Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Book of Kells style A (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Having been in T shirt embellishing mode recently, I recklessly thought it was time I did something for my son. When I first suggested the idea he looked a bit hesitant but perked up when I started talking of an initial in the style of the Book of Kells, whose strongly entwined patterns I know he likes. Now I’ve finished the T shirt I think the yellow and red are a bit bright –  my supply of jersey for appliqué is limited.  I have a feeling that after I show it to him next week when I go to London, I may well end up soaking it in a bath of warm tea which is always a good way to take the edge off the colours. If that fails, we shall just have to write it off to experience and he can use it for house painting, gardening, climbing mountains, etc. What is life without a bit of experimentation even if it doesn’t quite work?

T shirt with Book of Kells style A (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

For the last of my husband’s latest art appreciation sessions which focused on looking at paintings of people at work, we were a small, select group of about 8 (not including Chapel Arts staff, at least one of whom draws up his chair to look and listen). Coming straight after a Bank Holiday people were away doing other things which is to be expected. However, sometimes being part of a smaller group enables people to open up and join in with their own experiences, which are often eye openingly interesting or at the very least informative – one man explained the complexities of water management as we looked at a Constable Stour valley painting while on another occasion a depiction of the annual Rushcart festival at Saddleworth Church in 1828 caused a bit of a Morris-dancing-on-the-green sort of titter – rightfully silenced when someone pointed out that she’d lived in that village and that moreover, the rush festival – still celebrated – was as important a date on the calendar as the harvest festival. Architects and engineers are always useful in the audience, although sometimes the brave soul who says they haven’t a clue as to what a painting is about  can be the very best person to have around. Last week paintings of factory work during the second World War initiated a conversation about how women had enjoyed some of the most physical of factory work while men were away fighting. One woman’s mother had worked in a munitions factory, while another woman’s grandmother had worked as a welder and really enjoyed it  – for a while we were all very Foyle’s War. It was interesting though that two out of eight of those present had direct knowledge from relatives with such experience – we are after all 70 + years on from WWII.

April has in the main been unusually dry but crossing Montpellier Gardens after rain one day our noses were greeted by that most lovely of smells – no not cut grass after lawn mowing, although that’s pretty glorious, but the scent of rain on earth that has been dry for just that bit too long. And what is even more wonderful is that I’ve just discovered this sublime fragrance has a lovely name – petrichor (from the Greek ‘petra’ meaning stone and ‘ichor’ which is the word for the ethereal blood of the gods). The word dates back to just 1964 when Australian scientists isolated the chemicals involved. Petrichor refers to both the scent and its chemical components, the most important of which is something called geosmin, the product of Streptomyces bacteria living in the soil. Also contributing to the smell  are oils produced in plants’ roots which act to put a stop to growth and seed germination during dry spells. When a rain drop hits the dry earth, minute air bubbles capture the smell as  they bounce off and upwards to passing nostrils and so give the human owners the familiar feeling of earthy wellbeing.  Mmmmmm. Our neighbours’ mauve wisteria has rushed out with the sun this last week, so I’m hoping for only gentle falls of rain for the time being. It’s a wonderful time for a week in London as I shall catch another wisteria, this time white, which generously cascades more on our side than theirs. Oh, don’t you love spring!

Black T shirt with rose embroidered sleeve (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Now I have a bee in my bonnet about embroidering T shirts for myself, there seems to be no stopping me and I have pagefulls of ideas for future sleeves. Embroidery on the sleeves greatly appeals as the effect is peripheral and draws attention to the hands which I find infinitely fascinating the older and more gnarled they get  – and as you can see mine are definitely gnarled. Commercially I can see the embroidered sleeve would be a no-hoper as most of the time you never get to see more than half of the sewer’s hard work, but I think that’s partly what appeals to me. (Of course you could stop the design half way round the sleeve, but that seems miserly – an idea which I’m sure is related to our sewing teacher at secondary school who demanded the inside of a garment to be as beautifully finished as the outside. You think you rebel against these ideas, but then a lifetime later you realise you never did!)

Black T shirt with rose embroidered sleeve (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Anyway, this week it’s a trio of roses to go up the sleeve, rather than around as I did before. I have an ongoing battle with embroidering roses which I realise comes down to needing to be much less neat and precise with my stitches and not keeping to firm lines for the appearance of petals – another thing to blame on school days, as I now wince to see my grandchildren keeping their colouring within the lines and long to see them pushing colour over those thick black barriers. (I know, I know, it’s  done as an exercise in motor control but how often is one of the unintended consequences an inhibition on free flowing drawing and exuberant use of colour?)

Black T shirt with rose embroidered sleeve (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

This week my husband’s art appreciation talks focused on the way work is depicted. One of the paintings we looked at, The Semptress (1844), by Richard Redgrave shows a young woman in the dim light of a candle wearing what looks like quite a lovely gown (but the light is very dim). Her puffy red eyes are raised in brief respite from her work, her hands are momentarily idle over her sewing; there is just the one candle to work by. It’s the middle of the night and she is obviously working hard to a deadline – through the window houses opposite have lighted windows, suggesting she’s not the only one with a job to be finished. While the painter was not known to be one given to depicting social realism it seems highly likely that he was responding to the poem, the Song of the Shirt,  by Thomas Hood in Punch (published anonymously) for the Christmas edition the previous year, 1843. (Click on the link for the full poem.)

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread-

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch

She sang the “Song of the Shirt”.

The Sempstress 1846 Richard Redgrave 1804-1888 Presented by John Schaeffer 2014 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T14166

Hood wrote the poem about a real woman, Mrs Biddell, a widow with hungry children, who earned what little money she could sewing shirts and trousers in her own poor garret. Her employer provided the materials but she was made to hand over £2 for them, presumably to ensure she didn’t sell the valuable materials herself. In fact so wretched was her situation that she once she had made the clothes, she pawned them. Indebted to her employer, she was sent to the workhouse. We know no more of what happened to her and her family  but the poem highlighted such desperate plights and became important to the cause of those trying to improve the abysmal conditions of England’s working poor.

In the latter half of the C19th magazines like The Graphic became heavily involved in issues of social justice and would themselves commission paintings from eminent artists to flesh out aspects of contemporary life in need of social reformation. Painters for whom  The Graphic was patron include Luke Fildes :Houseless and Hungry (1869),  Herbert von Herkommer: On Strike (1891) and Helen Allingham, who was also commissioned to do 12 illustrations for Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ by The Cornhill Magazine. (Vincent van Gogh  studied English illustrated journals and it’s fascinating to know her work in particular was said to have influenced him.) Writing for The Graphic at this time were George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Anthony Trollope.

If I were to sit up half the night to sew it’s because I want to. Rarely do I do that anymore as I find even good artificial lighting a trial. I am picky enough to prefer only daylight and lead a comfortable enough life to be able to do what I prefer. Lucky me. Poor Mrs Biddell.