Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

JG monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

A quick post to show you a simple monogram of 2 letters which I finished off when I returned home from my stint in London. Ever so slightly entwined, these initials look bold in red which I find I have become increasingly fond of for monograms – that is when I’m not doing whitework. I embroidered simple flowers on appliquéd satin. My original idea was to outline the flowers in a fine black thread which I would also use for the french knots in the middle of the flowers. This looked too heavy however so I opted instead for a few spidery curlicues in backstitch which looked better. French knots in the flower’s centre morphed from black, through off white to red which latter I thought worked best.

JG monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

My inability to get properly organised with sewing projects when away from home makes me wonder whether there are certain character traits I’ve never really overcome. When I was a little girl, I was often taken to see my older brother play cricket or rugby on a Saturday afternoon – home and away. I was much younger than my brother and in order not to be bored, I would weigh my father down with paper and coloured pencils, jigsaw puzzles, packs of cards, a doll in a carry cot (with a change of clothes and blankets) and the odd book or two.

JG monogram: detail of flowers (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

In fact I adored the long afternoons of cricket (in particular) which I would spend meandering round the boundary chatting to other parents whose picnics I would be invited to share, rolling down the grassy slopes at the edge of the ground covering myself in sweetly smelling newly mown grass or ‘helping’ the groundsman’s wife with the players’ teas – dolloping out jam from industrial containers or struggling with teapots the size of watering cans. As a child I thoroughly disliked tea as a drink and was not much keener on jam sandwiches but somehow in a cricket pavilion on a Saturday afternoon there was nothing that tasted better.

JG monogram: detail of flowers (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

As an aside, now I think about it I’m sure my first fashion conscious moment came beside a cricket pitch (that is if you don’t count pouring through Ladybird books and scrutinising what ‘mother’ was wearing – usually variations on printed spots). Having made several circuits of the boundary rope I found myself sitting next to the Groundsman’s pretty elder daughter who, looking wonderful in a flowery dress with full skirt and petticoats, posed herself carefully, tossed her lovely fair hair and impressed me with the announcement that she was trying to look sophisticated. I was awe struck. (Slightly sadly I suspect that in my own life I have never come anywhere near to attaining such a peak of visual sophistication.)

Well, that interlude was a long way round to saying that, just as I packed for every eventuality to counter boredom as a child,  whenever I go to stay and help out in London I have a case similarly full of ‘what ifs’. I usually travel with a main sewing project, a backup and often a backup backup. And, just like my forays onto the cricket pitches of Nottinghamshire, most of my work remains untouched – except in this case for the piece that was technically finished and being returned to its owner.  You remember the feather embroidered cashmere jumper blogged about here, well perversely, I found myself itching to embroider more feathers  – and more never quite seemed enough even when the original 7 I blogged about seem to have increased to 24 (with perhaps 2 more still to do)!

JG monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

In my case, the monogram remained unfinished through indecision as to the colour of the french knots, the curtain tie backs to be embroidered lay untouched because I couldn’t get excited enough about them and  the knitting – an inset shawl collar requiring circular needles – proved to be too taxing for the novice knitter that I am. More feathers just seemed like the easiest option. I don’t think I will ever be able to let myself pack nothing that needs sewing/knitting/mending but perhaps one day I will pack just one project which I will doggedly commit to. Here’s hoping.

Apollo and Daphne fabric: designed by Duncan Grant for Alan Walton; reprinted for Laura Ashley

Four days after an extraordinary General Election which produced a surprise, if tiny, Conservative majority, normality is being restored remarkably quickly in the household of 2 political journalists where I still find myself. All expectation of inter-party negotiation behind closed doors has come to nothing and this sudden rush of single party government has produced a brief interlude of exhalation … and consequent realisation of exhaustion which often follows in rapid succession – and that’s just me! Thank you Britain for being so decisive. One small boy will now be taken to London Zoo today by his parents who will give him lots of attention (though undoubtedly still attached to their mobile phones).

Duncan Grant Apollo and Daphne fabric (Laura Ashley reprint) in a London bedroom. 2005

The fabric shown above was one of the Bloomsbury range produced by Laura Ashley in the late 1980s, although this particular design never appeared in the catalogues (and I have consulted all my early Laura Ashley catalogues from this time). Why it never appeared in ordinary stock I don’t know but in about 1988, I came upon a few bolts of the fabric in the shop with a sale price of £1.99  per metre  – surprisingly cheap even then when LA cotton was on average about £8 per metre. Without hesitation I immediately bought about 40 m which I made into generously full bedroom curtains for my then London home. Cut down from what was needed for  the 9 foot plus Victorian ceilings, they now work just as well in the vicarage. Not usually keen on patterned curtains which I find date quickly, I loved them … and love them still.

