Julie Arkell
Julie Arkell
ISBN 978-1-905865-67-3
Julie Arkell away
overleaf a slight flight dearie
contents 9 Foreword Philip Hughes 13 A creative life Sara Roberts 27 The order of things Jane Audas 53 Away Julie Arkell 61 Biography 62 Acknowledgements
some do not like to go away no no! not even for a day are you out at away today?
left come here little bird, don’t fly away. make a nest with me
foreword In 2004 Julie Arkell’s exhibition Home opened at Ruthin Craft Centre, it was a phenomenal success. It toured extensively and we reprinted the book ‘Home’ three times. Ten years on in 2014 it is with excitement and trepidation that we await the launch of a new tour-de-force by Julie – the exhibition Away. Home was about the ephemera of the everyday seen through a culture of thrift; make do and mend. Away sees many changes – Julie has an ‘Away’ studio as well as her workspace at home. As Julie notes ‘I love seeing everyday life from away. The anxiety before going away is a different story … However; once the front door closes behind me … new discoveries beckon. Being away frees my mind.’ For the main body of this exhibition Julie Arkell made 100 ‘creatures’, one-a-week over a period of almost two years and put them away in her ‘Away’ studio. Jane Audas’ insightful essay ‘The order of things’ tells the tale of Julie Arkell’s exhibition and posits that it ‘is one of order, regime and classification. It won’t look that way, of course. It will look as magical and spry as ever her work does!’
Sara Roberts wrote on Julie in the book produced alongside Home and revisited her for Away, she notes that ‘the idea of a creative life informs her artistic output and every action. Her practice revolves around the ‘embedded history of the found’ [that] she treasures old stuff, collecting it first, using it in her work later. Each fragment brings history, past usage, cultural reference.’ In Home I wrote about the wonderful ironmongers Bunners’ in Montgomery and Selvedge editor, Polly Leonard lamented on the demise of the haberdasher. Julie through her work, exhibitions and workshops has highlighted the importance of shops of this nature and now with ‘niche marketing’ and the buzz of the internet the tide may be turning for small specialist shops, Bunners still flourishes. Thanks to Jane Audas, Sara Roberts, Mary La Trobe-Bateman, designer Lisa Rostron, photographer Dewi Tannatt Lloyd, Gregory Parsons and Douglas Bevans. But most of all Julie Arkell herself for continuing to delight us with her work.
Philip Hughes Director, Ruthin Craft Centre
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a creative life Julie Arkell is accepting of change of a certain kind: of the way objects evolve through age and use, sustained wear and the ravages of sunlight, abrasion and moths. She dresses in an old tailored man’s jacket, her father’s – he was of slight build – which she has repeatedly darned and embellished, darted and edged, to turn it into a gorgeously decorated, pre-loved and highly feminine garment. Its every patch is a story, one laid on another. The fabric is washed soft, and the garment is moulded to her and her lifestyle. The idea of a creative life informs her artistic output and every action. Her practice revolves around the ‘embedded history of the found’;1 she treasures old stuff, collecting it first, using it in her work later. Each fragment brings history, past usage, cultural reference. The human figure is not part of her maker’s repertoire. She finds she can say things with animals she cannot say with humans, commenting on human existence with a light touch. The characters she made previously were rabbits, or round-eared mouse-like creatures which had benevolent or blank expressions, dolls with round, bright appealing eyes, large heads on slender bodies signalling their origins in childhood. Now the crows have arrived. While not in any way threatening, the crows’ pinprick eyes sit within darker grey faces modelled with paint, rouged with warm pinks. Their proportions are more like those of birds, not other animals or humans. But these crows have something of traditional Welsh women about them, with their stovepipe hats and the sombre melancholy plaids of their costumes, their layering feather-like and somewhat funereal.
