More Artist Scarves

Donald Hamilton Fraser 1929 - 2009

Donald Hamilton Fraser for The Genius of Venice exhibition at The Royal Academy, 1983/4

Born in London, Donald Hamilton Fraser studied at St. Martin’s School of Art (1949-52).

The ballet and landscape were common themes in Donald’s work, which was largely figurative and influenced by the School of Paris, where he studied from 1953-1954. He taught at the Royal College of Art from 1957-83 and was elected RA in 1985.

The scarf pictured above was designed by Donald for The Genius of Venice exhibition that opened at The Royal Academy of Arts in 1983. The central image of the harlequin was taken from a hand painted valentine's card that he had made for his wife. Apparently he made one for her every year. I do remember that we had to take great care of it and return it to her safe and sound.

Abstract by Donald Hamilton Fraser, early 1980s

 Donald Hamilton Fraser was a very kind and gentle man and a wonderful colourist. He visited us at Beckford on a number of occasions and my father got on with him particularly well. He lived at Henley on Thames in a beautiful house next door to the Leander Club and the year that my brother Charles was rowing at Henley in the final of the under 18s, he invited our family for a delicious lunch before we watched the race in the afternoon. My brother's crew were beaten but this in no way diminished a wonderful day.

Artist Scarves

I've been looking back through our archives at Artist Scarves that we have produced in the past, following a phone call from The Tate who are interested in re-launching a selection of them next year and I realise that we have a pretty impressive collection that reads like a who's who of 20th century artists.
I thought I would share some of them with you and the stories behind them. Here are the first two.

Patrick Heron 1920 - 1999

Gourmet by Patrick Heron

Born in Leeds, the son of TM Heron, the founder of Cresta Silks. As a child he lived for some time in Cornwall where he eventually settled at Zennor, St. Ives.

Patrick Heron studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1937-9). As a conscientious objector during World War II he worked on the land, also having a short time at the Leach Pottery in St. Ives.

In the mid 1950’s Patrick Heron began to paint abstract works and he was Britain’s  strongest link with the New York Abstract Expressionists.

This scarf was produced for a major exhibition of his work at the Tate in London in 1998. Unfortunately not well enough at the time to produce a new design, my father went to visit him and Patrick Heron chose this design (originally done in 1969) from his archive and then worked with James on re-colouring it for the exhibition.

Gillian Ayres 1930 -

Design by Gillian Ayres

Painter, mural artist and teacher, born in London where she mainly works. Gillian was married for a time to the painter Henry Mundy, and has taught at Bath Academy of Art, St. Martin’s School of Art, Winchester School of Art and The Royal College of Art.

Her work is richly coloured and in fact her original scarf design contained many more colours. In order to make the scarf commercially viable we had to bring the number of screens down to ten and so when Gillian visited us at Beckford, she went through the design with us, pointing out exactly which shade of colours she wanted us to use.

I remember her being a very nervous character and a complete chain smoker! She had obviously had a bad experience in the past and was paranoid that her colours were going to be 'messed about with'. Because of this it was particularly gratifying when she telephoned me on receiving the proof, to say how thrilled she was with the finished result.

 

Behind the Scenes at Beckford Silk

Beckford Silk is one of the original ‘factory shops’ where visitors can come and watch the printing and get an insight into how our scarves and ties are printed and made.

We have two half hour tours a day, at 11.30am and 2.30pm Monday to Friday for individuals up to a maximum of 10. We also offer a talk and tour for larger booked parties by prior appointment. If you are coming along for one of the daily tours then it is worth phoning in advance to make sure it’s going ahead as party bookings will take precedence.

This morning’s tour was taken by one of our printers, Rob. He met the group in the shop at 11.30 and took them upstairs to where we do the printing.

He explained the colour separation and screen making before carrying on with the print that he was working on which was for an order of dress fabric.

Rob explains the printing

Once he had finished the print he took the group downstairs and through to the steam room to explain the steaming and fixing of the colour into the cloth.

