Heartfelt: Yuli Sømme on Green Making and the Ecology of Dying

Photograph courtesy of Yuli Sømme. Copyright © Fern Leigh Albert.

Textile artist Yuli Sømme on making felted woollen shrouds and soft coffins and what it means to tread lightly as a craft maker.

By Imogen Hayes

8 July, 2022

Dartmoor based textile artist and maker Yuli Sømme has always had profound respect for the natural world. Until the turn of the century, she was making felted woollen homeware and wall hangings; then, a commission took her work in an unexpected direction, and she began making biodegradable woollen shrouds and soft coffins for natural burials under the name Bellacouche.

“I feel passionately that within the environmental movement, death is not being talked about enough, and people are uncomfortable about the subject,” Yuli told me over Zoom. “I empathise with those feelings, but what I want to express is that through developing Bellacouche, I have grown to feel comfortable talking about it. It's been a cathartic experience.”

The funeral industry at large is reluctant to adapt in the face of the climate emergency. Cemetery wooden coffin burials and cremations remain the most common types of funeral in the UK, with cremation being the most popular, accounting for 75% of funerals in the UK in 2021, according to the SunLife Cost of Dying Report. Yuli is part of a movement for reform in mainstream funeral care and for reframing our thinking towards funeral planning, bolstered by organisations such as The Natural Death Centre, the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, and The Good Funeral Guide.

While demand for wooden coffin burials and cremations remains high, meadow and woodland burials have seen a gradual increase in popularity over recent years. The SunLife Cost of Dying Report recorded one in 14 (7.2%) funerals was an eco, environmental or woodland service in 2016, but by 2017 this figure increased to one in 11 (9.1%). In 2020, SunLife recorded 11% of people surveyed wanted an eco or woodland funeral, and in 2021 4% of funeral directors surveyed said they would like to see more people becoming aware of eco and woodland funerals.

A natural burial is a carbon neutral alternative to fossil fuel intensive cremations and coffin burials. Some natural burial sites will not accommodate the burial of ashes, because of the environmental impact of the cremation, which releases mercury into the air and water, as well as producing nitrogen oxide, dioxins, and particulates. Some burial sites will not cater for bodies that have been embalmed, as the chemicals used in the embalming process may leach into the soil. At a natural burial site, the coffin must be made of biodegradable materials such as recycled cardboard, wicker, willow, banana leaf or bamboo. Burial shrouds are also encouraged as an even less resource intensive alternative.

Photograph courtesy of Yuli Sømme. Copyright © Fern Leigh Albert.

Yuli has produced shrouds and coffins for natural burials, as well as cremations, in traditional churchyards, municipal cemeteries, and woodland and meadow burial sites alike. Comments on her website are evidence of the comfort that her soft coffins and shrouds have brought her clients. Many reference the warm and pleasant feeling that the appearance of the felt evokes, how natural it feels to wrap a loved one in a warm woollen blanket, and to touch the shroud or coffin and feel that the departed is still present under the soft curves of the felt cover. Lesley Mary Close, a funeral celebrant who delivered a service for one of Yuli’s clients who opted for her Leafcocoon was warmed by ‘the hope it held out for the way the energy contained in this body would be recycled by nature’.

Sustainability is as intrinsic to Yuli’s practice as it is to the Craft movement as a whole. Integral to Craft are the principles of slow making, hand making, quality over quantity, utility, resourcefulness, and using only what is necessary. A deep understanding of the source material is also central to Yuli’s philosophy. She sources her wool carefully from holistically managed and organic wool flocks across the South West, and continuous refinement of her process over the years has led her to specialising in primitive breeds of sheep, as she prefers their wool quality and tendency towards lesser human intervention. 

