Frayed Again

Here are two more pieces from the Frayed exhibition currently on at the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth (see my last post for links).  Again I have included pictures of the information boards.  I went to the exhibition with my friend Ros and she is trying to arrange a visit to the museum for Norfolk quilters which will include a talk by the exhibition curator, Ruth Battersby Tooke.
Ros also forwarded a pdf from the V&A museum about the Elizabeth Parker sampler (previous post) which you can read here:  sampler
and reminded me about the exhibition blog which will continue to be updated:  blog

The exhibit which affected me the most were the Lorina Bulwer embroidered letters.  I have spent several sleepless nights composing and "stitching" letters and am inspired, as several others have been, including textile artist, Sara Impey:

to embroider a letter.  Fortunately, my subjects would not be as distressing as Lorina's.

Frayed - an extraordinary textile exhibition

Yesterday I visited a textile exhibition in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.  I didn't know what to expect as I hadn't read any "blurb", in fact, from the title, "Frayed" I suppose I was expecting some modern textile art pieces!

The exhibition is in the Time and Tide Museum, an amazing building that, in Victorian times, was a herring curing works.  All the textiles on display had been thoroughly researched and so I photographed the information boards.  I hope you can read them.  There were also files of additional information available to read, if the museum/curator had published a book I think they would have sold many copies.

All the textiles were related to lives damaged in some way, through bereavement, poverty, criminality, mental illness...  I think we all know how therapeutic stitching and working with textiles can be, this exhibition reinforced that it has always been so.

Sorry that I have no close-up of the patchwork and broderie perse in these bed hangings, I set an alarm off just getting this photograph!

I did take a picture of the space above the bed in the exhibition though, this is where the fish would have been hanging to cure.
Hanging alongside each other were contemporary pieces by prisoners in the Fine Cell Work scheme and a quilt made by the female inmates of Newgate Prison in 1817 under the direction of Elizabeth Fry.

The exhibition was rather emotionally draining and so I shall spread it over a couple of posts and finish for today with this sampler in cross stitch:

The exhibition continues until March 2014, I urge you to see it if you are in Norfolk and also recommend the curator's blog for lots more information.