Steaming and fixing the colour

They then went through to the main workshop which houses the dye winches and colour kitchen. James was in there making up a batch of dye for Rob’s next print.

James at work in the dye kitchen

Finally Rob took the group through to the Stenter Room. The Stenter is the large machine that we use to dry and finish the cloth once all the other processes have been completed.

Rob explains how the Stenter works

The daily tours normally run Monday to Friday and we charge £3 per adult (children under 15 are free). However this is then redeemable against a purchase in the main shop (not the Silk Store).

If you are interested in booking a larger group tour then do give us a call on 01386 881507 and ask for Anne.

Designing a scarf

So how do we go about designing a silk scarf?



Victoria working on designs



Well in the first instance we discuss with our customer what sort of scarf they have in mind – do they want a traditional silk square, a large square, perhaps a long scarf, or a small neckerchief? What sort of fabric have they got in mind? Light and floaty like georgette or chiffon, soft and luxurious like crepe-de-chine or satin, or rich and opulent like velvet?

Once we’ve decided on the format we begin to look at the source material. This is often in the form of digital photographs of objects or perhaps artefacts or paintings from a museum collection.

In the case of the velvet scarf that we produced for The Art Fund, the source material was a beautiful piece of furniture inlaid with semi precious stones, a technique known as pietra dura. From the photograph we enlarged the details and then hand drew the individual elements. We then scanned these drawings and tracings into Photoshop and manipulated them to create the finished design.



Design board for The Art Fund velvet scarf



The reason we do this is because the marks that a human being makes are often irregular and the brain picks this up. By using hand drawings from the start we retain this human element through to the finished design.

Hand drawing of designs

The Art Fund velvet scarf



Close up of The Art Fund velvet scarf



The scarf and tie design for Morgan Motor Company was a challenge. All they could send us were photographs of cars, bits of cars – and of course their logo! For this one we played around with filters in Photoshop to reduce the images to line drawings before producing hand drawings that we used for the final design.

Design board for Morgan Centenary scarf and tie

And here is the finished design, a simple two screen print on satin for the scarf, and silk twill for the tie.



Morgan Motor Co. silk scarf and tie



Our piece of Public Art

I was driving to work this morning and caught a piece on Radio 4 about public art in the UK. It got me thinking about our own piece of public art here in the courtyard at Beckford Silk and thought you might be interested in hearing more about it.

Sculpture at Beckford Silk by John Poole 1990

The statue that sits on a Cotswold stone plinth in the centre of the courtyard space created by our building is the representation of a skein of silk created for us by the sculptor John Poole (1926 – 2009).

His obituary in The Independent describes him thus;

"Anthony John Poole was one of the most distinguished and versatile British architectural sculptors, letter-cutters and restorers during the last half-century. His base was the Midlands, which has many of his sculptures, but his fine and often monumental works are to be found much further afield…. Poole was one of the last sculptor-craftsmen upholding the values of traditional practice and technique"

My father had started a tradition that when opening a new venture he would commission a work of art. For the opening of The Falconry Restaurant in Evesham he had commissioned a bronze statue of a falcon from artist Walenty Pytel. For The Wheatsheaf Restaurant in Tewkesbury local artist Bryant Fedden was commissioned to design and engrave glass panels for the entrance that depict the battle of Tewkesbury during the War of the Roses (this can still be seen in the building that is now a book shop). So as he was working on the design of the ‘new’ Beckford Silk building, he was already starting to envisage some sort of sculpture.

The contact with John Poole came via the boyfriend of one of our employees at the time and in 1989 James commissioned John to design and carve a statue that was to be inspired by a skein of silk.

The stone came from Hopton Wood Quarry in Derbyshire and started as a two tonne block. John worked on it in his studio in Bishampton Worcestershire but the piece also travelled to an art festival at Water Perry Gardens near Oxford where John was demonstrating. James remembers going to see him at work there. John completed the sculpture back at his studio and the finished piece was installed at Beckford Silk ready for the grand opening of the building in August 1990.