Yuli has signed the Green Makers’ Pledge as part of MAKE Southwest’s Green Maker Initiative (GMI). The GMI was launched in August 2021, in partnership with the EDRF funded Low Carbon Devon project at the University of Plymouth, and exists to encourage craft makers to consider the environmental impact of their creative practice and inspire them to take steps to become more sustainable. Open to craft makers based across the Southwest, the GMI provides free resources, support and advice for crafts individuals and groups based in the region. To join the GMI, participants are asked to sign a pledge to improve their environmental actions over time through a series of simple commitments. This involves completing a yearly informal report regarding their actions towards a greener craft practice.

I met with Yuli to find out more about the evolution of Bellacouche and what sustainability looks like in her practice.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Can you tell me a little about Bellacouche?

Bellacouche means ‘beautiful resting place’, and it was the name of the barn that I used as my workshop, where historically they used to make coffins, and where I was making shrouds. It seemed like a beautiful name and so apt.

What I see in the mainstream funeral industry is reluctance to change in terms of the environment. COP26 did focus minds, but I honestly feel that this is the area of our lives that has been badly neglected. Bereavement potentially makes us vulnerable to coercion that this is not a time to be bothered about the environment, and so outdated conventions prevail.

Throughout my 20 years doing this I have made a purposeful attempt at engaging with the mainstream industry. I belong to various organisations and through Zoom I've even been able to go to their AGMs. So, I've tried to engage with the mainstream of this industry and ask questions about the environment: what do you want? What are your aims? I want Bellacouche to really fit in there and to become more mainstream. I had two main products for burial, and they’re both quite involved and intricately designed, because there are some practicalities that you have to think about when you're burying a person or cremating them. Recently, I decided to add a third product, the Heritage Shroud, which is a nod to the 1667 Act of Burial in Wool. This was a British law that stated the dead must be buried in wool, designed to keep England’s wool economy thriving. I wanted to provide something more affordable, stripped back to pure simplicity and the essentials of what is needed to bury a loved one in an ecological way. It’s not just the fact of funeral poverty that inspired me, it’s the elegance and honesty and simplicity that I wanted. We are all equal in death. Actually, we are quite lucky in this country that there are relatively few laws about how we can do funerals, unlike most of the American states. For instance, there is plenty of information on the internet on DIY funerals, some of which is linked on my website, and my part of that is that I can provide a product that is both comforting and ecological.

Photograph courtesy of Yuli Sømme. Copyright © Fern Leigh Albert.

What does sustainability look like in your practice? 

Within my practice I embrace technology, and I acknowledge that my business would not have taken off without the internet, and so I'm grateful for that. However, it's often said that technology will get us out of this hole, but it won't — it will get us into a deeper hole. So, what I want to emphasise through my practice is appropriate use of technology and not becoming over technologised, because that means more resource extraction. So for instance with the Heritage Shroud, that's what it embodies. I was thinking, what is the essential that you need? You need a covering for a body, you need it to be empathetic and comforting. And you need it to be practical, so it needs handles. You don't need a coffin. I feel like I'm breaking into a new way of thinking, questioning why do we have coffins? What's that about? It's resource hungry, it's heavy, transportation is more expensive. Most of it comes from abroad. It's full of glues, it's full of plastics. There's not very much good about it, unless you're making it from sustainably and locally sourced wood. And possibly willow, although willow has its problems in that chemicals are used to kill fungal infestations, so I have reservations about willow.

So, I'm just stripping things back, thinking how can I avoid sewing this seam? Can I put this together with a toggle? The toggles are just pieces of wood that I cut from the hedgerows. It's almost secretive. I go in with my little pruning saw to a little coppice somewhere and cut away and I leave things that I'm not using, and as it's Hazel wood it regenerates beautifully. I've found a lovely way of folding fabric too. I've had to explore over the last 20 years how to do things like that – how to make a flat piece of felt into a three-dimensional papoose. I love that combination of something from the hedgerow with wool, where you create pleats and folds, and then you just hold it all together with a simple toggle. I’m avoiding the use of cotton yarn as much as possible as this has a large carbon footprint. So that’s how I’m developing: stripping things back to the pure essentials.

