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There is a field in Rodmell that has a diagonal pathway running through it, connecting the village to Northease Manor School and Lewes. I drew a quick sketch of the view one evening, standing in this right-of-way path, but looking in the opposite direction, towards the south-east and Peacehaven Cliffs. I thought of Virginia Woolf and her epic walks across the Southdowns many years ago and felt inspired to make an abstracted landscape piece in canvas-work using Appleton’s British Crewel and Tapestry wool.
In making this work I honour the hours spent by Ethel Isabel McNeil, turning drawings made by her son Duncan Grant and his close friend, Vanessa Bell, into needlework. Ethel used seven basic needlework stitches. I use more complex stitches and mix them to add texture, contemporising the technique.
Melinda Coss's book Bloomsbury Needlepoint is my primary source of reference for Charleston’s domestic needlework, and I quote Angelica Garnett’s foreword to this book:
“Occasionally, Ethel Grant, Duncan’s mother – who worked so many of their designs – came to stay at Charleston, bringing with her a cloth hold - all containing embroidery wool in finely graded colours, and the piece of work in progress. It was always known as her cross-stitch, regardless of a more exact term, and the different wools or stitches she used were chosen to reflect the feeling of the design, and for no other reason. This was done in consultation with Vanessa and Duncan, who themselves had only the most elementary idea of embroidery stitches and were often appreciative of Mrs. Grant’s inspiration.”
In a recent exchange with the academic Maggie Humm, she mentioned that Woolf was a “good embroiderer”, and offered this quote from The Years, “night after night her embroidery served to weave the after-dinner talk into a pleasant harmony”, and later, “embroidery … was the very climax of all that was brilliant and exotic.” For me, embroidery offers little in the way of pleasantry, rather my tool for dissent.