The finished sculpture is approximately 1.5m x 0.9m (5ft x 3ft) and weighs about one tonne. It is our own small contribution to ‘public art in the UK’.

Close up of sculpture A Skeine of Silk by John Poole

A Skeine of Silk by John Poole

Our first big commercial order

 As James developed his printing skills he started to get small orders for bespoke silk scarves from local shops, hotels and golf clubs. His first big commercial order however came in 1978 and was to a large extent thanks to his wife’s personality and home cooking.

Mother was managing the Wheatsheaf restaurant in Tewkesbury at the time and through her hard work, excellent food and extrovert personality had built up a good regular clientele. James had by now converted the skittle alley at the rear of her restaurant into a print room and mother was in the habit of occasionally inviting some of her regulars back to see him at work. One of these honoured diners, a lady called Ruth Segar, happened to work at the local headquarters of The National Trust and having recently commissioned a scarf design for The Trust, suggested that James might print it for them.

The National Trust was at the forefront of what we now call ‘Heritage Retailing’. They, along with institutions such as The Royal Academy of Arts and The National Gallery in London, were starting to develop the whole idea of museum shops and the development of ranges of gift products inspired by their collections.

Ruth arranged for the scarf designer Pat Albeck to come down from London to discuss the project and so James and Marthe suggested that the meeting should be held over lunch in their own kitchen at home. Mother put on a wonderful spread, several glasses of wine were consumed and the meeting apparently went very well indeed!

Over the years many museum and gallery buyers, designers and artists were invited down from London to discuss business, always over a home cooked lunch around the kitchen table at Beckford. It seems that word of their hospitality spread around the museum community and invitations were always eagerly accepted!

That first ‘landscape’ scarf design was the start of a long association with both Pat Albeck and The National Trust and set us on the path of printing and later designing for many prestigious museums and institutions. It is of particular significance to us therefore that it is this design that features on page 78 of Albrechtsen & Solanke’s SCARVES (published by Thames & Hudson) and described as “the definitive work on scarves in the 20th century…”



Pat Albeck's Landscape design for The National Trust



New Digital Printer Arrives

Yesterday was quite a momentus day for us all at Beckford Silk. It saw the arrival of our new digital textile printing machine.

We have always printed silk using screens, one for each colour in the design. This new machine will enable us, when appropriate, to print directly from a computer onto specially coated silk. This print method is suited particularly to multi-coloured and photographic type designs.

This T5 textile belt machine finally arrived by ship from Hong Kong a couple of days ago and by 2pm yesterday was being unloaded at Beckford.

We start to unpack the crate and then try and work out which way round it is!

Steve our builder has already taken down a couple of internal walls, removed two double doors and had to cut into the brick work so that we can get the machine in.

The machine weighs about 900kg so it takes a few of the guys to start manoeuvring it into the building

After quite a struggle they get it into the building

And there it is! It's taken three hours to get it into place but the new technology HAS LANDED!!

Now it's down to my brother Robbie to get it to work!

Our first shop

Having set up his workshop at the bottom of the garden, James spent a lot of his spare time experimenting with silk printing. He produced some designs, hand colour separated them, made up his own wooden framed hand stretched screens and had a go.

Silk has always been a luxury fabric and doesn’t come cheap. My mother is the keeper of the privy purse in our family and she began to get concerned about the amount of money that was sitting around in the form of Dad’s ‘experiments’! She had a chest of draws in the sitting room that was getting more and more full with printed silk and she finally decided to do something about it. She got James to set her up with a trestle table where she could display her wares, he made her a hand painted sign and attached it to the gate, she opened up the French Windows and ‘hey presto’ her first shop.

This temporary arrangement was very quickly formalised as us kids were chucked out of our play room so that it could be converted and a few years later when the workshop was extended, a smart new shop space was included in the plans. To this day my mother can be found reigning supreme in her shop and there is nothing that makes her happier than the sound of a ringing till!