1. James, S., Jones-Williams, L., (2014) Dark Tales, Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, http://issuu.com/lgac/docs/darktales4, accessed 28 July 2014
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left father’s jacket previous page home landing / home studio
rags wool keys pegs scraps and beads. things you find to use
at home with the flock
Julie speaks movingly of ‘knitting herself out of grief’ following the death of her mother in 2011. It is characteristic that she should turn to the intensity of domestic-level activity to resolve the complexity of emotions and practical issues arising from this life-changing loss. Even while spending the last weeks at her mother’s side, she produced a huge quantity of knitted ladders, and following the loss of her mother she knitted complex shawls – the kind of thing previously her mother would have made for her, and she didn’t know she had it in her to produce – to show her mother what she was capable of. She says work has always been a comfort to her. She values using her fingers and sustained craft practice to ‘work something out’, both emotionally and physically. Having previously dressed in bright peasant patterns, layered handmade and hand-finished textiles collected over many years of making, travel and thrift-shop gleaning, she found her appetite for brights suddenly inappropriate. I have never heard someone speak so lucidly about the rightness of mourning costume. She cleared out her wardrobe, giving away precious dresses, dyeing others dark blues and greys, firmly believing that this was a permanent transition and she would never wish to wear her old styles again. Now, with the healing passage of time, she regrets the loss of these garments. She is ready to reinvent her public persona and resume some of her previous mode of living, but with a new appreciation of life’s darker tones. In an entry from her ‘diary’ of characters, made one-a-week for one hundred weeks, each with a three-dimensional figure and a short text, No. 87, week 17, she writes: “I’ll get cross if you say I look sweet. How I feel if my rabbit creatures get called sweet: they have elements of sweetness in them, but it is not their whole story.” This is a cumulative reaction to misunderstanding of her work as nostalgic and enchanting, a fundamental over-emphasis of her softer side in the way that much of her earlier work has been emulated by other artists and amateurs, and she seeks something even more personal, grittier, which is harder to copy.
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left living room
above home studio right hallway
Her sense of the absurd is well-developed, fuelled by some of her consistent collecting and quirkier finds, like What the Horse Wore, her collection of images of horses wearing, variously, pantaloons and ear-warmers, from different cultures and for different functions, protection and insulation. Her work contains persistent references to art history and powerful historical images. The costumes and demeanour of her crows, for instance, are influenced directly by August Sander’s 1914 photograph, Young Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Westerwald in which the figures, dressed in smart but sombre black, look directly to camera, their arrangement graphic. Other influences are the highly individual approaches to representation of painters Winifred Nicholson and Rose Wylie; the quiet arrangements of Giorgio Morandi, and the fact that he sustained a lifetime of practice with the same small group of objects. Her interest in the power of naïve and children’s drawings is also manifest in a sustained interest in the work of the COBRA movement in Europe around 1950, particularly the graphic works of Karel Appel and Asger Jorn, and a little-known aspect of Paul Klee’s output, the extraordinary collection of puppets he made for entertaining his own children. These appeal through their simplicity and graphic boldness, with minimal costume and papier-mâché features to suggest characters in a narrative.
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in a quiet space of time it happened… the journey began… on the way to a dance…
She recognises the value of diligent sketchbook-use to capture moments: small observational ink drawings; a written record of phrases overheard or read which will later be incorporated into her work; scraps of fabric and paper ephemera, not assembled for direct public consumption. Her Holiday Journals, on the other hand, are more self-consciously designed layouts of places and exhibitions visited, food eaten, documented with tickets and drawings. Each spread is a beautifully considered presentation of a time and a place and a mood captured. Diary text is layered in colour and artfully delivered. Julie and her husband Douglas set aside time every day they are on holiday to work on their respective journals, and the question of whether the journals record the trip or the trip is the pretext for the journals remains debatable. Julie likes entertaining people, making them laugh, an element of performance in the way she has chosen to live and dress, a holistic approach to the material and the behavioural which governs every piece of writing, and even how she presents food in her home. She makes work to comfort herself in the first instance, and then puts it out there in the world to spread a wider sense of wellbeing. This is not a response to a particular threat, but the creation of an unthreatening and unthreatened world. She pursues the idea of comfort through words as well as objects; she writes ‘comfort lists’ in her sketchbooks, which act like concrete poetry. The written phrases she uses in her work are not slogans in the manner of words found on, say, a contemporary t-shirt. They enrich the characters they are on, and cause a quizzical acknowledgement of gentle humour. There is nothing of the cautionary tale; these are not moral messages. They sit alongside sculpted heads and feet, tiny hands and torsos, further animating them, and giving them something to say.