“Scarcity is the mother of invention, isn't it? So, see it as a really wonderful, wonderful challenge. Most craftspeople have no money. But we have our brains, we have creativity, and resourcefulness and the wherewithal to find where we can learn the skills.”

Some emerging makers might experience sustainability as a kind of restriction. But for you, it seems to be a restriction that breeds innovation. Has the challenge of sustainability always been a source of new ideas for you?

Well, my mum was a huge influence. She was an environmentalist, so she really shaped my worldview. Most of my training was in the 1980s. I did a handloom weaving course in Bradford. We had to experiment and make a lot of samples. I think I was the only one who decided I was going to hand spin all my yarns for my samples. So, my whole presentation was hand spun, as well as naturally dyed and hand woven. You might see the Green Maker Initiative as a challenge and think it's hard work. But it's not. It's absolutely joyful! I can tell anybody who's embarking on sustainability that it is so interesting. You find much better ways of doing things, and I think it goes back to this paring down of what's needed. That’s really become my philosophy, thinking do I need to have something from a global source, or can I source something locally? Can I find something joyful and something wonderful and different?

Photograph courtesy of Yuli Sømme. Copyright © Yuli Sømme, 1983.

Do you have any advice for somebody trying to make their practice more sustainable on a budget?

In the paring down of how I make things, there is a natural decrease in the cost of the materials. For example, by using something that someone else has discarded, the value is then in the making, and not so much in the materials. I use a lot of material from Proper Job, which is a reuse, composting, and recycling centre in Chagford. I test the material to make sure the fibres are natural. In this process I am supporting an environmental charity in my community and spending money locally. Cutting carbon can also cut costs. For instance, I had been buying jute webbing and cotton strapping which have no provenance, and later on I began to consider, what is their ecological impact? Through experimentation I have replaced these with materials from Proper Job. I get massive bags of textile waste that I can make use of, both within my work, as well as for packaging, so some of my parcels are sent in cloth bags that I make up from waste. I feel if you have the will, you will always find the way. You might have to compromise. The word sustainability means not buying stuff, and that's what the whole craft movement is about, really, is thinking I can make that myself. Scarcity is the mother of invention, isn't it? So, see it as a really wonderful, wonderful challenge. Most craftspeople have no money. But we have our brains, we have creativity, and resourcefulness and the wherewithal to find where we can learn the skills.

What inspired you to make felt coffins and shrouds?

There were various threads that led me to making shrouds. First, my interest in the history of wool, the development of the Industrial Revolution, and the law that decreed that the dead must be buried in wool. It touched something deep inside me at age 14; I thought it was really beautiful.

I was born in Norway and my father died when I was very young. This profoundly and negatively affected me, and my grief was compounded by moving from the glorious Norwegian landscape to Dartmouth, which is like a gold fish bowl in comparison. It has taken decades to process this event, and the making of my first shroud was a cathartic and helpful process.

I was inspired to make a piece of work for an exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen called ‘Treading Lightly’ in 1999, set up by the Guild Director, Alex Murdin. I focused on the Cycle of Life: I made a wedding cape, a woollen nappy and changing mat for a baby, and a shroud to complete the symbolism. I had gone through the last decade of the 90s having children and using wool instead of disposable nappies, lying them on sheepskins instead of cotton or plastic, and making clothes for them from cut down and shrunken woollen garments that I found at jumble sales. About a year later, somebody in Chagford where I live approached me to come and measure her husband who was dying, and asked me if I would make him a shroud out of his own wool. I was a little taken aback, not knowing anything about the funeral industry. I had no idea if the initial shroud was going to take me anywhere because after I'd made that exhibition piece, I worked on other projects, thinking that was the end of the concept. But that first commission awakened something in me, and I could see there was a need for something different to the current conventions. It was then I found myself involved in a movement that was seeking alternative ways of creating ceremony around a death.

Photograph courtesy of Chris Chapman.

What do you think is the role of craft makers in responding to the climate emergency?

