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Supporting Textiles: a New Commission
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I was extremely happy that the Clothworkers’ gave me this opportunity, and in so doing continue to support Cockpit Arts. The pieces for this commission were hand woven using passementerie techniques, and they are created from a combination of silky and metallic yarns combined with braid to create a striking lace like effect.
For the past three years, we’ve presented each winner for the Charity Governance Awards with an attractive Perspex trophy encasing a special textile design by Cassandra Sabo. Cassandra’s designs inspired the look and feel of the Charity Governance Awards as a whole.
This year, we’ve commissioned a brand-new textiles design from one of the talented weavers at Cockpit Arts. Elizabeth Ashdown has been inspired by Cassandra’s earlier work, but has created a completely new and unique woven work for the next set of Charity Governance Awards. Her work will be encased in the Perspex trophies presented at Charity Governance Awards ceremony this coming May.
Elizabeth has an impressive CV. She graduated from the Master of Arts Textiles programme at the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited as part of TexSelect (formerly Texprint) and at the Bluecoat Display Centre, The New Ashgate Gallery and Smiths Row, amongst others. Her clients include Liberty, Cassamance and Camira Fabrics.
Today, Elizabeth is a hand woven and mixed media textile designer and artist. Her practice focuses on creating exuberant, luxurious and playful hand-crafted textiles for a variety of applications including fashion, interiors and accessories. She uses traditional textile techniques to create modern textile objects that are full of life, texture, colour, and vibrancy.
By incorporating many techniques (such as hand weaving, macramé, hand embroidery, braid making and cord making), Elizabeth has become particularly skilled in passementerie – the art of creating small-scale fabrics, braids, ribbons and trimmings.
The pieces commissioned for the Charity Governance Awards are made from warps of fine polyester yarn, finished with a rich depth of colour and lustre. They have been woven in a striped design using a flat Soutache braid pattern. Rayon and Viscose materials are also used in this work. The project took approximately 70 hours in the studio to design, weave and finish.
Work in progress on the loom at Cockpit Arts.
The new cloth squares, cut down to size for Perspex trophies.