Sara Roberts
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left comfort lists
the comfort of wool
the order of things The tale of Julie Arkell’s exhibition – the Away that follows Home of 10 years ago – is one of order, regime and classification. It won’t look that way, of course. It will look as magical and spry as ever her work does. Yet behind the whole was a self-imposed making process that kept her going through mourning the death of her mother (which happened at the end of 2011) and manifested the cycles of grief Arkell experienced, in real and tangible form. For the main body of this exhibition Arkell made 100 ‘creatures’, one a week. They were finished, just, in July 2014 ready for the exhibition. From the first creature, a small timid thing, to the last creature – more robust and opinionated, striding off – they make a fabulous narrative set. Arkell knew she would make 100 from the start. She has a thing for numbers and the number 100 seemed just right. It would provide a full stop in good time for the exhibition, too. Taken one by one, each creature has a story. Not only did Arkell write the stories down, in most cases she wrote them down twice. She had a uber-notebook, with a list of the dates each piece was made and the ‘note’ that would accompany it. Some notes were embroidered on to the creatures, some written in pencil (always pencil) on an accompanying scrap of paper.
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left owl’s wool makes a lovely summer bonnet above the ‘putting things away’ book
The first entry in this notebook reads: Beginning in September 2012, the 36th week of the year, I decided to try and make something each week and put it away. I would attach a note to it, maybe expanding on the words behind the piece. At the same time I would copy these notes into this book, enabling me to remember the ‘put away’ things. Philip Hughes, Director of Ruthin, had asked Julie to consider an anniversary exhibition, to celebrate the 10 years since Home was shown in Ruthin in 2004. He suggested it might be called Away. ‘I thought if I start making a piece each week and call it ‘Putting Things Away’ this would be a way in to the project’ remembers Julie. And give or take a few holiday weeks (for which she sometimes made a piece early) Arkell stuck to her plan. The creatures went in to their cardboard boxes, one by one, layered with tissue paper blankets, to sleep until preparations for the exhibition meant they needed to be unpacked and take their first bows for the camera.
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left raven girl above the ‘putting things away’ book
above the last away (detail) right the perfect disguise
The 100 creatures undoubtedly make a set. Away, for Arkell, was about the loss of her mother, about going away, packing, suitcases, holiday journals describing being away, postcards, putting things away. She used the word as a thing to play with, to be inspired by, as a starting point. And all of these inspirations are present somewhere in the final 100 creatures and their notes. Like all of Arkell’s pieces the creatures work on a most immediate level of small, cute and accessible. But they also work on a deeper, more messaged level, one that repays close observation. That is when the darkness, humour and pathos of her work seeps out. The making process she mapped out for these 100 creatures (and stuck to over a hundred weeks) means that, unplanned, the resulting pieces have ended up something of an aide-mÊmoire to the journey of grieving for her mother. On the surface these creatures are exactly the sort of work we have come to expect from Arkell. But step a little closer and consider the parts that make the whole, then step back to see the whole laid out in this exhibition for your consideration. 100, it is certain, was indeed the magic number.
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above the impatient pram (detail) right full of crowness overleaf home studio
It is incredibly moving to be able to see a maker’s heart exposed in a work – for a ‘work’ is what 100 creatures form when seen together. In some ways it seems this 100 should be kept together; holding metaphorical hands, joined forever in their diversity, adversity, patchwork, confusion, found accoutrement, sameness and difference. A visual mapping of all those weeks of Arkell’s life. Anthropomorphising inanimate craft works is something that makes many a craft naysayer uncomfortable. But for the rest of us, glimpsing human-like life, emotion or personality in a piece is a thing we treasure. It pulls us toward a piece. Arkell’s work involves, and always has done, the human experience as conveyed through somewhat humanistic doll figures. Her pieces are formed, each and every one, by something Arkell is thinking about or feeling, reading about or inspired by. This is the ‘makers touch’ that is so intrinsic to craft. It’s just that with 100 creatures, and writ large, the touches of Arkell’s experiences that we’re privy to are a bit, well, unbearably touching.
