SERIAL NUMBER ISSUE 15NO WINTER 2018
NO NO SERIAL SERIAL NUMBER NUMBER
CRAFT CRAFT || HERITAGE HERITAGE || ENVIRONMENT ENVIRONMENT
Unpicking the Stitches of Time
THE HANDBUILT
THROUGH FIRE
THE RESURGENCE OF
POTTER
AND WATER
MENDING CLOTHES
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ISSUE 15 WINTER 2018
Dear Readers,
Credits
Welcome to the Winter edition of NSN Magazine. In 2018 we have explored so many artists and this latest edition is no exception in terms of the variety of content and beauty of crafts showcased. In the Traditional Arts, Trades and Crafts section, we feature experiments with wool from Italy, a truly global weaving project, a special section on mending and also two very different crafts: woodworking and pottery! The Sustainable Fashion section hosts the most incredible bags from recycled hosepipes. The No Serial Number Magazine team personally visited the beautiful mill where these bags are made. In the Upcycling section we have something completely different: friendly, travelling mice! In the Innovative Materials section we explore a new product that can filter the air we breathe. I leave you to explore the remaining features of this magazine yourself, but I would like to draw your attention especially to the #plasticfreecrafts campaign that our collaborator Kate Stuart launched back in the summer edition. We now have an online petition and would like to ask everyone to get involved. We hope you will enjoy reading this new issue. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and comments via email or online.
Alessandra & NSN Team
Editor Alessandra Palange Art Editor Francesca Palange NSN Italy Editor Rosa Rossi Marketing Alessandra Palange Francesca Palange Translations Fuschia Hutton Subscriptions & Advertising info@noserialnumber.org Cover Photos Image by Mandy Pattullo, Pink Flower. Finger turned appliqué using French fabrics. Graphic Content: Fonts by Creativeqube Design, By Lef Design, Mainfile, Freepik and desings by whiteheartdesign. Copyright All images are copyright protected and are the property of their respective makers/owners as detailed in each article and photo. No Serial Number Magazine is published four times a year. No responsability will be accepted for any errors or omissions, views expressed or comments by editors, writers or interviewees. No Serial Number Magazine makes all efforts to advertise products that are in accordance with its ethos. However, goods advertised are not necessarily endorsed by No Serial Number Magazine. Information is correct at the time of publication. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission. All prices are accurate at time of going to press but these may change at any time.
No Serial Number Team ALESSANDRA, EDITOR I am a qualitative researcher in the social sciences and education with a keen interest in citizenship. Being the editor of No Serial Number Magazine is a hobby for me, something that I do out of passion and with the belief that there are many things we can do to make the world a better place, one of them is producing and consuming more responsibly as a society. I originally had the idea of this magazine when I started networking with eco-friendly artists, artisans, and creative businesses online for a family startup business. At this point, I realised how diverse and creative the environmental movement really is and thought it would be great to have a place where we could tell all these stories and explore the role of creativity in the search for environmental solutions. If you’d like to propose a story for No Serial Number Magazine you can email me here: editorial@noserialnumber.org
FRANCESCA, ART EDITOR After many years working as a retail manager in the fashion industry, I decided to leave the retail world when I became disenchanted with its focus on profits over the quality of products and the customer experience. I decided to take the leap and start my own business, first by collaborating with eco print artist Michela Pasini and then with my family on the development of No Serial Number Magazine. With time, I became more and more passionate about the graphic design process, so much so that I am now in charge of the design of magazine. I also keep track of emails, sales, and subscriptions, and run the social media pages. If you have any questions about your subscription, a wholesale inquiry or would like to talk about cross-promotion, I am the one to ask! You can contact me here info@noserialnumber.org
ROSA, NSN ITALY EDITOR I am a retired Latin and Greek teacher and an avid knitter and crocheter. I have published school textbooks and work as a freelance writer for Pearson Italia. I am also a consultant for various cultural projects in Italy. At the moment, I am managing the development of a new library within the theatre of Caffeina Cultura and Caffeina Cultura’s own bookstore. For No Serial Number Magazine, I am mainly in charge of finding eco-sustainable realities in Italy, where I am based, and writing about them. I also manage the Italian Blog of No Serial Number Magazine, so if you’re interested in No Serial Number Italia, please visit the blog it.noserialnumber.org or email me: noserialnumberitaly@gmail.com
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Featured contributors. . Michelle Challice
Textile Designer specialising in the fructose indigo vat and biodegradable homewares. Recently relocated back home to Britain and works from a tiny natural dye studio on the Dorset coast. Loves her rescue dog Felek, African and Folk textiles and the British weather. Hates having her photo taken!
