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I was prompted to write this account after reading a review in The World of Embroidery of the Artextiles exhibition in Bury St Edmunds. As a teacher of art, I am constantly looking for new ideas and economical ways in which an art department can be resourced. Looking at other artists, designers and craftspeople is now a very important aspect of the course and pupils are expected to look at other people's work and make connections with their own. It is a much more rewarding experience when young artists can have first-hand experience of real pieces of work.

Bury St Edmunds has two small museums and an art gallery. We are thankful that they now have education officers who are forging links with schools and are helping enormously to address this aspect of the National Curriculum for Art. The art gallery has a very strong team with a varied programme displaying contemporary artists' work in a wide range of media.

Experimental weaving using hessian

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The students of the County Upper School, Bury St Edmunds, were taken to the Anthropology Museum in Cambridge to look at how other cultures used decoration in a wide range of artefacts such as cooking utensils, items of clothing, jewellery and household items. They looked very closely at woven materials, beaded cloth and hand-stitched surfaces, questioning the human desire to adorn everyday items with exquisite design and fine craftsmanship. Time was spent drawing and annotating in sketchbooks and gathering knowledge which could then be used in a variety of ways back at school. The rest of the summer term was spent experimenting with weaving, mainly with paper, or with woven fabrics, looking at ways in which surfaces could be altered by pulling threads, pushing holes and re-weaving in the created spaces, re-using the pulled-out threads. The students had the opportunity of working in the Bury Art Gallery recording information from the Artextiles exhibition. They then set about designing and developing a textile that was influenced by it and by their cultural visit.

African Panel

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One of the strong points coming from the Artextiles exhibition was the use of traditional techniques which were hand crafted to a high level of technical skill but interpreted in a contemporary context. The new students used this aspect of the exhibition for research, looking in their homes to see if they had any family heirlooms hidden away. The response was amazing. They discovered family christening robes which had been beautifully embroidered, with pintucked, handmade lace, crocheted tray covers, hand-embroidered tablecloths, tablecloths using the Hardanger technique. One boy student even got his grandmother to teach him how to do tatting. Some students were allowed to bring the items into school. They were encouraged to question the intensity of the labour involved in the pieces, and the social influences of the time. This was then discussed in relation to the Artextiles exhibition.

Rhythm of Stone Age Man

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Now that the research was under way, it was time to experiment. Students changed the surface texture of fabric - pintucking, pleating, gathering, ruching. Looking at the technique of drawn thread work was the opportunity to start pulling out threads from different fabrics, from thick, coarse hessian to fine butter-muslin. Changing surface texture by making marks incorporated the use of mono printing, batik and embroidery stitches. All the time the students were experimenting, they were asked to make links with the different pieces of work seen in the exhibition and decisions were being made about how they would develop their own design ideas.

Mask

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Some students did so as a direct response to a study and drawings of a historical, traditional textile, while others wanted to make a statement about endangered animal species. Others still were influenced directly by work seen in the Artextiles exhibition. Students decided which technique or combination of techniques they would use in relation to the design ideas being developed. They still wondered at - and valued - the intensity of hand embroidery, and produced exquisite pieces of hand-embroidered work themselves. Others preferred mono printing and used patterns in nature as a source for building up rich printed surfaces before the fabric was gathered, either by hand or machine, into panels. Many students combined materials and created wallhangings with double layers of fine butter-muslin that had been dyed or mono printed. They then pulled out threads to reveal stitched or dyed panels beneath.

Indian Rhythm

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There are many rewarding aspects of teaching, but one of the more memorable ones for me must be this textiles project, seeing some 150 young art students aged 14-17 of all abilities handling textile materials, developing individual ideas and each producing a piece of work which had been creatively designed and very skilfully worked. A number of them chose to use hand embroidery as that skill.

Artextiles has now moved on from Bury St Edmunds but it has given us such a rich source of ideas and teaching material. Many Year 11 students re-visited our resource pack and their sketchbooks as inspiration for their recent GCSE art examination, and some of the A level students have become involved with a group of interested people who have set up a working textile group as a result of the exhibition. More importantly than that, it has brought textiles out into the public eye of Suffolk and we hope that, through our teaching in school, it will continue to promote textiles as a serious art form.

Immortalised Tiger

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Kathrynne Owen's teaching posts have included Head of Art at County Upper School, Bury St Edmunds, and teaching art in an International Upper School in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

This article first appeared in The World of Embroidery, Volume 49 No.1; text and all images © Kathrynne Owen. All rights reserved.

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