Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Arts and Crafts Gimson style rose monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Although June has not been as lovely as we would wish it, the long light evenings have been particularly pleasant and permitted prolonged embroidery sessions.

Arts and Crafts Gimson style rose monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Rain has come mainly at night and although there has not been enough to satisfy the farmers, the crops are beginning to look impressive to the naive, i.e. me and the vicar. Barley, the first major crop to be harvested, is starting to show hints of gold in its ghostly quivering while grey-green wheat is looking very formal, stiff and ram rod straight.

Originality & Initiative: Mary Greensted & Sophia Wilson (Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, 2003)

But the poppies…oh the poppies have burst into unrestrained life and within a single day a field of rather cabbagy looking vegetation has turned into a a cloud of mauve-white flower heads. For a very short time – probably not much more than a week – they will continue being breathtakingly beautiful and looking utterly exotic. The oil seed rape, now quite tall and airy-fairy looks very understated in comparison with the other crops.

Sketch by W.R.Lethaby (from Originality & Initiative: Mary Greensted & Sophia Wilson (Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, 2003)

In the hedgerows and along field borders, wild cherries are showing visibly red fruit which I’ve never noticed before as they’re usually stripped by birds immediately on ripening (too few birds or lots of cherries ? – I hope and think the latter).  It seems also to have been a very good year for blossoms and flowering plants in general – my white cistus (Cistus purpureus with panda eyes) has never been so happy. And it’s happy for me too as I really like this sort of June, not too hot, not too wet, not too windy, the days long and the countryside in a state of gentle flux. I look up from embroidery and relax my eyes on green fields stretching away to the horizon and blue skies. An English bliss – understated and not too extreme.

Good Citizen’s Furniture: A.Carruthers & M.Greensted (Cheltenham ArtGallery and Museum, 1994)

The first of the two baptism monograms to be given as presents in early July is now finished.  The embroidery was inspired by an Ernest Gimson design for an inlaid cabinet which appears on the cover of a book recording items in the Arts and Crafts archive collection held by Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.  Sketches and drawings not often on display are detailed in the book and Gimson’s designs – inlaid wood and metalwork in particular – are a rich source of inspiration as they can easily be adapted for little embroideries.

Simplicity & Splendour: A.Carruthers & M.Greensted (Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, 1999)

The Arts and Crafts collection at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum is a designated collection of national importance and a wonderful showcase for the many brilliant craftsmen (and some women, like the textile printers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher) who lived and worked in the Cotswold villages above the town. My husband was director of the museum in the early 1970s (for about 8 years) and his first appointment was Mary Comino (after marriage, Mary Greensted) whose book cover inspired my embroidery. She has been the author/co-author of other books highlighting different aspects of Cheltenham’s collection, most notably Gimson and the Barnsley ‘Wonderful furniture of a commonplace kind’* (as Mary Comino), Good Citizen’s Furniture, Simplicity and Splendour (the decorative arts – jewellery, ceramics, textiles, glass, leather and plasterwork ) and Originality and Initiative (detailing the archive of printed material). All wonderful books to have in the bookshelf, close to hand for inspiration when creativity is flagging.

The Arts & Crafts Movement in Great Britain: Mary Greensted (Shire, 2010)

*This is the young Gimson’s description of the work of his friend William Lethaby exhibited in the 1890 Arts and Crafts Exhibition, but it can equally be used to describe his own work and that of the two Barnsley brothers. There’s something so deeply satisfying in such a description – as is also the case with the notion of  ‘good citizen’s furniture’ (with a hint of ambiguity).

Arts & Craft Gimson style rose monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the handmade – or even hand finished – were to make a massive come back in the creative life of this country? The Chinese weren’t keen on Spode made in China and wanted  ‘Made in England’ stamped on the bottom. Similarly with Burbery. Wonderful Emma Bridgewater has reversed a tidal exit and moved INTO the Potteries and in the process is bringing joy and work to local people who probably thought they would never put glaze to pottery again. There must be a message for us in this. Let’s all go for buying fewer things of better quality. (Dearest children, I mean you too.)

Opium poppies, Ipsden (23 June 2015)

Do go to Cheltenham and visit the museum, but please note, it has now somewhat bizarrely been renamed ‘The Wilson’ after artist-scientist Edward Wilson, a local hero who travelled with Scott on that ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic. Well done Edward and all that but why oh why would the powers that be rename something with such an off at a tangent name when the institution already had the perfect name??