Holly Foat
As a freelancer, I’m passionate about supporting the local community and helping local businesses. I also work in ethical marketing, and enjoy promoting sustainable living and blogging about it. I’m a craft and upcycling enthusiast, especially textiles, although I rarely find the time to create as my two young children keep me busy! Blog: www.noserialnumber.org/directory/author/holly-foat Facebook: @EthicalByHeart Twitter: @CaptainHolly
Paige Perillat-Piratoine
I am especially interested in growing the urban fabric. From urban agriculture to biomaterials, I work with projects that contribute to a more organic cityscape and report on the people that make the steps in that direction.
Lucy Sobrero
I was born and grew up in London and then as an adult lived in rural Piemonte, Italy, where my father came from, for over 25 years. Language tutor, translator, mother, and grandmother, I am passionate about natural crafts and textiles and fiercely opposed to cheap mass production, sweatshop labour and throw away fashion. I love communal activities and projects that engage and inspire people of all ages without costing the earth. I particularly enjoy sharing NSN’s stories about Italian artisans, translating for NSN and contributing with articles on craftspeople and projects in the U.K. I also like sewing, felting and a make do and mend lifestyle. I volunteer at a refugee centre in Birmingham and also with my local park.
DO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR US? GET IN TOUCH!! If you are passionate about
crafts, art, design, social projects, zero waste and all the other
subjects that we cover in our
magazine then get in touch and you could become one of
Kate Stuart
our contributors.
I’m a practising artist, writer, craftswoman and environmental activist based in the North East of England. I specialise in upcycling, zero waste living, quilting and painting with acrylic on canvas. Website: www.thephoenixgreenstore.org Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shopThePhoenixGreenStore Facebook and Instagram: @thephoenixgreenstore
All you need to do is to send us an email to
info@noserialnumber.org. We also have opportunities to write for our blog so get in touch!
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Contents TRADITIONAL ARTS, TRADES AND CRAFTS 6.
The Beginning of the World Wide Weave Project
12. Paints and Pigments in the Past 14. Discovering a Salvage Project at the LANA VIVA Studio
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Mouse in the House
18. Experiments With Appenninica Wool
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20. Tutorial: Maria Tavares’ Candle Holder 24. The Resurgence of Mending Clothes, in a World of Over Production
Clog Maker
27. Oversize Knee Patch Tutorial 30. Unpicking the Stitches of Time Exploring the Work of Mandy Pattullo 34. Melissa Weiss: The Handbuilt Potter 38. A Clog Maker Shares Some Wood Working Skills in a Birmingham Suburb SUSTAINABLE FASHION 42. Through Fire and Water. Reclamation According to Elvis & Kresse UPCYCLING HUB 46. Mouse in the House
Melissa Weiss
INNOVATIVE MATERIALS 52. theBreath: Fabric Panels for
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Breathable Air HOME CHRONICLES 56. Tessa Jane: Paintings with Purpose MULTIFUNCTIONAL GARDEN 60. Mud & Bloom 63. Make a Conker Spider Web ZERO WASTE 64. Calling Creatives to Action NSN Plastic Free Craft Campaign 66. Make a Gift Bag From Recycled Paper in Under Two Minutes 68. Crop Drop PROJECTS FOR THE PLANET PETITIONS
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ISSUES FOR ETHICAL BUSINESSES THE ECO CRAFTER AND ENTREPRENEUR AWARD
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Tessa Jane
LANA VIVA
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ABOUT
Each issue is created with love: love for our world heritage and love for the environment. We are really passionate about meeting creative people that put all their effort in combining these two elements - that’s why this magazine exists! In this day and age we desperately need to change the way we live, consume and produce. We hope that with this magazine we are contributing towards this goal. If you love what you see purchase today and help us grow and reach more people! www.noserialnumber.org
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Spring Issue 2019 • Handmade Paper and Natural Dyes • Colours From Pigments • Quilting • Nettles for Textiles • Environmental Art • Innovative Materials • Zero Waste & Much More ...