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No 1. Week 36 (September 2012) old reds blues stained white and brown All my favourite colours at the moment. This was the first of 100 creatures made and packed away. Arkell said: “I find in summer I always want to wear blues and whites and reds more. I am very ‘change with the seasons’ in what colours I wear.”
No 5. Week 40 this time last year‌ A very poignant week for me, my mothers birthday, the first without her here.
No 9. Week 44 i don’t want to write to an Elk Something Douglas said that made me laugh. Clocks go back, thoughts turn to winter nights and reindeer. About a person (not an animal) called Elk. But then this person is turned in to an animal.
No 10. Week 45 a circumstance Don’t know where this came from, covered an old box of my mothers as a ‘home’. A secretive creature that looks somewhat surprised to see the light when you open the box.
No 11. Week 46 where did you fly too? Thinking of my mother, who I was with constantly this time last year. An imploring pose and a mad Busby headdress. The note above, however, says it all.
No 14. Week 49 do birds have ears? Do they? Wondered this in a difficult week. A lovely poignant creature, with the question ‘do birds have ears’ embroidered on a tag, never to be forgotten. Looking at creature 14 Arkell mentioned it would be so easy to look this question up on Google and get the answer. We both decided we didn’t want an answer. ‘I sort of like just thinking about it’ she said.
No 17. Week 52 i feel safe amongst the crows Beautiful black Welsh hat. I love these colours.
No 18. Week 1, 2013 to begin with Off goes 2013. Cleaned studio, washed windows, ready to begin. A four-legged creature of possibilities. Made across 2013–14 New Year.
No 35. Week 17 the impatient pram Did a painting of this at the ‘Away’ studio. It went through a number of changes, helped by a drawing that gave me more the spirit of the occupants. It was altogether a worrying week preparing for COLLECT. Reflecting a mad multitasking period for Arkell. The 3 creatures read: ‘Rather lost.’ ‘I don’t know what to do.’ ‘Worried.’
No 87. Week 17 I’ll get cross if you say i look sweet How I feel if my rabbit creatures get called sweet. They have elements of sweetness in them, but it is not their whole story.
No 90. Week 20 yan tan tethera Yan Tan Tethera is traditionally a sheep counting rhyme system used in Northern England. It was also used by knitters to count their stitches. I discovered it at Cecil Sharp House, an event was held there this week to celebrate knitting through folk song and dance. Arkell’s creatures often have things attached, although it is not always clear who is leading whom. The plastic zebra was found on the street in Islington, London.
No 97. Week 27 collecting insects Whilst in France last week Susu gave me a dead butterfly in a jar. I added to the collection and want to make some insects for the nature table. Not only is there a jar of real dead insects but the creature’s dress is a tiny piece of insect-covered fabric.
No. 100. Week 30 (finished in the July of 2014) the last away Well here we are, seven boxes full of awayness. Jane Audas came to see me this week, and we unpacked a few ‘weeks’ to talk about. Surprising to see them again after an interval of being put ‘away’ and read their stories. This last, a resplendent creature in her flowered dress, is grasping a falling ball of unravelling wool. It’s a running theme in Arkell’s work, falling balls of wool. We don’t need to know why.
