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2/26/08 Click image to view a larger size
My English grandmother, Elsie Wickenden, was an artist of sorts, a fabulous designer and embroiderer, a fine woodcarver, and a very competent oil painter as well. She was a religious woman who embroidered many kneeling cushions (is that what they're called?) for her Episcopal church.
In 1959, the year before she died, she almost completed one of her finest pieces of crewelwork, which now hangs in our entryway. She wasn't able to quite finish it, so she asked my mother to finish it for her, but my mother never had the heart to do it. I'm glad she didn't: the two unstitched leaves make it more lively, as though Granny had just put the work down for a minute and might return to it anytime.
I knew that my grandmother had left us a sheaf of her original designs. My mother once showed it to me, and, I thought, put it away safely in my grandmother's carved wooden chest. After my mother died, and after I took up katazome, it dawned on me that Granny's designs would make wonderful stencils, and I went to the chest looking for them. Nope, not there. I scoured my mother's house, and still couldn't find them. I remembered that my mother, in the throes of Alzheimer's disease, had done some rather enthusiastic house cleaning, and I sadly concluded that my grandmother's designs were gone. That was eight years ago.  Click image to view a larger size
Well. Last fall, when finally I finished cleaning out my mother's house, I found a moldy old suitcase in the basement. It was light and I was about to toss it in the garbage. But something made me open it, and you can guess the rest of the story: there, at last, were the designs, 28 of them, on the thinnest of tissue paper, all of them wonderful arabesques of flowers and animals, some with human beings, too. (St. Francis was a favorite - as I said, my grandmother was religious).
Now that I've settled into my studio, I've once again unearthed the designs, and am working on translating some of them into stencils to use for Japanese stencil dyeing. What a wonderful feeling it is to bring these designs out and use them some fifty years after my grandmother drew them! Unlike Granny, I am not a religious person, but I imagine that if there is a heaven she would be up there and she would certainly be pleased to look down on a granddaughter so appreciative of her work.  Click image to view a larger size
 Click image to view a larger size
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A Dyer's Journal 
