This is a heartening story for menders everywhere. Regular readers will recollect ceramicist Hanne Rysgaard‘s total disregard for mending generally – and mending ceramics in particular – in the previous post ” Oops!”. where I showed the beautiful flowered jug she decided to rebirth as a completely whole and perfect object.

The mold was made and the porcelain poured and then I waited to hear how it appear after firing and what she wanted to decorate it with – but the next time I heard from Hanne was a frantic angry  email – Subject “Arrghhh” saying simply “jug got stuck in the mold”  Do you also hear the Mending Goddess laughing?

But I knew exactly what she would do now – smash it and start again – so I immediately  phoned her and told her to just put pairs of holes either sides of the breaks and I would stitch it back together later; and then we talked a lot about how we have to hear and act on the universal messages we receive…. till she calmed down and agreed.

The next set of images some minutes later made me seriously worried ( see above left) these were truly horrible stab wounds, but later that evening I received another email saying “really liking making these holes now – with a drill” and the holes were getting everywhere

Eventually the jug was fired a second time and placed against the second cast, which only had a slight neck wound, when the third cast appeared perfect, Hanne confessed to being disappointed – nothing to play with and drill.

The jug had lost a a fair amount of size after the 2 firings, above shows the jugs after one and 2 firings, and the original is bigger again. It is interesting to see the whole collapse of the first jug, Hanne says it has “sat down” and that is a very descriptive phrase for the odd shape – but we are about to take this poor sad failure and make it look like some one cared about it.

At first we both thought red stitches would make it look right but some aspects of the gaping wounds looked both sexual and scary when stitched in blood red – so gold was agreed.

The stitching was problematical although in essence very simple, I used curved needles to navigate the undulations of the shape and also the stitching needed to look as good inside as well as out.i worked on this for several hours getting the stitches to look as if they were planned perfectly.

But the finished piece makes such a strong impression that all our stress has been worthwhile.

and when I eventually took it to the next meeting of the Stitch and Think group, who are working on the mending project, this is the reaction I was wanting to see – Hanne delighted with her  mended ceramics.

I had called a meeting of the Stitch and Think group who are working towards an exhibition around the idea of mending – a reminder that they had all promised to have working samples ready for early March – I was ahead of the game I had made several pieces of porcelain with mending mottoes on and was feeling pretty confident that I had done enough….then getting  out of my car to go into the meeting I dropped the carrier bag containing all 4 porcelain plates. KERACK!  My passenger Basil Kardasis said “Thank f… it wasn’t me who did that —– this has happened for a reason Janet”. quick thinking on his behalf but I felt strangely elated.

When I unpacked the bag of broken bits, only one plate had survived – my W H Auden poem plate – more of which later. But on seeing my pile of broken crocks the group became animated, they fell on the pieces re-arranging back into plates and all said they preferred them broken, because now I have proper mending to consider not just simulated, contrived and controlled versions. For myself I felt sick – I was so proud of those plates; then, OK – move on; then, suddenly – FREE ! I no longer felt I had to remake them in a way that would not compromise Hanne Rysgaard’s standards, Hanne had helped me make the plates and she is a stickler for skilled work. So now just  my handkerchiefs with the embroidered mending mottoes will be developed for the exhibition, as the group thought they were a better idea – leaving the plates as research development. Meanwhile, jeweller Syann van Niftrik, had started to look at the way the stitching had been exposed by the break…

she photographed it saying I had given her a great idea – well it’s an ill wind. The work Syann had brought with her in response to the museum visit was a set of buttons, made in one afternoon, from various cast off metal objects from her studio. She had soldered loops  onto their backs to make them useful.

But when she saw my broken plate it reminded her of the carapace of Chinese Cracker fireworks for the Chinese New Year celebrations, so she now is planning to make cages of wire in the form of the exposed linen stitches – to put together as necklaces.

The button idea has developed through a collaboration with Syann, Basil Kardasis and Dail Behennah – they have been not exactly working together on an idea for making buttons to fasten a collection of significant fabrics to fashion into a garment. Basil talked about a maxim of his father’s, who was a tailor   – a decently made buttonhole was truly important – you could die if it is poorly made. Think about this.

So he has found an old sampler of how to make tailored buttonholes and and has requested us all to bring him pieces of fabric which we feel are personally significant and he will buttonhole them all together to make a sort of group portrait – I think!

Meanwhile Dail Behennah had been looking at developing her mending jewellry or rather jewellry to hide moth holes, she has been using sewing dictionaries to develop different shapes to stitch in precious metal wires. Below are her pieces base, the lower one based on the arrow head used in tailored garments to strengthen edges of pleats and pockets. The Bristol Mending Samplers have been a real source of inspiration.

Another decorative and functional mending system has been devised by Matt Benton, Matt works in several media but uses vitreous enamel for much of his work. He has made mend shaped small enamel plates with drilled holes all ready to be stitched onto a worn area of a garment.

While everyone seems to have been inspired by the mending idea, one maker hates the idea of mending anything to use again. Hanne Rysgaard, who I have been working and talking with throughout our collaboration, admitted that she thought that anything broken should be discarded, in fact she thought that using broken things was a sign of disrespect for the user – she put it very succinctly “I am worth the best things” and “broken things have lost their energy”  these statements caused much argument between us, and although she can see the worth of mending for sentimental reasons (in fact I recently spent some time darning her damaged but favourite red winter scarf ) she still feels that to surround yourself with broken things is disrespectful.

So what will she make for the exhibition then? She has bought a large and beautiful wash jug and bowl which is only slightly cracked – and as I pointed out to her she would not have wanted to buy  it if it at the unbroken price – but she wants to remake this, so is in the middle of casting a mold to give rebirth to a damaged but lovely object – but will she leave evidence of this break?

