Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions (each) 150cm x 50cm

This summer I was commissioned by the Peter Potter Gallery, Haddington, to make new work exploring the ‘Herring Road’, the historic 45km route from Dunbar to Lauder once walked by fishwives with creels of salted herring on their backs.

With my love of textiles, I was instantly drawn to the traditional distinctive outfits that the fishwives wore, in particular, their striped double-layered skirts, which are the focus of these paintings ‘A Fishwife’s Tail – West, South and East’.

Christie Johnstone brilliantly described these garments in 1853:

‘On their heads they wear caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad lace border, stiffened and arched over the forehead, about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered. They have cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pattern, confined at the waist; short woollen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white, most vivid in colour; white worsted stockings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wear a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which is visible round the lower part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one is kilted, or gathered up towards the front, and the second, of the same colour, hangs in the usual way. Their short petticoats reveal a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds a beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who with their airy-like sylphs and their smoke-like verses fight for want of flesh in women and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties. These women have a grand corporeal tract; they have never known a corset! so they are straight as javelins; they can lift their hands above their heads! – actually! Their supple persons move as Nature intended; every gesture is ease and grace and freedom’.

Extract from Groomes Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland c.1895

I have a feeling that these ‘costumes’ were kept for special occasions, with a simpler arrangement being worn whilst walking the Herring Road, however, the interesting use of the two layered skirt, with the upper one being tucked up to form a pocket (as well as reveal it’s striped lining) may well have been used by these women whilst selling the herring or bartering them for meal and eggs.

Metal and string

In the summer of 2010, I spent 3 fascinating months as artist in residence in Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Sutherland. Timespan’s vision focuses on linking culture, heritage, the arts, people and their ideas. My residency, exhibition and publication, both titled Close-Knit, was the first in a series of projects using this theme and was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the European Community Highland Leader 2007-2013 programme.

I found this bucket in one of the croft ruins in Wester Helmsdale. It had no bottom on it and a big hole in the side. The crofters were (and still are) extremely resourceful and frugal, and would mend what they could before replacing it. This bucket would have been a vital piece of equipment, so I mended it by weaving it a new bottom and wrapping the hole at the side with string. It’s now a perfectly good bucket again…for everything except liquid!…and is valued once more, transformed from the rejected to the treasured

As part of this residency, I created a publication titled ‘Close Knit’. It is a little coffee table book for those with an interest in Scottish history, the history of the home and traditional crafts. Full of stunning images and snippets of stories which describe what it would have been like to live in a croft house in the Scottish Highlands in the 1800s and also includes images of the works of art I produced when in residence. If you would like to purchase my publication, Close-Knit, please email me at julia@juliadouglas.co.uk. It costs just £10 plus P&P.

Received the Richard Coley Award for Sculpture at Visual Arts Scotland‘s Annual Open Exhibition 2011.

Photos by Colin Usher.

Lambda photographic prints and light-boxes x 2

Made with the help of Christine Cowie

In the summer of 2010, I spent 3 fascinating months as artist in residence in Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Sutherland. Timespan’s vision focuses on linking culture, heritage, the arts, people and their ideas. My residency, exhibition and publication, both titled Close-Knit, was the first in a series of projects using this theme and was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the European Community Highland Leader 2007-2013 programme.

The two gable ends, pictured in the light-boxes, were both found in Wester Helmsdale and are brilliant examples of the skill and creativity of the crofters. Virtually nothing remains of these crofts except for these vitally important fireplaces. But with these, we can imagine a glimpse of what it would have been like to live in these homes. The hearth was the focus of indoor family life, around which the whole family would spend their evenings. The crofters would never have let the fire go out. For this work I installed warming flowers and smoky grasses, in order to recreate that focus point and create a ‘memorial’ for the heart of these homes. The space in which these works were housed was the same dimension as a croft.

As part of this residency, I created a publication titled ‘Close Knit’. It is a little coffee table book for those with an interest in Scottish history, the history of the home and traditional crafts. Full of stunning images and snippets of stories which describe what it would have been like to live in a croft house in the Scottish Highlands in the 1800s and also includes images of the works of art I produced when in residence. If you would like to purchase my publication, Close-Knit, please email me at julia@juliadouglas.co.uk. It costs just £10 plus P&P.