I’m really aligned with the philosophy of Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective, which she describes as complementary and alternative to Extinction Rebellion: quietly making things as an act of rebellion. I feel that the way I live and how I practise within Bellacouche is a form of activism in itself. It's quiet revolution. It's slow revolution. The government has slammed down on any creativity in schools whatsoever, and this is ringing many alarm bells. That’s where MAKE Southwest and people like Sarah Corbett, and anybody who's a craftsperson, can be an activist by supporting education, supporting colleges, and supporting people who want to learn. The more that we can get together through projects like the Green Maker Initiative to invite people in in a positive way the better, and I think Craftivism is such a brilliant way of doing that. We can't rely on governments anymore. We've seen that with COP26. Nothing changed. We've got to do it ourselves. We cannot go on thinking in this way of continual growth, and that we can get anything at the click of a mouse, and Amazon will bring it to our doors. We need to recognise that that is not the way forward. So, the more that craftspeople can find alternatives to their sources, really research them, and try and localise that as much as possible the better. Know your material, know its background, its biochemistry, its environmental impact, and understand that you can't just make stuff. Don't just buy stuff to make more stuff. Know what it is you're making and understand the materials.

bellacouche.com

Andrea Liu is Swimming Against the Current

Quilt of Many Colours, by Andrea Liu. 2020. Photograph by Emma Booth.

Meet the Artful Craft exhibitor, artist, and designer turning discarded salmon skins into leather.

By Imogen Hayes

29 June, 2022

Fish skin leather has a history that spans several cultures, once integral to indigenous communities in coastal and riverine areas across the globe. The Ainu of Japan, the Hezhen of northeastern China, the Nivkh of Siberia, the Inuit of northern Canada, and several peoples indigenous to Alaska, including the Alutiiq, Athabascan, and Yup’ik, incorporated fish skin leather into their clothing, shoes and containers, favouring its strength and water-resistant properties. However, this traditional practice faded into obscurity in the 20th Century. In some communities, fish skin came to be regarded as a ‘poor man’s leather’, because it was perceived that fish could be caught by unskilled hunters, while the violence of colonialism saw the near eradication of indigenous cultural practices in Canada and the US. But now, fish skin leather is undergoing a revival as indigenous communities strive to unearth the traditional practices of their ancestors, and a new generation of designers seeks out ecologically viable alternatives to cow leather production. 

Woven tiles, naturally dyed, by Andrea Liu. Photograph by Emma Booth.

Nominated by Peter Randall-Page for the Artful Craft exhibition, Andrea Liu turns salmon skins, salvaged from the bins of smokeries, restaurants, factories and fishermen, into leather artworks. Utilising her specialism in woven textile design, which she developed during her undergraduate degree at Central St. Martins, she weaves the salmon skins in intricate patterns that stand alone as one-off pieces, or are hand sewn into quilts. Andrea is currently studying MA Textiles at the Royal College of Art, where she continues to hone and explore her craft, and interrogates her role as a designer in advocating for green practices in the textile industry. 

According to Hakai Magazine, every tonne of filleted fish amounts to approximately 40 kilograms of skins, which are then ground into animal feed or fertiliser, discarded in landfills, or thrown back into the sea. Humans consumed the fillets of just under 150 million tonnes of fish globally in 2015, which equates to approximately six million tonnes of skins.

Andrea turns waste skins into material of value. By adopting traditional practices of dyeing, tanning, spinning and weaving, her process is totally free of chemicals. She achieves beautiful colours in her work using natural dyes she has made herself, from experiments with kitchen waste and lichen, as well as other natural pigments. Though processing waste produces waste of its own, Andrea is determined that nothing goes to landfill, and hand sews her offcuts into vibrant Zero-Waste Patchwork pieces.

Andrea’s craft is as much a preservation of cultural stories and practices as it is of the salmon skin itself. Her work is infused with the knowledge and stories told to her by those who have guided her in honing her practice. Native Alaskan methods inform her leatherising and tanning, while her off-loom woven quilts incorporate colloquial Guernsey patterns. Her work reacquaints us with forgotten practices and narratives, and asks us to reevaluate the stories that, like the salmon skins themselves, are all too often discarded.

