Lines in the Landscape - the story behind the East Anglian quintet of blankets
For over twenty years I have had this little quote by John Clare stuck up by my desk. It’s travelled with me from studio to studio, getting increasingly tattered and tea-stained. It feels more profound now than ever, and very relevant to this new collection. In many ways I feel that my patterns too are found out in the fields…
This newest collection of blankets is perhaps also my most personal one. It plies several strands of interest together, grounded as it is in place, history, vernacular architecture and the timeless rhythms of walking through an agricultural landscape. I’ve called this my ‘East Anglian Quintet’ – rooted in the landscapes of Essex and Suffolk.
Excuse my very amateur photoshop skills – dusted off from many moons ago…
…here you see the Quintet of places that lie behind the East Anglian Collection – Blythborough, Walberswick, Coggeshall, Thaxted and Finchingfield.
For me, these are places with resonance. We often walk in John Nash’s footsteps through what he jokingly called the ‘Essex Highlands’ along the River Stour which forms the boarder between Essex and Suffolk – just north-east of Coggeshall. A little further north and west from here, headed for Saffron Walden, you reach Thaxted and Finchingfield – ancient places which found themselves on the fringes of the early 20th century artistic community of Great Bardfield, and now, rather less romantically, hunker down under the Stansted flightpath. Travel the other way - further south and east and you’ll come to estuarial Essex – the wide mud-flats of the Blackwater dotted with the rusty sails of old Thames barges. Cross the Blackwater and you reach the Dengie peninsula – an ancient area where wind turbines stand alongside the ghosts of Roman ruins. If you travel further up the coast – beyond the port of Harwich you reach the joys of the Suffolk coast - and the villages of Walberswick and neaby Blythburgh.
Each design draws on specific place – a point on our well-worn OS landranger maps.
The palette is drawn from the colours of vernacular architecture – chalk, straw, plaster pink, rust, walnut, charred black – the weathered and timeless colours of limewash and tarred timber with an occasional flash of baler-twine blue. An oatmeal warp runs through the whole collection softening all the hues.
The patterns are large scale and dynamic, but the weathered softness of the palette brings a quiet calm to the pieces. There is a knowing nod to age old vernacular traditions of patch or pieced work and quilting.
Through the whole collection is the repeated motif of gentle score lines. These are woven into the structure of the cloth, adding a subtle ribbed feel to the surface – echoing lines in the landscape – ancient ridge and furrow patterns, ploughing lines and crop rows.
To browse the new collection in the online store please see here.