OUT ON 23.03.2019
www.noserialnumber.org
PINTEREST Follow our Pinterest boards for vintage fashion, traditional toys, natural colours, textile design, ecofriendly ideas & recommended books www.pinterest.com/ noserialnumber
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TRADITIONAL ARTS, TRADES & CRAFTS ISSUE 15 WINTER 2018
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The Beginning of the World Wide Weave Project Questionnaire by NSN Team Photography by Maria Clarke-Wilson and Mark Wilson
Textile designer and natural dyer Maria Clarke-Wilson tells us about her fascinating project of gathering yarn from natural dyers across the world to create a wonderful woven piece. In this interview, she tells us about the colours and the people she came across along the way who inspired this project.
Tell us a bit about you and your training? How did you become a weaver and natural dyer and why? When did you first come across botanical dyes? And why did you pursue this? I started a Master Degree in Textile Design at Norwich University of Arts (NUA) after many years of working in education as a teacher and consultant. I had always wanted to go to art school. I was fortunate to be accepted onto the course even though I did not have a background in textiles. My life is full of creative pursuits, such as painting, drawing and I am passionate about fabric and yarns and my home is filled with things from various projects.
loom and weave structured pieces. My first weave was dyed using plants from my garden, windfall willow bark, daffodils and rosemary. The warp process was quite challenging and although I planned and carried out a mediative weave session over 2 days, the structure and repetitiveness of the pattern left me searching for something more in tune with my expressive and free flowing creative ideas. As a child I was passionate about nature and all things natural, and in my adult life I’d lost sight of this. My desire to immerse myself in nature and to use environment for creating and researching the colours from homelands drove for my leap into the world of natural and botanical dyes. It is a vast and exciting journey with many variations. It alters with the seasons, water used and planetary alignments. Once I’d begun voyage of discovery - of art, chemistry and textiles there was no other option for me but to develop my skills and
After attending skills development workshops at NUA, I was very quickly drawn to trying natural dyes rather then synthetic options. Weaving was something I wanted to develop further. I set about learning how to prepare fibres, warp a
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Paints and Pigments in the Past (PPIP) – Decorating the Antonine Wall Distance Stones Dr Louisa Campbell, HES Postdoctoral Fellow in Archaeology, University of Glasgow As part of her Paints and Pigments in the Past (PPIP) research project generously funded by Historic Environment Scotland Dr Louisa Campbell has just completed a programme of analysis on Scotland’s exquisite Roman relief-sculpted sandstones commonly known as the Antonine Wall Distance Stones. After noticing the remains of reddish pigment on significant areas of the sculptures, Dr Campbell analysed them non-destructively by portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) and Raman Spectrometry to test the hypothesis that they had originally been adorned with pigments in vibrant polychrome and to identify the colours used. Roman paintings on wall plaster are well attested from across the Empire and recipes for the pigments used as well as techniques for their preparation and application survive from contemporary writers, most notably Pliny’s Natural History and Vitruvius’ De Archetectura. Polychromy on sculptures are similarly well attested through various sources, including small traces of surviving pigment on marble statuary or images of painted statues in frescoes and mosaics . This has led to a burgeoning scholarly interest in polychromy on Classical sculpture, albeit this is largely restricted to marble and bronze. Poor survival of the pigments due to post depositional processes make their authentic reconstruction challenging, but recent transdisciplinary approaches combining archaeological investigation with scientific analysis allow for the characterisation of compounds, using both micro-sampling and nondestructive techniques.