I spoke to Andrea to learn more about what drew her to the practice of leatherising salmon skins.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

How did your fascination with salmon skin leather begin?

So it started in my second year at Central Saint Martins when I was sent to a cluster of old factories in Hackney Wick with some other students. One of the buildings was a smokery for smoked salmon. For some reason, my peers at that time weren't interested in that factory so, being older, I volunteered to go to the smokery. I was invited to have a proper tour of the building, and then I got to talk to the factory owner, and from our conversations I began to ask myself what can I do with this waste? So the owner brought me to these massive bins, and at the factory they produce around 500 skins per week. The salmon skins are so beautiful when you really look at them: the colours, the scales, the patterns, the textures. And the first question that came to mind was how do I leatherise this? How do I preserve this material? It's slimy, you still have the flesh on it. It smells a little bit fishy, of course. From there I started diving into YouTube clips and tanning books. I came across some incredible women working in tanning. One of them is Lotta Rahme. She's really famous in Sweden, and also in the leather world. She's a traditional tanner, and she introduced me to natural veg and oil tanning. From there I started experimenting with this practice and it took me a year to learn, and eventually I signed up for a workshop in Alaska where I met Audrey Armstrong, a wonderful Athabaskan woman who makes beautiful baskets out of fish skins, usually from fish caught by herself and her husband on the river. She taught me her techniques and shared her stories, and I got to really understand salmon skins in a personal way. And that’s how I just fell in love with salmon. 

Is there something that you find really meditative about the process of leatherising salmon skins?

From a design perspective, I think it's really interesting, because when you're in design school, you don't really learn the process of how material is made, and often you become wasteful as a result. But when I started processing the material, getting it from raw, and then leatherising it, I began to realise how much work goes into the processing of the material. I've dislocated my thumb a few times, because it's so laborious. The process I use is very traditional, very ancient. You’re cleaning the skins with your knife, by hand, you're washing it by hand, and then you're softening it by hand, you soften it over a rock and you're really working at it, so your whole body is involved in the processing of this material. So the relationship with the material becomes really intimate, you actually get to know every skin because every skin essentially is alive. Some of the skins are so stubborn, they have their own characteristics. As a result you don't want to throw anything out anymore, and when there are offcuts, you save everything. I think that's where the beginning of a dialogue of sustainability comes in. When you arrive at the final product, you hope you’ve done the salmon justice. I think that ties in with the way indigenous communities value the entirety of the animal. As designers and makers, that's up to us as well, to have that respect for our materials. I’m working with a byproduct, but I’m breathing new life into it.

You’re working with a material with so many irregularities, and yet you achieve these incredibly intricate patterns. How much have you come to embrace those irregularities in your work?

Well, the skins I receive from the smokery aren’t perfect, they wouldn't be acceptable in a tannery. They're waste that nobody wants to use, because they carve into the fish with the skin still on during the smoking process. So I receive these wholly imperfect skins, but I see the beauty of them. I think it's really interesting to work with constraints. The reason I weave them is not just because of my specialism in weave, but also because I was trying to figure out a way to disassemble and reassemble the material, so that I can create something. I cut them into strips, so I can better utilise the whole material. I think with the patchwork pieces, like the quilts, you'll see the holes, you'll see they’ve been mended, and that’s to highlight the imperfection of the skin. With some of the quilts, tiny little holes and imperfections are there for a purpose, so you’ll see that this was a byproduct, and even in imperfection, there's beauty. And because my nature is to strive for perfection, I really enjoy this meshing of intricate patterns in a methodical way. Sometimes you'll see some of the texture of the skins has been worn away, because of the way they've been handled in the factory. They have a bit of fraying on the surface. Then other parts of his skin have preserved these perfect gridlines of where the scales used to be. All these characteristics express the story of what the skins have gone through. 