Other makers are embracing the idea of sewn mending wholeheartedly, Jess Turrell,a jeweller and enameller has mended broken crockery by stitching linen covers and it looks like she may cover a whole tea set! This spoon is useless now and she calls it “inappropriate mending”

the cups and saucers have become un-useable but several of the group thought they had attained another aesthetic value…oops the slippery slope of  the values of art v craft emerge…….moving swiftly on, all the stitchers were impressed by her precise work in fabric, she has an instinctive feel for elegant making with disparate materials.

As does Jilly Morris who is an applied artist working across a variety of materials, but here is researching the idea of skin which, for humans, is the area most often in need of mending. She also looked at sticking plasters – below she has pinned them into position onto a sheet of tracing paper liking the translucency akin to areas of our skin.

Playing with the idea of the transparent papers she is was advised by most of the textile makers to move towards making her mending ideas in fine animal skins, parchments, seudes and kid leathers which we have given her to play with.

Two makers are using this project to develop areas for their  advanced degree studies and both have stayed close to their own materials. Steph Wooster is a knitter and designer, undergoing an MA by Research at UWE Bristol, she showed us some large pieces of patchworks that have been based on the use of straight- jackets

I won’t go into the details but she has developed the fabrics while researching at a local hospital’s archives;  she found the jackets were copiously mended through constant use. Controversially for the group,  she thinks that one overlooked benefit in the use of the straight jackets is that the patient has to hug him/herself…………..and that before the use of these garments the patients were chained in cellars. However this has lead to the sampling of some sumptuous fabrics

Dawn Mason is studying part time for her Ph.D by Practice, she is course leadr  in Drawing and Applied Ats at UWE. and she has used the old making manuals to develop pieced papers which are darned, patched and stitched together. She talked of feeling a sense of loss for the present society’s skill base when looking at the original mending samplers. she is currently researching gauntlet making out of the papers she is stitching together, so maybe a move into 3 dimensions is developing.

Whatever else is thought of in the old practices of mending it certainly is proving a rich research area for all these different makers, The group has truly become more than the sum of its parts, we were all fascinated by the different aspects  each maker had discovered for them selves and the truths we had to uncover to start to explain our thinking behind the making.

What follows is a pretty much the ultimate in the evidence of mending…you have been warned. A colleague, Dawn Mason, and I  recently organised a day at the the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery to research a project called Stitching and Thinking, for the ETC. group affiliated to UWE Bristol. It aims, by way of workshops, DVD interviews, playing with disparate materials and now visiting museum archives, to try to record the thoughts that creative makers, designers and applied artists feel when they are engage with their material.

The group comprises academic and research staff from UWE, experienced makers and designers who run their own businesses – earning a living by making and selling their own work. They are nationally and internationally known and respected within their field:  jewellers, ceramicists, basket weavers, stitchers, knitters, enamellers….. we aim to make work together by sharing our skills and philosophies. I also invited a critical writer, an interviewer and a cameraman to record the day. We were given a short introduction to the mended pieces by Karin Walton, the curator of Applied Arts, who I think was rather bemused by our fascination with this odd collection of stuff.

The museum’s attitude to working on anything needing repair is to neither deceive nor detract from the original and all repairs need to be removable. But many objects were mended before they came into the museum’s possession. Some of the pieces mended in the museum are really very refined,  they often have carefully painted patterns so that the repair is not too obtrusive; but I think the ethereal quality of some painted repairs adds to the charm of the originals – but I would, wouldn’t I?

Some of the repairs are really lively, just additions to make the item serviceable again, we were all reminded of our wasteful society and how we will just throw broken things away and replace them, in fact most technology is superceded by the latest model long before the original has worn out.

But  I was also intrigued in the types of repairs found when turning the pieces over, the staples or rivets in the cracked porcelain and glass were particularly pleasing and I would really like to learn how to make them.  They look so simple a solution to holding broken pieces together but they must take courage to drill when the object is of worth.  But as I have remarked before in the earlier blogs on mending, a decent mend is a sign of worth.

But I am most intrigued by the blanks in the design left by the restorer when using a plain infill – the strange shapes are perfect “blank canvasses” for me to start to invent into.

The inspiration for this project to develop work from the museum was because I wanted to show the group the stitched mending samplers. Bristol Museum holds one of the most comprehensive sampler collections in the country, it is held at The Georgian House and can be visited by appointment. I have researched it many times and I wanted the group to see these particular samplers so Karin, who has written the catalogue for whole collection, brought over several for us to view. The sampler above is from the local Quaker school in Sidcott, it is so fine and holds a special, and to some people in the group, a troubling presence. I just am concerned about the poor childrens’ eyesight and patience, both of which which must have been strained to the limit.

What is noticeable about the plain workmanlike samplers she brought us is that they are made in schools, the young girls who stitched these were learning useful techniques which would stand them in good stead in the future, either for running their own households of serving in someone else’s.

Moving into the museum galleries after our morning in the archives we were all alert to the many mends in evidence, this elegant marble mend on the back of a statue is particularly pleasing, although I would be interested to know at what stage the marble was patched, before or after the caving?  But Now the group, myself included,  needs to go and start to create work that has been inspired by the morning, I will keep you posted on any future progress.

Some new  information on mending has been sent to me from Dail Behennah, one of the of makers involved in this project; she has unearthed this archive advert from a Bristol newspaper which looks like the Coombes company or a predecessor, may have had a hand in mending that tea pot with the metal spout…