Organised alongside their latest exhibition, Styled by Design: Modern Artist Textiles, Gray M.C.A are hosting an In Conversation event with Persephone Books Founder, Nicola Beauman, who has championed women authors since the early 1970s.
Persephone is famed worldwide for the quality of its literature and the beauty of its books. Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly mid-twentieth century. All of their 145 books are intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written.
They publish novels, short stories, diaries, memoirs, poetry, gardening books and cookery books; each title has an elegant grey jacket and a ‘fabric’ endpaper with a matching bookmark dated from the period of the book.
Chairing the event is Jo Andrews, host of the Haptic & Hue, Tales of Textiles, which looks at the different light textiles cast on the story of humanity.
She spent many years as a senior reporter and political correspondent for the British television network, ITN. Twenty years ago, she went to live in New Zealand and thought: “30 million sheep can’t be wrong – I need to learn to weave.” She went to night-school in Wellington where she was taught by Desiree Paterson and later by Janet Phillips in the UK.
She has been weaving since then, and owns a small herd of looms, which can be found in a studio in Dorset. She has exhibited and sold her work in a number of places. She creates cloth largely with natural fibres: wool, cotton, hemp and linen, and she weaves stories about the role textiles play in our lives and the impact they have on our economies and cultures in her podcasts.
To learn more
