Skip to main content

Handmade Things Gallery

By October 3, 2017June 18th, 2019

WE CAN WRAP OUR DAILY LIVES, IN BEAUTY

A picture celebration of family and friends’ imaginings: skilful play, with all forms of Creativity

 

SPIRITUALITY: acting through non-acting

THE GALLERY offers a series of selected contemplations, of poetry, thought, scientific research, and image. It offers examples of how stirring a quiet seed might be. What thoughts might spring from what you read, what you see, how it touches you? How might the quiet seed grow? For grow it will, and this is the beauty of how we open ourselves up to nourishing freshness, through taking time to focus on spiritual offerings of creative minds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


HANDMADE THINGS

I love handmade; honour craftswomen & men. I wear handmade dresses from Rajasthan, India. Handblocked prints, Ikat weave produced by families which Denny Andrews has  known for over 30 years. www.dennyandrews.co.uk.

There’s a few pots in the kitchen, bought at roadside stalls, in Malaysia. Rugs from the Subcontinent and some cloths woven in Indonesia and Mali. Woven baskets and turned wood bowls are particularly cherished because you can imagine the crafter sitting, painstakingly forming the object… a Philippine woman crouching down, weaving a flat brown & black dish from banana leaves…in Mali, mud relief patterning. Recall watching a 15 year old boy sitting before a log loom in Srinagar, Kashmir, weaving the golden silk rug  which arrived here by post months later.

At the time, I knew little of the arguments for & against child labour.

I do know now that ancient craft skills are being lost, world- wide, as city technology gives hope of money .

Two current exhibitions in London, take our imaginations into the imaginations of present day and ancient Craft women and men :-

– Tate Britain until 21 January 2018 – Rachel  Whiteread celebrates over 25 years of her internationally celebrated sculptures http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/rachel-whiteread

– British Museum 14 September to 14 January 2018 – Scythians warriors of ancient Siberia  http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/scythians.aspx

 

Anne Yarwood