Roman conquest of the region and perhaps to stoke competition between legions constructing segments of the wall. Of the 19 known examples, 17 are held in the collections of the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow (Fig. 1), another is in the Glasgow Museums collections, while the most easterly, and arguably most extravagantly decorated, is held by the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh (Fig.2). Dr Campbell’s work has confirmed these unique monumental sculptures were indeed once decorated in colour, bringing the iconographic scenes to life and highlighting inscribed text. Despite having access to an extensive range of pigments, it is clear the artisans used a restricted palette of colours mostly dominated by reds and yellows on the Antonine Wall Distance Stones and there was a proscriptive format to their application in clearly defined contexts. The results confirm, for example, that the letters were depicted in red – either madder red, possibly mixed with realgar to provide depth of colour, or red ochre. Other reds were used on features, including minium (red lead) to denote freshly spilled blood on captured northern warriors fresh from battle with Roman cavalrymen who have chased them down on horseback carrying military standards coloured with red ochre and wearing similarly coloured cloaks. Yellow ochres and lustrous golden-like orpiment have also been used. The results of the research will soon be published in full, but this exciting and innovative work confirms that sculptures on the furthermost boundaries of the Roman Empire were not the static, brown and lifeless objects that we are accustomed to seeing in our museums today. But rather, they were vibrant, colourful and life-like representations of Romans, their enemies and their deities and they provide an incredibly valuable insight into life on the Roman frontier.
Monumental relief sculptures are an important medium through which Roman artists provided background and cultural context to mythological, religious or historical events such as the iconic scenes of the Roman army on campaign depicted on the columns of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The incorporation of iconography and epigraphy on the Antonine Wall Distance Stones combine commemoration, monumentalisation and propoganda. The Antonine Wall was Rome’s most northwesterly frontier – a massive turf rampart set on a stone base that cleaved a route across Scotland’s Forth-Clyde isthmus for a distance of 37 miles and separated the Roman-controlled region to the south from the non-Roman north. The distance stones were carved from locally quarried sandstone and recovered from along the line of the Wall - they constitute the most impressive epigraphic evidence recovered from any Roman frontier. The sculptures contain dedications in abbreviated Latin to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, who commissioned the mural barrier around 142 AD, and provide detail on the distance constructed by the three legions stationed on the frontier. Some also contain iconographic images of life on the frontier, including depictions of the subjugation of troublesome northern tribes and religious practice with the Legions’ favoured deities. They are propagandist tools to commemorate
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The Resurgence of Mending Clothes, in a World of Over Production Why Mending Matters, with Katrina Rodabaugh Words by Kate Stuat Mending Matters by Katrina Rodabaugh published by Abrams Books with photos by Karen Pearson
I
can remember, as clear as if it were yesterday, sitting beside my mother as she showed me how to darn a sock – watching her swift fingers lift the wool with the needle – over and under, over and under – like weaving, only on a tiny scale. Some of my clearest childhood memories of my mother are wrapped around craft. The little poem we were taught to remember where to put our wool when we were knitting. The patient rethreading of my needle whilst I learnt to sew badges on my Girl Guide uniform. Drawing secret pictures with her tailors’ chalk. Clothes in our house were hardly ever new, and were always, always mended. The mending of clothes was part of our heritage – skills handed down from one generation to the next. My grandmother had a wooden darning mushroom, hand carved and worn with age – goodness knows how old it is – it lives with my sewing things now and I think of her every time I hold it in my hands. I remember her crafting too, always making, stitching, mending. The women who came before me have poured their stitching, singing, craft loving genes into me and I hear their presence resonate every time I pick up a needle and thread.