Jane Audas
she thought all kinds of wicked things, then tried to be good the crow bird in a black forest bonnet the crow found and made all her treasures the crow that stands alone
away I love seeing everyday life from away. The anxiety before going away is a different story. What to take, what to wear, have I remembered everything? The night before leaving is nerve-wracking. I often think I would rather put my bags away and stay at home. However, once the front door closes behind me and I am marching up the road, new discoveries beckon. Being away frees my mind. When I am out and about I gather the ideas I will use later in the studio. I don’t have to be on holiday; even on the walk from home to my ‘Away’ studio there is so much to see and rediscover. Walking changes the way I think. Long train journeys are another opportunity for collecting impressions. I gaze out the window and wonder what it would be like to live in that house in the middle of the field, or that town just passing by? I scribble words down, and figures appear on the fringes of the page. Holidays were important and well planned in my family. My parents would discuss places to go in January and by February the letters would have been written to various guest houses, cheques sent, replies and confirmations received.
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left Hotel d'Angleterre with doll brooches in the rooms above doll brooches
above Julie, brother Peter and their mother, Croyde Bay holiday camp, 1959 Julie and her father, Croyde Village, 1956 Julie and her mother outside their chalet, 1956
For the first seven years of my life, these holidays were spent at Croyde Bay, a small holiday camp in North Devon. Merely writing the words creates strong memories for me, and I feel they have made a huge impression on the way I work now. The little white washed chalets were calm and neatly ordered on our arrival. Each had two single beds, with colourful woven bedspreads, a small wardrobe, a desk and chair and metal-framed windows. No en-suite bathrooms, all those facilities were at the end of each chalet block. Between each chalet was a verandah, where all the beach paraphernalia was stored. I revelled in the competitions for children: the flower pressing and arranging (in jam jars), the sandcastle building, the nature trails too, but especially the making activities. And there was always the chance you might win a voucher to be spent in the gift shop. The sea on the North Devon coast could be quite rough, and they would announce at breakfast if it was safe to swim. There were sighs of disappointment if it was too dangerous that day. Standing at the back of the camp, an old wooden gate led onto the warm sand dunes covered in pampas grass, and on the other side a long splendid beach was revealed. Through the week our table and
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windowsills would became cluttered with shells and holiday treasures, and the chalets gritty with sand. At the end of the week came the moment I could ‘spend’ my saved up vouchers in the gift shop. All the time the grown-ups were relaxing over coffee in their Lloyd Loom chairs, I had been gazing longingly at the bright assortment of toys, sweets, and beach novelties. Finally I could have what I wanted, which was a consolation when the holiday was over. It was always hard to leave. I was devastated when my parents decided that we should go somewhere new for the holidays in order to ‘broaden our horizons’. We never went ‘abroad’, except a day trip to St Malo from Guernsey or was it Jersey? The Lake District, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland were all holiday destinations over the years. My holiday journals began on those family holidays, but it has become a thing I do on every away trip now. I love to visit cities in the cooler months and have a summer seaside holiday. Brittany has been a place that I have been drawn back to many times. The rough coastline reminds me of North Devon, and the seaside towns give me hours of joyful pottering in the local museums, information centres, shops, markets and cafés.
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above fabric pendants animal pendant Croyde Bay postcard sent by Julie's father to his cousin in 1959
above sketchbook pages Brittany, 2011
Making, writing and drawing are such basic necessities and comforts to me, that maybe it is a way of transporting my studio with me as I travel. Many a time I haven’t packed any knitting, to find myself staring longingly at a wool shop in France, and have to go in and buy needles and yarn. Anyway, how would I remember all the things I’ve seen, eaten and heard if I didn’t write them down? One of my favourite things to is sit in a cafe sticking in all the various tickets, sugar wrappers, bills into my journal and writing up the stories.
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This is the first time I have shown my holiday books in public. Usually they are stored in my studio, taken down for reference or to remember events, a meal, a hotel, a particular place or simply to look back on being away. The freedom of being away gives me a clearer access to the things I want to capture in the everyday.