How Beckford Silk began

So how did it all start? …. Well back in the early 1970s my father James, a trained chef, had taken over the running of his own fathers business being a number of small restaurants and cafes in the local towns of Tewkesbury and Evesham. He and my mother ran them together and when we were old enough, my brothers and I were drafted in to help with things like washing up and laying tables.

James however was also a keen and accomplished artist with a passion for colour and in his spare time he would often take a walk up Bredon Hill with his oil paints and easel and paint the Cotswold landscape around him.

He had an idea that he wanted to start up a business from home that used colour in some way but at first wasn’t sure what he could do. An original idea was to do hand painted ceramics but he wasn’t convinced that he would be able to compete in the market place with so many others in the area doing a similar thing.

James was in Evesham one day, dashing from one restaurant to another, when he spotted a gentleman walking towards him sporting a very colourful silk tie. It grabbed his attention and it got him thinking!

James started to make some enquiries. He read up about printing silk, got in touch with dye manufacturers and talked to printers in the north of England who were prepared to offer him some consultancy.

He started off experimenting on the kitchen table with hand made screens and his first steamer was a stock pot on the kitchen stove.

Mother however was not impressed with this arrangement and so my father soon set about converting an old building at the bottom of the garden into a workshop. My parents still live at the Old Vicarage in Beckford and this out-building had, in a previous incarnation, housed the vicar’s pony and trap. When they moved in however it was very run down and full of junk. One of their discoveries on clearing it out was a long horse drawn carriage base, which they later learnt had been used to transport coffins! Dad used it as the base of a miniature gypsy caravan that he designed, built and decorated for us to play in.

At this point James was still working full time in the restaurants but devoting as much of his spare time as possible to experimenting with silk printing.

Next time I’ll tell you more about those early years and how he got his business off the ground.

Dear Reader

Well this is our first foray into the world of blogging and hopefully the first of many conversations with your good self.

I thought I would start by giving you a brief outline of who we are and what we do.

Beckford Silk is a family run business that was started in 1975 by my father James Gardner. There are 11 of us currently working here, designers, printers, makers and colourists, and together we produce silk and velvet scarves, silk ties, silk and velvet clothing as well as printed and dyed fabrics that we sell from the roll.

We work from our own premises here on the outskirts of the village of Beckford (a building that my father designed and had built in late 1989/1990) and we are open to the public 5 days a week throughout the year (we close for just one week between Christmas and New Year).

Our core business is the designing, printing and making of silk scarves and ties for the UK Heritage Market (Museum and Gallery shops) but we also produce our own designs that we sell direct to the public from our shops here at Beckford and online.

Over the next few weeks I will introduce members of the team in more detail but for now in brief, our motley crew consists of the following:

• James Gardner (my father). The driving force behind Beckford Silk, James runs the company as well as being a full time dyer of silk and velvet.

• Marthe Gardner (my mother). Mum works full time in our main shop and also does the wages and pays the bills.

• Anne Hopkins (me). I help Mum and Dad run the company and my main job is looking after customers. I originally trained and worked as a graphic designer in London and I’ve been here at Beckford now for 20 years.

• Bill Cook. Printer and Dye maker, Bill has been with us for about 30 years.

• Sue Olsson. Sue started about the same time as me. Originally one of our sewers and hand rollers, she oversees the finishing and making up.

• Victoria Sargent, designer and internet sales. Victoria studied textiles at Falmouth College of Art and joined us in 2008.

• Beth Leibbrandt, colourist and velvet sales. Beth studied art and design at the University of Gloucestershire and joined us in 2010. She works along side James as our colourist and technician.

• Rob Flory, printer. Rob also joined us in 2010 and works primarily as a hand screen printer.

• Suzanne Marler works part time in finishing, packing and sewing.

• Anne Clark helps Mum in the shop for one day a week.

• Robbie Gardner (my brother and a professional actor) has recently joined us part time to set up and run a new digital printing machine that is arriving at the end of this month. Further down the line he will also hopefully be helping me with sales and marketing although this will depend on what acting jobs come along!

That’s it for the moment. Next time I’ll tell you a bit about how the business started.