“My mom”, Katrina tells me, “was always working on a fibre arts project—quilting, sewing, knitting, embroidery, cross-stitch, etc. So, I grew up with this sense of normalcy around making. I started and stopped numerous creative projects as a kid. But when I was a senior in high school I dropped my calculus class to take a sewing class instead. That class taught me so much about garment sewing and my mom was a huge support as I made my first garments. She insisted I hand-stitch the hem on my final class project and I thought this was some strange form of punishment. But she wanted me to understand the importance of craftsmanship and really go the extra mile. Now, of course, I love hand-stitching and usually prefer to hand-stitch all my dress hems.” Katrina, who lives in a 200-year-old farmhouse in the Hudson valley, USA, is known now for so much more than hand stitching dress hems - her visible mending alone has inspired thousands of people across the globe to begin thoughtful and meditative stitching projects. Influenced by Sashiko stitching and Wabisabi, she tells me it “embraces imperfections, asymmetry, and the effects of weather and time to change patina, add character, or shift texture. Wab-sabi might encourage an unfinished seam if it didn’t affect the overall function of the textile. It might accept the tear in a worn garment because that garment was well-loved but through mending it offers even greater value—it creates an opportunity for richness and enhancement that wouldn’t be there otherwise. But it’s also”, she continues, “a somewhat minimalist approach of ‘just enough’ [which] lends itself so beautifully to repair work. You can see this philosophy in the Japanese Boro garments and original Sashiko stitching. My mending work is very influenced by Japanese Boro and I love this approach. But you can also see a similar aesthetic in cross-cultural repairs like antique European darning in homespun linen or even in my great grandmother’s patchwork American quilts. Repair work was just ingrained in domestic life and in fashion.”
In the acknowledgements section at the back of her new book, Mending Matters, published this Autumn, author and awardwinning artist and crafter Katrina Rodabaugh nods to the family lines of the women who came before her too – a “lineage of stitches” she calls it. A thank you to the women who raised her in craft and fired her early connection to making and mending.
An Environmental Studies major in college, she turned to Creative Writing as her major in graduate school but was encouraged by her book arts Professor to connect her fibre art work into her studies. Her professor, she told me, “convinced me to consider my informal training with my mom as central to my creative work. So, I started creating large fibre installations, collaborating with performing artists making sets, costumes, and interactive exhibits, and through this work I came to my current work with mending, dyeing, and sustainable fashion.” However, it was the Fashion Revolution movement that brought the inspiration for Katrina’s Make Thrift Mend project, initially due to be just a year long, but which has continued to shape her work to this day. “Make Thrift Mend started in August 2013,” Katrina explains, “just four months after the Rana Plaza factory collapse. It was 25
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Sprig. Embroidery on to textile collage. 30
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Unpi cki ng th e Stit c he s o f T im e E x pl or i n g the Wo rk o f Mandy P att u llo Words by Kate Stuat Photography by Mandy Pattullo
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s old as time, quilting has been both practical and art form, carrying the stories of the women who pieced them together and stitched their layers down through generations. A quilt past it’s best would never be discarded, but a new cover made, often from old clothing, adding unique archaeology full of the essence of the family to whom it belonged. Beyond the practicalities of keeping warm, quilts have served as symbols of family heritage, and the stories they hold are tied up in the fibres of the cloth and the stitches that hold all the pieces together.
and finishing that before moving on to the next thing.” Mandy grew up around textiles – both her mother and grandmother were textile creatives, and so stitching was part of normal family life. “In my childhood,” Mandy explains, “there was always a sewing machine out as my grandmother, who was a seamstress, made all of my clothes as well as outfits for my dolls and trolls. I have many of my grandmother’s diaries that record when a pattern was bought, when a dress was made or altered. I have recently taken some of the entries in the diary that relate to clothes making and embroidered them in my grandmother’s handwriting on to strips attached to her cotton spools. It was not until my mother took up patchwork in the late seventies [that] I realised sewing could be something creative rather than to serve a purpose. At that time, you could buy scrap packs from Laura Ashley and I soon became addicted to joining small pieces together and transforming them into something like a quilt or a cushion. In a sense I am still doing this now and since that time I have always had a sewing project on the go. I now [create] textile collage but really it is patchwork but in an unstructured way. I loved working with stitch and cloth so much that I embarked on a Textiles and Surface Pattern Degree and the formal training helped me to move my stitch along in more experimental ways, develop a visual language, learn a process based on research to develop ideas and to contextualise my work.”
