more elegant materials, it is actually comprised of found bits of metal, card, human hair, and bone.
Read more...

A Peddler Doll's Basket


A Peddler Doll's Basket
Originally uploaded by notionnanny.
This picture of a miniature peddler doll's basket has made its way to me from cousin Jo of mother Debbie of B+B curator Sarah Carrington.

Either separated from its peddler owner somewhere along the way, or a sculpture in its own right, the basket holds over 50 objects and messages, including, at center, a book called "Devotion."
Read more...