Bridget Harris

Starting my MA  September 28th 

Having become the lucky owner of a secondhand Hawthorn Etching Press I have been experimenting this morning in my studio. Once I had set up the weight of the roller I got some random flowers, leaves and vintage lace, inked up the plate and off I went. After the first print I took off the elements and reprinted the plate causing a negative effect which can be seen in the second photo. This negative effect is really interesting and something I have been investigating with vintage lace when doing my Wednesdays at The Ropewalk  http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/ nts. Another interesting factor was how the sap and stamens from the leaves and flowers bled onto the paper thus causing natural dye. As the garden is coming into full bloom this may be the idea time to carry on with investigating this further. 

Print making and playing with order and position. Often I just use one piece of garment or lace to print with , here I am trying to get out of the habit and use a variety of different elements. The reason is to try and link these pieces with further work in some way. I like the difference between the ghostly images and then the block colour of the lace in the right hand corner,I'm not sure if I could now print and over print to get different textures and colours .

Worked in Flowers. All types of flowers were used as an interest for Eighteenth century young ladies, obviously for those of wealth and privilege. Embroidery gave them the opportunity to express an interest in botany working the flowers in silks in running stitch, in  The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker  , Parker talks about the attitudes that shaped eighteenth century embroidery by looking at Mary Delany's work , Mary's sister described a piece of embroidery in a letter stating "the bottom of the petticoat was worked with twined nasturtiums,ivy,honey suckles,periwinkles,convolvuluses and all sorts of twining flowers". Above I have used my print image of a sleeve and started to embroider using very contemporary flower shapes, I shall continue inter-twining and working into the fabric to see what happens to the humble concept of the sleeve. 

I was trying to imagine the turmoil and thought of separation the women who left their children at The Foundling hospital felt.  The stain of leaving a child would be bad enough , however it was to enable the Mother to try and restart her life , often I believe with the intention of re claiming her child, though this rarely happened , often death came first. The process of print on paper using vintage sleeves as a means of communication between mother and child , as you can see stains are beginning to appear on two of the sleeves, the response to the stigma of having to leave your child, tiny little threads at the top of the sleeve are the threads of connection.

An afternoon at  The Ropewalk  printing, I had been given some beautiful tatting done by a friends Mother and also some Vintage lace as a Thank you for talking to students about my work. I thought about how I could use then and decided to make an impression  onto a zinc plate using a soft ground and then it was etched using a Nitric acid solution. I have printed on both paper and fabric , the results are clear and interesting, if you look closely you can see the small stitches are just visible. I am now keen to see how I can develop this further, maybe by adding embroidery myself or looking at other colours and medium to print with 

After spending many hours wondering how to take my pieces of drawn thread work that I had done for my BA and incorporate them into larger pieces of stitched detail. I contemplated the thought of the women of the eighteenth century whose lives were filled with continuous drudgery and fear. Slow Stitch with hand dyed thread to represent the stain some of these women carried with them was worked over poor and rich fabric, the result is quite beautiful and calming .