Mandy Pattullo, a textile artist based at The Hearth, in Horsley, Northumberland, uses old and discarded quilts to make textile pieces which are part patchwork, part applique and which carry all their old stories forward to merge with new ones. “My work”, she tells me, “nearly always starts from the fabric itself. I do not believe in fabrics being too tidy or colour coded. It is the serendipity of fabrics landing next to each other that gives me a thrill. When I see two pieces of fabric that are just meant to be together then I might collect others within a bit of a controlled colour story. I make little piles of colour combinations or I hang them up on a clipboard in my studio. I will have many of these collections on the go at any one time but then when I have laid out a composition, I concentrate on stitching it together, adding surface stitches
Unpickings. Unpicking an old quilt.
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A clog maker shares some wood working skills in a Birmingham suburb Words by Lucy Sobrero Photography by Sean and Jojo
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t is a very hot summer’s day and I am visiting a small workshop on a high street where many small shops close down but other enterprises start up. At Pathcarvers a barefooted young woman in harem pants and a leafy green vest top is wielding a stock knife with the confidence, grace and expertise of the second-generation expert woodworker she is.
Spoonfest is a yearly weekend gathering of everyone interested in spoon carving. It started out as a pipe dream of her father’s and has become a genuine international event where JoJo and other great spoon makers teach each summer. In her early twenties and already an expert woodworker, she felt ready to challenge herself once again and applied for one of only two apprenticeships with master clog maker Jeremy Atkinson who soon recognised her exceptional ability to master techniques. Today she makes classic and contemporary clogs and explores her own take on this traditional craft. Still making and selling her exquisitely carved spoons, she has taken on a life-long challenge: the continuous development of her bespoke clogs.
Daughter of master woodturner Robin Wood MBE, it was hardly surprising that JoJo was already whittling sticks aged four! Woodworking was what she loved and though she went to Art college and did various other things, it made sense to return to it. Now one of less than a handful of clog makers in the country, previously she became the doyenne of spoon carvers. Helping out at SPOONFEST as a teenager, a stubborn feminist streak in her made her determined to become the only female teacher at the festival as soon as she could.
Meanwhile in Stirchley, South Birmingham JoJo is director and co-founder of Pathcarvers - a social enterprise providing the space and opportunity to craft. JoJo organises courses
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Detail from ‘Outside the Walls’, Behind the Walls series: close up detail showing the telescope, which remains one of the most fiddly pieces to create, the telescope is made from paper, and sliced into sections, then reassembled. 46
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MOUSE IN THE HOUSE Interview by NSN Team Photography by Kathryn Ashcroft Kathryn Ashcroft’s artistic work started very early on, from her own creative family home, where she used to play in her dad’s workshop with objects that her dad had gathered. In this interview, Kathryn tells us about her background, the materials she uses in her art, and the reasons for her wonderful obsession with mice. Hello Kat, thanks for taking the time to speak to NSN Magazine. First of all, tell us… where are you currently based and what’s your artistic background? I work from my studio at home in Bawtry, South Yorkshire. It’s built into the chimney breast, and is tiny - a perfect, enclosed space for creating mice! I’ve always made things. I grew up in East Yorkshire, in a house in which creating was the norm, and encouraged. Some of my earliest memories are in my dad’s workshop on rainy afternoons, raiding the offcuts of wood and making toy furniture and playgrounds for my Play People (this was the early 1980s!) It was a very logical step to study art. The post-A Level Art Foundation Course at Hull College was an absolute revelation to me. It was the first time I’d been entirely surrounded by like-minded people, and the first time that I felt that I truly fittede in anywhere. I’ll always remember the day that we were sent to raid the metal-work skips at the back of the college to bring back material for our sculptures, and the feeling of being able to turn something old into something entirely different! I then went on to study Theatre Design at Nottingham Trent University, where I gained a First Class Honours degree. I loved the variety of the work, having to turn my hand from set building, to costume, puppetry, and props. But it was the scale-model making that really captured my imagination. I spent hour upon hour creating tiny, intricate models at 1:35 scale. Whilst on this course, I became heavily involved in Theatre in education (TIE), which led to my strong beliefs in the importance of creativity in Education. So much so that I wrote my dissertation on it, and trained to be an art teacher!
