Back to the Beginning
Kirklees Council, through their museums manager, have acquired a piece of my work!
Hudderfield Town Centre is undergoing a £210 million regeneration project known as: ”Our Cultural Heart”. The former four-storey Grade II listed Central Library will be transformed into a flagship museum and art gallery opening in 2029.
My rug has been accepted as part of The Kirklees Collection and will, I’m told, help to tell the amazing story of wool and the textile industry in Huddersfield; the very reason I chose to study Textile Design there, in the 1980’s.
The rug was hand-tufted in 1986 for my final show at what was then Huddersfield Polytechnic. It was one of three rugs that sat alongside printed textiles.
The designs were influenced by photographs I took of carnival dancers at the Plantation Restaurant in Barbados, sadly no longer around.
From these photographs I painted, sketched, collaged paper, made felts, and regrouped all the work until, eventually, my final designs appeared and were ready to be ‘painted’ with wool. In those days, Professor Tim Moscovitch was at the helm, a man known for his bright shirts and matching personality!
It was a delicious experience. Very physical. I used a Hoffman tufting gun and mainly 16mm wool cut and loop pile. The rugs were trimmed by hand, the backing was hand-stitched, and blisters treated!
What I find amazing, given it was a very long time ago, is the memory is still so fresh: the sounds, the smell, everything. I would do it all over again, in a heart-beat, and believe it or not, I am still painting dancers! Perhaps it’s time to revisit rugs as well?
More amazing still, is that dancers still influence my work. Even when the subject mater isn’t that of flowing skirts, the vibrancy and colour still comes through. One thing is for sure I might be getting older but the core of what inspires me still remains.
I would love to find some of the rugs commissioned by Arthur Sanderson’s and Sons Ltd, Tots TV and many individuals along the way. I would like to think like, the rug pictured they are still going strong.
And it’s lovely that a piece of work that represents very much part of the ‘young’ me; that has travelled around the world with me for the last 40 years; that was inspired by my home country of Barbados but ‘forged’ at my alma mater, and where there are echoes of dance and movement in the work I produce today, gets to be exhibited to help tell a much bigger story. Exciting.