Dreaming of Gansey Patterns, by Andrea Liu. 2020. Photograph by Emma Booth.

You incorporate a lot of different cultural references into your work, with your woven designs inspired by Guernsey patterns, and your tanning methods derived from traditional Native Alaskan practices. Fish skin leather has a long history across so many cultures, and yet has largely faded out of practice. So is that something you’re really concerned with, the preservation of these cultural stories and practices?

I wanted to incorporate stories into my work, and I thought I would love to interview a few retired fishermen who would be willing to speak with me. So Fishermen’s Mission connected me with the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther in Scotland. Then I was also connected with a home for retired fishermen in Hull, and I was able to speak with a group of retired fishermen. They told me their stories about the hardships they went through at sea: the fear of not knowing what would happen next, the fear of death, as well as the relief of coming back home with their family for three days, because that's all they had before they were back at sea for months at a time. I was really inspired by these fishermen's sweaters, because it was wonderful to see how textiles were used as a language. These Guernsey patterns are imbued with so much meaning. Every pattern has a story and symbolises something. 

According to some fishermen, in the past, you were able to identify the bodies of the fishermen who lost their lives at sea their sweaters, because they were knitted by these women in specific villages. So you could tell from which village or household the fishermen came from, so bodies could be returned home. Some say it’s a myth, but I would love to believe it’s true! 

I’ve incorporated this ‘V’ pattern in my quilts, and that’s what they call a herringbone pattern. It represents fish — they were always hoping to catch a lot of fish, because that amounts to wealth. You’ll also see zigzags, which they would call ‘the ups and downs of marriage’. The diamond shape also represents the heart within the home. It’s fascinating how these colloquialisms are communicated in the knitting patterns. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to recreate this visual language in some way? Because that's exactly what we're trying to do as makers, to connect with people, otherwise what's the purpose of making? And I loved the challenge of storytelling without words. 

You are working to decolonise the practice of making fish skin leather. Can you tell me what that means to you?

It came from my time with Audrey Armstrong, while I was listening to her talk about salmon. Salmon was no longer a fish, it was family. For her it was personal. It was not just her livelihood, it was somebody that she loved, so there was huge respect for the fish. For us coming from a Western education, we were never taught that way. Food comes from the supermarket, it's packed, we don't hunt for meat, we don't fish for salmon. For indigenous communities, there's a huge respect for the animal, as well as how they treat the byproducts of the food. As a result of my time with Audrey I became involved with a wonderful organisation called Salmon Nation, which has connected me with creatives, writers, filmmakers and investors who are working closely as allies with indigenous communities. Audrey encouraged me to teach what I learned, and to be as generous as I can. So my hope is to share these skills eventually, to recreate exchanges of some kind. The history of colonialism is so laden with blood, it's horrendous, what has happened to the indigenous populations in North America, and it’s still only in recent history. A lot of indigenous women like Audrey have to go to museum archives to learn their ancestral practices, to reverse engineer them almost. That's how they learn their culture, because it's been almost eradicated. 

Zero-Waste Patchwork by Andrea Liu. Photograph by Emma Booth.

Sustainability is intrinsic to your work, and of course the textile industry is such a big culprit in terms of carbon emissions and the waste it produces. So how do you situate yourself in this dialogue about sustainability in the textile industry, and what do you think can be the role of designers as advocates for positive change? 

Designers now are working with so many interesting materials, for example: cow blood, scrap metals, scrap wood, or even with mycelium or bacteria to create pigments. We’re seeing a lot more designers thinking seriously about ecology, and any good designer is concerned with the end of life and end of usage. They’re asking themselves, how does this material have a healthy death? How can we give back life? My work is an investigation into what is a healthy material, so what is healthy tanning? What is healthy dyeing? What are healthy finishings? I also started thinking about what a healthy way of recycling offcuts would be. Because even though the materials are from waste, I'm still creating waste in my work. So from these experiments I want to create something beautiful, because the skin itself is beautiful. I want to preserve this beautiful material and create something long lasting. If we’re considering the life cycle of the material, I think designers hold the key to change for sure.

andrealiu.com

Alice Dudgeon’s Labour of Love

Ash Basket. Photograph by Murray Orr. Copyright © Alice Dudgeon 2021. All rights reserved.