Wool, rope and stuffing

In the summer of 2010, I spent 3 fascinating months as artist in residence in Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Sutherland. Timespan’s vision focuses on linking culture, heritage, the arts, people and their ideas. My residency, exhibition and publication, both titled Close-Knit, was the first in a series of projects using this theme and was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the European Community Highland Leader 2007-2013 programme.

I made this work with the help of some children from the Helmsdale Primary School and the knitting group, who meet on a weekly basis in Timespan.

The knitted installation is inspired by Badbea, a deserted clearance village 6 miles up the road from Helmsdale. Though Badbea is a dramatically stunning spot, it is windswept, rocky and desperately near an extremely high cliff edge. It is said that the families were so nervous their children would accidentally fall off the cliff, they tethered them to posts and rocks while they were out playing.

If you would like to purchase my publication, Close-Knit, please email me at julia@juliadouglas.co.uk. It is a little coffee table book for those with an interest in Scottish history, the history of the home and traditional crafts. Full of stunning images and snippets of stories which describe what it would have been like to live in a croft house in the Scottish Highlands in the 1800s and also includes images of the works of art I produced when in residence. It costs just £10 plus P&P.

Photos by Colin Usher.

Made collaboratively with Lorna Jappy

In the summer of 2010, I spent 3 fascinating months as artist in residence in Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Sutherland. Timespan’s vision focuses on linking culture, heritage, the arts, people and their ideas. My residency, exhibition and publication, both titled Close-Knit, was the first in a series of projects using this theme and was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the European Community Highland Leader 2007-2013 programme.

This spoof Estate Agent’s document aims to sell the idea of living in a croft in Badbea, a deserted clearance village 6 miles up the road from Helmsdale, whilst, at the same time, describing what it might have been like to live in one of the most challenging clearance sites during the 1800s.

The document is included in the publication, Close-Knit. If you would like to purchase Close-Knit, please email me at julia@juliadouglas.co.uk. It is a little coffee table book for those with an interest in Scottish history, the history of the home and traditional crafts. Full of stunning images and snippets of stories which describe what it would have been like to live in a croft house in the Scottish Highlands in the 1800s and also includes images of the works of art I produced when in residence. It costs just £10 plus P&P.

Wool and starch

In the summer of 2010, I spent 3 fascinating months as artist in residence in Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Sutherland. Timespan’s vision focuses on linking culture, heritage, the arts, people and their ideas. My residency, exhibition and publication, both titled Close-Knit, was the first in a series of projects using this theme and was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the European Community Highland Leader 2007-2013 programme.

The Old Chanty is a knitted bedpan, designed in the style of one that would have been used by an old or sick man who had taken to his bed. A little worse for wear and bearing the scars of its life, not functioning quite as well as it once would have, but still loved and cared for.

If you would like to purchase my publication, Close-Knit, please email me at julia@juliadouglas.co.uk. It is a little coffee table book for those with an interest in Scottish history, the history of the home and traditional crafts. Full of stunning images and snippets of stories which describe what it would have been like to live in a croft house in the Scottish Highlands in the 1800s and also includes images of the works of art I produced when in residence. It costs just £10 plus P&P.

Photos by Colin Usher. Bedpan from Laidhay Croft Museum.

Close-Knit
Timespan
Helmsdale
Sutherland

Perhaps it’s the zeitgeist but knitting certainly seems to be de rigueur at the moment. Recently, Dunbar Arts Trust staged a recreation of the town’s harbour using knitted fabric (and were ‘tweeted’ on Radio Four’s ‘Women’s Hour’). Currently, there’s also a knitting conference1 being held in Shetland to celebrate the craft’s fascinating and long history.

At Timespan, as part of its ‘bridging’ project where artists work in conjunction with the local community, East Lothian artist Julia Douglas, as part of a recent residency, has chosen to focus on the ancient and valued craft of knitting as a means of collaborative interaction with the town’s residents. It’s a brilliant and insightful move because knitting accesses a wealth of traditions, customs and techniques and embraces social and economic history, as well as a domestic one. Knitting also bridges the gender gap because although most of the woollen garments were made by woman they were worn by both sexes equally. For example, each fishing community on the Moray Firth devised its own knitted pattern pullover so that drowned fishermen could be readily identified.

Julia Douglas has succeeded in bringing together a number of community elements and elevating knitting from a craft to an artistic medium without loosing sight of its traditions and values.