Arts & Craft Gimson style rose monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addsion)

For more about opium poppies see here & here (half-way through my post on harvest if you want to know about it as cash crop).

Linen tie back: detail of rose embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

The sitting room in the Vicarage has a very wide set of patio doors, recently replaced but nevertheless still of the patio door variety rather than the latest multi-folding, disappearing out of sight and move at the whisper of a fingertip, state of the art version. Our cat has not mastered her distrust of the cat flap in the utility room so we often leave the patio door open for her to come and go at will. Each time she comes in she brushes against the cream cotton curtains and being a cat who frequents the field beyond the garden she regularly leaves a muddy smear and wisps of black fur. I thought, “enough of this, I need tiebacks”.

Linen tie back: detail of honeysuckle embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

I immediately cut out the tie backs, along with wadding and backing and tacked all the layers together. I could have bound the edges there and then and had them up and functioning in no time but, no, I had in mind that I wanted to do a bit of chunky wool embroidery. That was three years ago. Since then they have languished in a chest of drawers purposeless.

Linen tie back: detail of rose embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

It can be very elemental here on the edge of the Chilterns and this summer it has been particularly blustery in our back garden – wind channels unpredictably up the dips in the bosomy chalk and sometimes it can be so noisy you can’t make yourself heard outside to someone standing next to you (at other times it’s still to the point of unreality, no rustle of leaves from the sentinel beeches, no billowing waves in the feathery barley, and even no helicopters on exercise from RAF Benson – quite perfect and paradisical). But when the wind blows through the even slightly open door it sets the curtains ballooning and on a mission to wrap themselves round anything nearby – often the cat. It has been particularly blowy this summer. I can bear it no longer.

Linen tie back: detail of honeysuckle embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

A small job I thought.

Linen tie back: detail of rose embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

My first mistake was that the wadding + two layers of linen proved to be almost impenetrable to the needle – albeit the longest, strongest with the biggest eye that I could find. I think it was the fault of the 2 layers of rather slubby linen as I’ve quilted whole quilts with this wadding with no problems. I persevered and managed to finish embroidering one tie back – at the cost of a bruised thumb, incipient tendonitis in the same thumb, craters and callouses on the index and middle finger of my sewing hand, not to mention general arthritic aches and pains beyond what I normally experience. (I just can’t get on with a thimble although I do often used some of those little sticky finger pads which are brilliant- if  only I had remembered these before being nearly finished.)

Linen tie back: detail of rose embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

I had, however, successfully completed one tie back and was in some danger of getting slightly pleased with myself, especially as I had used up in the process various old hanks of tapestry wool, some of which it is true had no label – and there the sharp witted reader might have noted the advance of problem number 2. The tie back looked fine indoors, both in day light and in artificial light, but when I took it outside to photograph I was thoroughly irritated (actually a bit more than irritated) to discover some embroidery was a very different colour (see picture immediately below this paragraph – I almost can’t bear to include it on this post as it so offends me but in the interest of getting you to share my amazement I feel I must).

Linen tie back: detail of embroidery showing the wrong shade tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Having no more of the main wool I’d used left, I set to searching for its match online. And wouldn’t you know it, the wool I was using, Anchor Tapisserie Wool 0402, had undergone a renaissance, ditching the french to become Tapestry wool and in the process getting a completely different set of shade numbers?

Linen tie back: detail of honeysuckle embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

In fact – from here on – it wasn’t too dreadful.  I found an online conversion chart showing 0402 was now 8004 and I promptly put in an order; two days later a packet of 10 new skeins of perfect match arrived. Phew. Relief. Undoing the wrong wool took very little time and as the gargantuan needle holes were still clearly visible and offered an unimpeded passage through the fabric restitching was done in half an hour. My fingers have healed but I have yet to summon up the energy to embroider the second tie back which notwithstanding its unfinished state (bound edges but not embroidered) is nevertheless doing the job it was intended for and holds back the second curtain.

Linen tie back: embroidered in tapestry wool (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Enough of wrestling with incalcitrant materials, I’m about to settle down to a couple of gentle monograms for a double christening of cousins in early July – fine linen, skeined cotton, maybe one in delicate colours and the other black on white. Happy undamaged fingers will be nice too.