Good morning,

I hope you are excited for some links about textiles this morning! Textiles are awesome because they are a traditionally feminine craft that can be and have been subverted all over the shop for a wide range of reasons.

We start with Elizabeth Parker’s sampler, which you can go and see in the V&A. The first time I went to the V&A Saxey took me to see this, and it has haunted me ever since; a woman tells about her unhappy life and her despair in this tiny, detailed cross stitch which just stops at the point when you really want to know what happens next:

Her life then changed forever as she left home to enter service as a nurserymaid. She describes what she sees as her own weaknesses and sins, and the trials she had to face from employers who treated her 'with cruelty too horrible to mention', in this deeply personal confession of her temptation to suicide. As the text continues her desperation increases, '..which way can I turn oh whither must I flee to find the Lord wretch wretch that I am …what will become of me ah me what will become of me'.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/sampler/

Hannah Ryggen turned to tapestry because it is so much more transportable – and hence more useful in a revolution – than a painting is. She did not shy away from showing brutal murders and/or Mussolini's corpse, either. There is a show of her work on in Oxford right now, so if you want to go and see it, you can before Feb 18th! Be sure to let me know what you think, if you do:

Her turn to tapestry, and with it, her interest in craft traditions and the eccentric compositions of medieval art, was explicitly political. A tapestry was a mobile messenger: it could be nimbly rolled up, transported and displayed without sustaining damage as a painting might.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/arts/hannah-ryggen-wove-politics-into-her-gorgeous-tapestries.html

Finally, less political but no less awesome, please enjoy Mel Bartheidel’s beautiful, detailed CMYK and greyscale embroidery. There’s much more detailed and impressive work on her instagram, so I advise you to click through – but I love this test stripe:

https://www.instagram.com/studiobartheidel/

Have a lovely weekend,

Alex.