Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.153, 26 March 2023
Our Afternoon Fellowship is blessed to have gifted local people taking time and care to generously share their interests and crafts with us each month. This week Pippa Foulds described to us her journey from having been a lawyer to now being an active member of the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), teaching and undertaking commissions of all kinds in many places, worldwide.
Pippa works with Durham Cathedral Broderers, and was appointed Head Broderer at York Minster in 2018. She showed us examples from a number of private commissions, commercial, ecclesiastical and conservation, and described in detail her restoration of the white altar frontal at Austwick Church (which will next be on display on Easter Day). Starting by taking a pair of scissors to vintage (if threadbare) silk, to crop out the needlework designs to be restored (onto new silk), must require quite some nerve. The meticulous work of creating, or re-creating, detailed shapes and forms clearly requires a steady hand and keen eye.
Pippa also showed us her work on one of the pictorial panels on ‘The Magna Carta, An Embroidery’ for artist Cornelia Parker, on ‘The Hardhome Embroidery’ for HBOs Game of Thrones, and of her project for RSN at Burberry’s Makers House, among exhibitors described as "some of Britain’s most exciting creators, (showing) the innovation and inspiration behind their work.”
The image above, of a recent piece, shows how Pippa’s interests in embroidery are now embracing more experimental forms. I found myself reflecting on how this mirrored Jilly Hazeldine’s presentation to the Fellowship in January, where she described a similar ‘journey’ which she is making from conventional, into increasingly abstract, styles of lettering, as demonstrated by the image above.
“With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling / We shall not cease from exploration,” wrote T.S. Eliot in Little Gidding. Eliot was describing the progress through life of an engaged Christian faith, but his words might equally express something which artists and craftspeople who love their work also find to be true, and which we may each find true with whatever it is we’re passionate about. If we love something in that deep way, then every hour we spend with it is a time of ever more satisfying discovery.
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