Duncan Grant Apollo and Daphne fabric (reprinted by Laura Ashley, late 1980s) in Ipsden Vicarage.

The original fabric of 1932 was designed by Duncan Grant for Alan Walton Textiles and was screen printed on either satin or cotton & rayon. Having a thoroughly late C20th sensibility I love natural fabrics and shudder at the thought of the now much reviled but then new and experimental rayon, nylon, etc. It’s also noticeable that Laura Ashley had subtly fine-tuned the colours for the current version – for an  original colour way see V&A blog here. What is not in doubt, however, is that the design was highly regarded at the time for it  won the Medal of Merit at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937.

Laura Ashley Catalogue of 1987 featuring reprinted Bloomsbury fabrics

The Bloomsbury Group were particularly fond of Greek Myths and the Apollo and Daphne story appears often in both their art and writings. The main source is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In this telling of the story, Apollo has scorned Eros for his unseemly use of his bow and arrow and, infuriated, Eros sets about revenge, shooting the innocent nymph Daphne with a leaden arrow to arouse hatred and piercing Apollo through the heart with a golden arrow to induce the deepest love.

Apollo in pursuit of Daphne (Laura Ashley fabric, a reprint of a Duncan Grant design)

Daphne is a seriously bad choice as an inamorata for she has already turned away many potential lovers and begged her father, Peneus (a river god) to allow her to remain unmarried. She prefers outdoor pursuits and loves nothing as much as wandering through her wooded homeland revelling in the wonders of the natural world. Now Daphne’s sylvan idyll is seriously under threat from the love sick Apollo who continually pursues her through the woods, dogging her footsteps but never quite catching up with so fleet-footed a nymph. Impatient Eros, viewing his bagatelle from above, interferes to effect Daphne’s capture. In utter desperation, she calls to her father to help free her, begging for drastic intervention – being swallowed up by the earth or a change of form, anything to avoid being taken by Apollo.

Daphne pursued by Apollo (Laura Ashley reprint of a Duncan Grant fabric)

Moved, Peneus initiates her transformation. Her feet falter, slow down and become rooted in the earth. Apollo, within reach of  the still visibly human form, embraces the object of his desire but he finds his hands devoid of the expected voluptuous flesh and full instead of delicate leafy branches. Apollo, still awash with uncontrollable love and desire, but now with a beloved tree and not a nymph, vows to tend the tree forever and he grants it special significance. From now on Daphne will be a tree symbolising victory and immortality, her everlastingly green leaves rewarding triumph and success. The twist in the tale is of course that in both Apollo’s and Daphne’s case their own successes are not without the bitter tang of  defeat.

Pages from 1987 Laura Ashley Catalogue showing Bloomsbury Collection

The Apollo and Daphne story had 2 powerful echoes in society  of  the 1930s. Women had only received full suffrage in the Representation of the People’s Act of 1928 and they were beginning to push for a more equal footing in other areas. There was also a growing appreciation of the natural environment after the carnage of WW1 and the economic hardships of the 1920s. The Bloomsbury Group loved myths, fables and fantasies and indeed they could be said to live an idyllic rural fantasy – a fabulous bubble which was not always what it seemed. (Yes to increasing women’s independence, yes to pacifism but yes too to servants* – where would they have been without Grace Higgens? – and yes please too to unearned income to pay the rent.)

Laura Ashley Catalogue of 1987 featuring Bloombury fabrics. (Picture shows Studio on the Talgarth Road, London)

*For more about the Bloomsbury servants, read Alison Light’s Mrs Woolf and the Servants which will make you feel much better about yourself and your inability to find time for Bloomsbury style creativity as you plan family meals, load the washing machine and sigh at the pile of ironing.)

Two Bloomsbury short stories have elements of the Apollo and Daphne myth. E.M.Forster: The Other Kingdom and David Garnett: Lady into Fox. In both stories the nature-loving heroine escapes her male tormenter as well as the disturbing aspects of modern society by returning fully to nature as a tree in the first story and as a vixen in the second. I think there may also be whiffs of similar metamorphoses later in the century in the novels of Iris Murdoch but I’m still thinking about this. Meanwhile I look at my curtains and just enjoy the design and colour and give very little thought to anything of deeper significance – oh dear superficial once again.