By Imogen Hayes

14 April, 2022

Artful Craft is the latest exhibition to launch in our Jubilee Gallery. Curated by MAKE Southwest president and artist Peter Randall-Page, the exhibition features Evolution V, XV, XVI, and XIX, his Rorschach-style ink blots, alongside works from 12 artists who straddle the boundary between fine art and craft-making. Each of these artists combines conceptual thinking with a scientific knowledge of their craft. Peter invited globally recognised artists to share their work in Artful Craft: David Nash RA OBE, Susan Derges, Halima Cassell MBE, David Mach RA, Tavs Jørgensen, Sarah Gillespie, and Marcus Vergette. Each artist was then invited to nominate another artist whose work illustrates the porous boundary between art and craft.  

Artful Craft is a celebration of artists who are embracing technological innovation, as well as those breathing new life into traditional practices. Tavs Jørgensen and Jonathan Keep are at the cutting edge of glass and ceramic technology respectively, using 3D printing and digital fabrication tools to articulate their visions with great sensitivity. Marcus Vergette’s work is a hybrid of the old and the new, as he combines traditional bell foundry casting techniques with digital software to create harmonically structured monumental bronze bells. At the other end of the spectrum, Andrea Liu and Alice Dudgeon are preserving heritage crafts while imagining new possibilities. Andrea Liu turns discarded salmon skins into fish leather, dyes them with her own natural dyes, and weaves them into ‘Gansey’ pattern quilts; while Alice Dudgeon adopts steam bending and hand carving techniques used traditionally in boatbuilding and furniture-making to craft her wooden sculptures.

Contemporary fine artist David Nash, who works with wood in a highly innovative way, nominated Alice, with whom he shares a tremendous understanding and respect for the material. David met Alice when she visited his studio four years ago, and has admired the confidence and sophistication she evidences in her sculpture ever since.

Alice travelled over eight hours from Edinburgh to ensure Winnowing and Ash Basket arrived safely. As she unboxed her sculptures, it was clear why she was reluctant to entrust them to an art courier. Both pieces, though structurally robust, are exceedingly delicate, composed of tapering wooden spines individually steam bent into smooth curves with an exacting eye, and held in tension with dowel pins and linen thread that suspends small grain-like sections. 

Winnowing is named after the process by which chaff is separated from grain. While winnowing is used across cultures, Alice looks to the Amish and Shaker communities for inspiration.

“The Shakers use shallow baskets to collect all the grain, and then they wait for a certain wind to come,” Alice explained. “Then they toss the grain up in the air, and the wind refines the grain from the husk. It's very beautiful to watch the process of the grain being tossed up in the wind and then falling into these amazing shallow baskets. It’s a very slow process.”

Winnowing. Photograph by Samuel Young. Copyright © Alice Dudgeon 2021. All rights reserved.

A happy accident resulted in Winnowing taking on new dimensions:

“I had always intended on fixing these hand carved grain-like pieces in place, but one day the skylight was open in my studio, and the breeze came in and they all started spinning.”

As the basket rocks gently in the breeze, the grains flicker and spin, and the process of winnowing is brought vividly into the mind’s eye, dynamic and vital in its life-sustaining role.

For Alice, there is something transcendental about provision, agricultural labour and working directly with the land. There is something sublime in her craftmanship too: her sculpture Avodah, from the Hebrew for work, worship and service, is one of her most contemplative pieces, earning her the FEUVA Award for Sculpture in 2018. The sculpture, constructed from 136 parts each turned by hand on a lathe, invites the viewer to step inside for a moment of silent reflection. “Avodah was really the start,” Alice said. “All the pieces I've made since Avodah have been focused around the idea of what it means to make as worship or what it means to make and give of yourself physically in your work.”

