A day of connecting through patterns.
A photo. A family lunch. A pattern factory. Grief and realisation.
Last weekend, I met with my old friend Linda (on the right in this Polaroid photo from 1976/7?). I am on the left and another friend, Susan, who I have since lost touch with, is in the middle. I remember the friendships well and the time spent together in the community of our cul-de-sac, with huge happiness. We roller-skated down the hill, went to the beach, spied on the neighbours and made things together. We went to Girl Guides and Brownies together but went to different schools. We drew and made things together.
The red dress I am wearing in the picture was made by my mother with fabric chosen by me from McIlroys in Havant, now Poundland – see my picture below, taken a few weeks ago.
I loved that I had unique clothes that I had a part in the making of, but sometimes wished that I had more shop bought clothes. I remember my mother said that she made my clothes because she could, and we enjoyed it, but also because I was so skinny that things did not always fit properly off the peg and she had to adjust them anyway. Linda was the first friend to accompany me on my first forays into the local town of Havant to spend our pocket money. She was two years older than me and was therefore deemed responsible enough to accompany me without an adult.
Linda and I have only been in touch again recently, and seen each other only four or five times in the last thirty years. We still get on so well. Last Saturday, she drove me to her mother’s house in Bedhampton, a suburb of Havant. Maggie, was my Girl Guide leader and, at 80 something, is still driving, a WI craft project enthusiast and maker. She lives in the same house, opposite my old house.
Maggie knew we were coming and had decided, with no input from me, that we would do a craft project together. We made folded ribbon christmas tree decorations (see above). It was good for all of us be together again, with her telling stories of people and the past as she taught us how to make the decorations. She had a dedicated craft room and had a neat ‘stash’ of fabric ironed, ready and waiting on a hanger for her next project. A patchwork quilt was pinned out as a work in progress. I felt so at home. I naturally understood this shared language of making, materials and friendship.
Linda messaged the photo of me, Susan and her on Sunday, two days ago. When it pinged onto my phone my brother was at my house for lunch. He remembered this time too. He had arrived with two dressmaking patterns that he had picked up from the now closed Butterick pattern printing factory that his company have just bought with a view to re-developing the site. He thought that I would be interested in the patterns, despite knowing very little, if anything at all, about my MA project. He knew that I would be happy to look at them.
We got talking about the factory. It is in Leigh Park which blends into Havant and I remember its location. I think I have a memory of going there once with my mother to a sewing pattern sale. My brother told me some of the history he had learnt about the factory.
It was built, post-war in 1957, on the edge of one of the largest post war council estates in the country to have been created – Leigh Park. The land it was built on was owned at the time by Portsmouth City Council. The Council built Leigh Park to accommodate a postwar population that could not be accommodated in Portsmouth. There was a lot of engineering skill in the area due to the connection with the Navy and the Dockyards. The Butterick factory printed and distributed patterns and provided work for some of this new community, particularly the women.
He said that the building is very outdated and no longer suitable for modern commercial demand. It was designed by Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin architects, significant in the modernist movement. (Lubetkin designed the penguin pool at London Zoo). My brother said that it is based on a ‘Northlight’ grid design layout.
We spoke a lot about the social history of the place and how we both appreciate its history and how we are both so familiar with dressmaking patterns. I said to him that I was ‘trained’ in that familiarity by our mother. He agreed and could totally see how I might feel that. He 'got’ why I am in tune to pattern as a template, a decorated surface and a behaviour.
I thought, and discussed with him, how a factory like that, giving work to a new community, must be the subject of many shared stories, memories and histories in the community and beyond to the people and places that the paper patterns were sold to. Memories and stories that might feel untethered, or triggered less often, with the building demolished and the site redeveloped? Would that be a good thing? Without these memories might the community feel ‘without’ in some way, the object of their shared memories gone? How do the community feel about that? Might it be appropriate to make a record, before it goes? What new stories could it contribute to? What new patterns of activity might re-establish on the site?
Suddenly, straight after reading the paragraph that I have just written above, I am entirely struck by a strong sense and emotional realisation that that conversation I was having with my brother, about the demolition of the factory and its relevance to the community around it, parallels and is a metaphor of exactly how I feel now, about the loss of my, our, mother, several years after her death.
I suddenly realise how much, and how often in my day to day life, I experience the grief of her loss. My constant checking in with her is kind of debilitating at times. I frequently ask myself what would she do in different situations that I find myself in, and do not acknowledge often enough that I am perfectly capable of making decisions without referencing what she might do – however, I would argue that that is also entirely because of her legacy and the way she brought me up to be so independent!