Julie Arkell
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caption
left pixie hood stitched knitting pattern
biography 1955 Training 1977–78 1974–77
Born in London
2007
Diploma in Fashion Textiles, St Martin’s School of Art, London BA (Hons) Textiles, West Surrey College of Art & Design
2006
2005 Selected exhibitions 2014 Dark Tales, Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre Music Makers, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool 2013 Collect, Contemporary Applied Arts (CAA), London 2012 I’ve Dusted the Farmyard, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool (solo show) The Bolingbroke Hospital: A view backwards, CAA, London Making up poems, Petite Violette, Malmo, Sweden 2011–13 Femmes Alchimistes, Automates Galerie, Brussels Toytown: favourite toys from Whitstable and beyond, Whitstable Museum and Gallery The Making of me, Frank, Whitstable 2010 Smile, Ruthin Craft Centre, (touring exhibition) Pour l’Amour du Fil, Nantes, France Focus, showcase, CAA, London 2009 The Creatures Show, Touchstones, Rochdale Embodiment, Llantarnam Grange 2008 Season of Tales and Stories, South Hill Park, Bracknell Making Stories, Flow Gallery, London Window at Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
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2004
The Knitting & Stitching Show, Birmingham, Alexandra Palace, London and Harrogate Galleri Excentrisk, Denmark Made, Yorkshire Sculpture Park Folk Art and Fairy Tales, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown Replay, Flow Gallery, London Showcase at CAA, London Home, Ruthin Craft Centre (solo tour)
Selected teaching workshops 2012–14 Raystitch, London 2010–14 Hope and Elvis, Welbeck, Nottingham 2008–14 West Dean College, West Sussex 2008–14 Loop, Camden Passage, London 2008–14 Les Souers Anglaises, France 2008– Catmose College, Rutland 2005–10 Marlborough College Summer School, Marlborough 2006– Textiel Plus, Holland 2006– Seattle and Summer House, California, USA 2005– Artist and Display, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Collections 2006– Evelina Children’s Hospital, London 2006– Touchstones, Rochdale
acknowledgements right no more schooldays for the crow overleaf a crow red daughter sister young girl crow the crow that stands alone front cover holding on to threads inside front cover watch out! dear woods man‌ page 2 the crow that stands alone back cover long live the glorious crow
I would like to thank Philip Hughes for giving me the opportunity for making Away. Also to Jane Gerrard, Gregory Parsons, Sioned Philips, Dewi Tannatt Lloyd and Lisa Rostron for their help and support in preparing this exhibition. Sara Roberts and Jane Audas for their writing skills and observations. All my friends who give me inspiration and encouragement, and to Douglas for his shelf making and companionship, both at home and away. Julie Arkell, September 2014 Ruthin Craft Centre would like to thank and acknowledge the assistance of the following: Julie Arkell; Jane Audas; Sara Roberts; the Arts Council of Wales; Nia Roberts; Lisa Rostron and all at Lawn Creative; Dewi Tannatt Lloyd; Gregory Parsons; Pete Goodridge and ArtWorks. Julie Arkell: Away is a Ruthin Craft Centre touring exhibition Ruthin Craft Centre exhiibition staff: Philip Hughes, Jane Gerrard, Sioned Phillips and Joe Jubb. Design: Lawn Creative, Liverpool Photography: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd Translation: Nia Roberts Print: Team Impression, Leeds
Jane Audas is a freelance writer, curator and digital producer. The whole list can be found at www.janeaudas. com with more specific asides at www.shelfappeal.com. Sara Roberts is a Welsh independent curator based in Winchester. She has worked on regional, national and international projects for Ruthin Craft Centre, the Crafts Council, Oriel Mostyn, The Winchester Gallery at Winchester School of Art, PACA (Public Art Commissions Agency) and The British Council. Published by Ruthin Craft Centre The Centre for the Applied Arts Text Š The Authors and RCC 2014 ISBN 978-1-905865-67-3 Ruthin Craft Centre is revenue funded by the Arts Council of Wales and is part of Denbighshire County Council. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the publisher. This book is also available in a Welsh language version. Ruthin Craft Centre The Centre for the Applied Arts Park Road, Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales UK LL15 1BB Tel: +44 (0)1824 704774 www.ruthincraftcentre.org.uk
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Julie Arkell
Julie Arkell
ISBN 978-1-905865-67-3