A flavour of Douglas’ approach is given in what, at first glance, appears to be a bona fide estate agent’s sales brochure entitled ‘Foxglove Cottage: A superb compact bijou residential croft in the heart of Caithness’. However, this is quickly revealed as a satirical document which skilfully employs the estate agent’s notoriously euphemistic jargon to give an account of the material living conditions of the Caithness crofters in the 19th century:

The property currently lacks plumbing and electricity; however, a stream passes near the croft, supplying a clean water source; peat banks are less than five minutes’ walk, providing an ideal source for winter fuel, and an abundant source of mutton fat and fish oil is obtainable for candle making and lamp oil. The opportunity to build a dry outhouse is offered for sewage disposal and a chamber pot may be used overnight…. N.B. Though children may be encouraged to help with all crofting activities, small children and animals must be tethered to a stone or stake at all times when out doors, as the cliff edge is close!

The document – written and conceived by Douglas and Lorna Jappy – is based on historical fact; the last sentence refers to the practice of Badbea crofters (Badbea is a Clearance village several miles north of Helmsdale on the Caithness coast) of tethering small children to prevent them from falling from a nearby coastal cliff.

This, in turn, is the basis of another collaborative work ‘For Your Own Good’ made with local primary children and the Helmsdale knitting group.2 The installation consists of 21 woollen bootees (representing the number of children under 10 years in Badbea at the time of the 1841 census) and three large woollen boulders to which the bootees are ‘tethered’. The exhibition notes go so far as to ascribe individual children’s names and ages to each item of footwear. As well as being a fun piece it also has a serious intent, illustrating the precariousness of these crofters’ lives and the danger and difficulty they faced on a daily basis. But most importantly it clearly illustrates the resident artist’s role as an ‘ideas catalyst’ involving others in a type of narrative art-making from which they might otherwise be excluded.

Another of Douglas’ individual works, ‘One Perfectly Good Bucket’ references the traditions of arte povera and ‘installation’ art but gives it a particular local resonance. Douglas found the damaged bucket on one of the ruined crofts in Wester Helmsdale and repaired it with string – referring to the traditional crofter’s habits of frugality and resourcefulness. Thus the object is transformed from uselessness to utility, and from the discarded to the valued.

Despite the now overworked theme of the Highland Clearances, and the concomitant devices it relies on – ruined crofts, a dispossessed and disenfranchised people, hardship and suffering – this is a credibly fresh attempt to read a series of deeply felt historical events and circumstances from a new perspective with new materials. It succeeds both as art and as a form of social cohesion.

Written by Giles Sutherland, who writes Art criticism in Scotland and internationally.

Made collaboratively with Clare Waddle and Rebecca Wilson

Bone china, chain and light fitting

A giant chandelier of chore related objects such as kitchen implements, and cleaning and gardening utensils, cast in low relief, in translucent bone china. The piece glamorises and makes light of the domestic routine, and its implements of monotony. The domestic accoutrements dangle, tinkling in the breeze, temporarily redundant, allowing for a break from the monotonous grind of housework to enjoy a moment’s light relief under the glamorous chandelier.

This piece was used in craftscotland’s ‘The C Word’ advertisement, an international cinema and print campaign, which challenges public perception of craft and aims to break the association of craft with handicraft and hobbicraft and place craft as desirable, unique, edgy and contemporary. Air Creative and Pearl & Dean were also partners to the project.

These chandeliers were also selected to be shown in the Homes & Interiors Scotland Exhibition, 2009, and in Man Shops Globe, on America’s Sundance Channel.

A Wee Bit of Light Relief below left.

We also made A Teeny Wee Bit of Light Relief (middle) and A Teeny Weeny Wee Bit of Light Relief (right)

Between August 2007 and July 2009 I was an Art & Interior Design Tutor on the Fab Pad Project, run by Impact Arts.

Fab Pad is a youth housing project, working with vulnerable young adults across Scotland who have had a problem with homelessness when they start a new tenancy, helping them develop ideas and learn the skills to turn their new flat or house into their home and help them into employment.

For this project I ran workshops, teaching clients how to make lovely things for their homes such as cushions, curtains and stencilled furniture, and also taught them basic D.I.Y. skills such as tiling and painting. I also visited their homes to help them to come up with Interior Design ideas and took them on shopping trips to help them buy the products that they needed to transform their flat into a truly personal home.

I personally worked with clients in WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh and Artspace in Craigmillar, Edinburgh and also ran taster sessions in various hostels for homeless people, including Edinburgh Cyrenians and Number Twenty, and Youth Drop in Centres such as the City Youth Cafe on Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh.

I brilliant and rewarding job!