I also like to reference strong, inspirational women. Representing them as mice is subversive and metaphorical, it’s my own ‘thank you’ and nod of acknowledgment to them for what they have done for women today. I like the fact that a lot of these references are so subtle, that only a few notice them! For example in ‘Professor Mouse’, I was commissioned to create a mouse to celebrate a new Professor of Women’s Studies. I put the suffragette colours of purple, green and white very unobtrusively in there: it’s very subtle, but it’s definitely there. Why did you go from being a theatre designer and art educator to a designer of miniature mice? What are the connections between your previous work and your current work in terms of skills, techniques, landscapes, subjects and inspiration? I would still consider myself as both. The artwork is small-
How would you describe your project, Mouse in the House? My current work explores the need to allow our imaginations to wander, to encourage the notion of ‘play’, even as adults, and to provide the escapism that I, and others, so often need from the realities of everyday life. Some of the smaller, freestanding pieces explore and represent relationships and basic needs (as identified in Maslow’s). My mice create their own reality; they could be any creature really, but I’ve always seen myself as quite ‘mouse-like’. I often feel invisible, overlooked, and some pieces in this project allow me to represent that aspect of my life (‘Behind the Walls’ series). They collect the detritus left behind by people and use it to create their own world. It’s about their survival, creating the things that they need in order to meet their basic needs. I try to keep to the concept, although sometimes it’s applied more loosely in commissioned pieces. I like the idea that the mice could just be a little flit of colour that you see out of the corner of your eye, and you don’t know if you actually saw it, or if it was your imagination! I also have a fascination with mice throughout history, how they have accompanied humans, always been there, again in the background, quietly. I have made a range of historical mice, and try to reference this. But it’s surprisingly difficult to research, mice often being unrecorded. So if anybody has any ideas for this, I’d love to hear them, please!
scale, but still consists of scenes, I’d like to work more large Shakespeare Mouse, Historical Micehandmade series: onemice! of And scale, maybe infest an entire wall with the most popular mice, I receive several requests for I I still teach, I’m Head of Art in a large secondary school. personalised versions of this. The box is lined with old teach across three Key Stages. This is intrinsic to my beliefs, from school Shakespeare texts, with notes aspages I believe in education and creativity soriddled strongly. Mouse rescued from the skip. in and the House had existed in my head for as long as I can 47
A mAGAZINE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRAFT MOVEMENT Why the name “No Serial Number”? Because nature and craft share a common characteristic, they are not made in series. They are both the result of an organic, slow process of growth and development. Not one leaf is the same, nor is a handmade creation. Crafts remind us that our hands and minds can work in tune with our natural environment to make things that are useful, or simply beautiful. As a society, we are in urgent need to slow down and preserve our collective environmental and artisanal heritages from unsustainable production practices and corporate greed. No Serial Number Magazine is a humble attempt to explore how creativity, nature, activism and business intersect in contemporary society. Who is it for? artists, artisans, casual makers, craftivists, and conscious citizens Topics textile arts • natural colours • traditional trades and crafts • creative upcycling and salvaging • slow fashion • zero-waste lifestyle • biodiversity • grassroots environmental movements INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED BY NO SERIAL NUMBER ISSN 2516-1776 (Print) ISSN 2516-1784 (Online)
No Serial Number Magazine www.noserialnumber.org info@noserialnumber.org Fb: www.facebook.com/noserialnumbermagazine Twitter: @N0serialnumberM Use #NoSerialNumber Pinterest: noserialnumber Instagram: @noserialnumber.com_magazine £13 + Delivery Printed on recycled paper at UEL Printers