This MA is thoroughly challenging me to reluctantly and self consciously review myself, what I do and why I do it. This blog forces me to think carefully and write things down in order to track influences, learning and the progress and direction of my project. I did not imagine so much introspection on the course, I wanted to focus on looking outward and forwards but today, writing about memory, family, friends and the factory has taken me into an unexpectedly personal place.
I think that the state of grief has become a long term habit for me. One of not easily letting go and getting clogged up with too much ‘stuff’ that all seems important. A kind of emotional or mental hoarding, collecting thoughts and ideas that I find hard to let go of. I am not a hoarder at all in the physical world, but do seem to find it hard to travel purposefully in my personal creative practice, bogged down by so much possibility and choice. I think I maybe get stuck in the world of creative potential. Like the slightly exciting feeling that I get looking at a piece of fabric imagining what it might become.
Embarking on the MA was a conscious acknowledgement to move on in my work but I do not think that I understood or properly acknowledged that until now. I seem to subconsciously choose to make in a way that connects me back to my mother. A desire to keep her with me maybe, or to repeat activities that we loved to share? This feels like a revelation as I write. How interesting that through the research of pattern and what it means to me, and in shared conversations, I suddenly better understand how I feel about her loss and my niggling grief. I feel more accepting of that loss as I write, seeing that her legacy can contribute positively to my future work – to better and more enjoyable work maybe? That realisation feels positive. I can make it my own. The metaphor of the factory is a parallel to my grief in that I have:
• A sense of being increasingly untethered to my mothers memory as time passes.
• A gradual loss of connection with the places we would visit, some no longer exist, some look different. Time changes a place and landscape.
• Fewer opportunities to connect to the community of people that knew her. Death, distance, time and family fragmentation have played their part.
• A better understanding of why people might gather to remember shared stories and the importance of that.
• A strengthening and positive understanding of the context of her legacy on my life. Recent research into my personal relationship with the concept of pattern has highlighted how she played a large part, exposing me at an early age to pattern and making.
• A sense that I can openly acknowledge her influence on me in my MA project and celebrate it through my own love of pattern and making. I can own that legacy in my future practice more purposefully with this understanding.
• Learnt that the conversation about the factory with my brother acted as a kind of transformational metaphor in my understanding of my self and my feelings of grief and how that relates to what I do and make.
In the photo above of my friends and I, I cannot help but also notice the patterns on the garden furniture in the background. These were the patterns of the time. Bold, colourful, floral and clashing! Nowadays, this lack of co-ordination would most likely be deliberate, part of a ‘retro eclectic’ scheme. At the time it was exuberant and is now imprinted on my ‘memory retina’. In 2019, we are, as consumers, so much more aware of a ‘designer’ curated and co-ordinated look. We are encouraged to buy ‘a range’ of ‘garden’ or ‘house essentials’ to fulfill a coherent, fashionable aesthetic in our garden or home.
The red dress fabric print I remember less, I think that the motif was a simple, graphic ‘folk’ daisy style floral repeat with white and a tiny spot of yellow, but this is a distant memory. My stronger memory is how it felt to wear. Comfortable. I have a secret hope that it was made from a Butterick pattern, printed in the Butterick factory in Havant just a few miles from where this picture was taken. I would love to find the original pattern that it was made from because it was used by my mother several times and adapted by adding sleeves and using different fabrics each time.
I have mentioned before that I feel susceptible to coincidence in my MA project. I did not ask for Linda to send me any pictures, or for my brother to pay any attention to my project. He had, a while ago, mentioned that he was looking at the factory and I had said that would be interesting as I remembered it and I remember their patterns from when mum made things. The fact that this photo arrived while he was here and it opened and connected me to family, old friends, patterns, making and place and to my project, feels somehow significant and serendipitous.
I wonder if researching the factory, and the community involved in it, might be a fantastic project for my MA from here? I could still make something and include pattern? My brother gave me the details of the ex Facilites Manager who is, according to my brother, a font of knowledge on the subject of the factory and the business. I am visiting the factory next week...
https://www.architecture.com/image-library/RIBApix/image-information/poster/butterick-factory-leigh-park-havant-hampshire/posterid/RIBA28031.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-francis-skinner-1139173.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Lubetkin
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/08/penguin-pool-london-zoo-berthold-lubetkin-debate-uk-architecture-news/
Reference map to show the location of: Pennant Hills, Bedhampton where the photo of my friends and I was taken and I lived from 1973/4 until 1978. Poundland in Havant (ex McIloys). The Butterick Factory in Leigh Park. Holt Gardens in the village of Rowlands Castle where I lived from the age of 12 after Pennant Hills. My school in the countryside on the South Downs where I went from the age of 10-16.
