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!
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