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My final piece of work when I was at the LCC was a book that grew from an idea I had about the importance of how stories are passed on to us and how the retelling of these stories becomes woven into our own myths and then passed on again.
It can be best summed up here
For most of human history, literature, both fiction and poetry has been narrated, not written - heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created the world.
Angela Carter
I loved the idea of having a book that is a tactile object for passing on of the stories in a written/ printed form. From this I began to think of making a book that could leave the readers mark on it as it was passed from person to person.
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The result was this:
The cover was made from 100% pure wool tops which had been woven loosely on a peg loom. The inside pages were a combination of the same wool that had been felted into incomplete and uneven pages and cotton sheets that were printed with illustrations I had drawn, extracts from passages of relevant writing and my own companion poem to the book. My main idea was that I wanted to make a book that would continue to felt and knit together the more the book was handled.
Companion poem to the book
"Once upon a time, as all great tales begin
A community of women would sit and deftly spin
They would gather telling stories, in order to impart
Wisdoms, truths and remedies repeated from the past
The clatter of the loom echoed reason, words and rhyme
To soothe and heal the anxious, worn by passing time
The power of such storytelling still lives within all crafts
So we must weave and stitch together to ensure tradition lasts"
Alison Webb
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