Quilting for men
I read this definition yesterday and found it quite funny. 'Male Quilting' was a term applied to Marquetry after labour intensive woodworking had become less in demand and relegated to folk art status. Hobbyist work was seen to have a similar relationship to quilting and stitch work.
I thought a bit about this earlier in the project, that Marquetry seems a male dominated craft. The intricacy and detail does have a lot in common with needle work though so the link made in this description makes sense. Quilting seems an obsessive hobby, requiring patience as well as creativity- much as marquetry does.
I don't know much about quilting but historically it was something that required many hours of work. Huge pieces produced by women over many years and continued through subsequent generations, all by hand.
Working delicate pieces of veneer is like working with fabric in many ways, creating joins and fusing materials together.
wood in the news
I have been enjoying the coverage of the timber washed up on the sussex shore. There are some amazing pictures of it on the net. Waves of wood which look like tiny matchsticks.
I wonder about the attention it has provoked. Would a public art installation of a similar affect have attracted the masses? Extraordinary alterations to familiar places are more acceptable or appreciated if they are accidental or natural.
Anyway, its a pretty spectacular display of wood.
Oysters
Things here are continuing with other stuff going on too.
Before Christmas I had dropped into the staffs Marquetry group to see if they had any ideas about Oysters…..Not the fishy type in shells but the Marquetry technique or effect that shares the same name. I found a definition that might clarify this a bit
‘Veneers cut across the grain of small branches of trees such as walnut, olive and laburnum, and laid decoratively. Popular circa 1700’
Basically these slices of branches can be assembled to form patterned sheets, which have an appearance similar to an oyster shell. To buy, these veneers are expensive and they often feature on antique furniture rather than being used for pictures. I like the idea of using the slices of twigs in some way and wanted to produce some of my own. I was introduced to a razor saw, a very dainty tool with many fine teeth for cutting and a thin blade, essential to attempting to cut anything to veneer thickness.
By lucky coincidence I had a couple of twigs with me and was able to produce some little oysters quite nicely. So this has given me some other things to think about. Without a lot of equipment creating sheets of veneer would be a fairly impossible task so this feels like a scaled down version, a way of working with a piece of wood from scratch.
Christmas brought this shiny looking razor saw too and a good opportunity for making use of the tree once it had done its job. I am still in the process of stretching its creative potential.
Merry Christmas
Cold and Christmas slowing things down, hope to get things in order come next year.
Drawing an Illusion
I was quite excited when I stumbled across Susan Collis’s work. She is using Marquetry in her work in a way I had been leaning towards and after my initial reaction of ‘oh that’s a bit annoying she’s done what I wanted to do’ I identify the differences in her approach as well as similarities. So I got over that and have become more interested in her work and where she is coming from.
Collis uses (amongst other things) Marquetry/ inlay techniques to create the illusion of marks on surfaces such as chairs, walls, floors. The imperfections are highlighted in things through their replication in precious materials such as gold, pearls and gem stones. So a reference to very early marquetry which was more about inlaying precious materials into wood (rather than being confined to veneer) is apparent.
Drawing seems essential to Collis’s work which is a lot about mark making. Importantly though acknowledging a sense of time and labour is something the work communicates too. Craftsmen working several centuries ago (16-1800’s) invested unbelievable amounts of time to single pieces. Working on incredibly intricate designs for extravagant furniture this kind of craftsmanship is virtually unheard of today. Collis’s subtly marked work tables, step ladders and overalls highlights the investments made to the art making process the values placed upon this and the objects themselves.
I think importantly the illusion is not created as an end in itself unlike more traditional uses of marquetry trickery, which are easy to move on from once you get the joke. There is a lot more beyond the surface of things.
Collis is showing at the V and A in a very slick looking craft exhibition.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1637_outoftheordinary/artists_detail.php?artistTag=collis
Anyway I’d cut this tea stain mark that I’ve been trying to photograph on a dry day and I got around to it at last.