Avodah. Photograph by Samuel Young. Copyright © Alice Dudgeon 2021. All rights reserved.

I had the opportunity to talk with Alice when she delivered her work ahead of Artful Craft’s opening.

Artful Craft interrogates the perceived binary between art and craft, celebrating artists whose practice straddles this binary. So how do you think your work straddles or subverts the art/craft binary?

Well, in the last three years my focus has become more about process. And, in particular, the process of steam bending and carving, and I think, more and more, it's important for me that everything is manipulated by hand, that there's a lot of physical labour and time involved. The steam bending has just really taken over in the studio, and I’ve been led and directed so much by material. And what I love about working with natural material is that you can try and tame it as much as you like but, ultimately, it's going to have irregularities, it's got a mind of its own, it's going to do its own thing. And so I think that has very much dictated the direction I've gone in. And the irregularities in the movement I get from steam bending with material has led me on that kind of trajectory. And it's a very traditional craft process, obviously, in itself, boatbuilding. I would say, that's really why I straddle the art and craft binary. I mean, obviously, I trained in sculpture, in fine art. So we were very much taught to, at least at my art school, we were taught to make work that was ideas-based and concept-driven. And in my final year, I just spent so much time in the wood workshops. And that has led me, since graduating, to push into the material more than the concepts. But I mean, I'm very much interested in both; everything comes out of my drawings, which obviously come from research and ideas. It’s all ideas-driven but ultimately, the wood is just making sense of the ideas. It’s the material that makes sense of my drawings. 

Avodah is one of your most contemplative pieces, and your work is concerned with labour intensive, repetitive processes, and working directly with the land. So can you talk to me about craft as a means of worship, or worship as a means of craftsmanship, and what Avodah means to you?

I found the process of making Avodah very meditative. I felt in a strange way that I was almost aligning myself with people from the past who were using these processes for purely functional reasons; they were creating these functional objects that had an innate beauty to them. I was essentially turning these broom handles on the lathe again, and again, again, to make Avodah. But I think there’s something to be said about slowing down, you know, the actual strength that you build up in your hands and in your limbs, and that feeling of building up strength with this repetitive physical process, and slowing down. As a Christian, I suppose I was aligning myself with communities like the Shakers and the Amish, who obviously, in practice, are very different to me, in terms of their lifestyles, but I was really interested in their belief that making with excellence, especially in the realms of craft, and furniture, in particular, was an act of worship, or the greatest act of worship. So I think that definitely dictated the processes that I then used working on the lathe: they were all very traditional historical craft processes that they use to create functional objects. And I was slightly subverting that obviously, by then making something that really didn't have much of a function. But again, I think people were double-taking when they were inside the structure because they were walking into what they thought had maybe initially been manufactured en masse, like broom handles manufactured en masse in factories. And then as they got closer, they saw that there were nicks in the wood, or tapered-in joints, and they suddenly realised that there were a lot of irregularities that could only have come by hand manipulation, though Avodah was actually very polished in comparison to my work since then. Now, I actually try and evidence my hand more and more. So I'm sanding a lot less, even between Winnowing and Basket, the two pieces, there's about a year and a half time difference. And you can see that one is quite polished. It's not polished, but you know, there was a lot of sanding involved in Winnowing. And in Basket, you can see the chisel marks, so I used the same processes as in Avodah, but just practised revealing what I've done more and more to the audience, and allowing the eye to bounce along the work’s surface rather than hiding it.

Can you tell me a bit more about Winnowing and Ash Basket?

So I was looking at the process of winnowing in my research for quite a long time, because I've been looking at these communities in the past, Shakers in particular, and how they don’t use machines in the process of harvesting. There are mechanics, but they’re all very traditional and hand driven. And winnowing is a very old process of refining grain. It was that imagery that really informed me introducing grain, or grain-like hand carved sections, and these shallow steamed curves for the baskets. Those were obviously things that I became quite interested in reflecting, and then I started to introduce this linen thread because it was a way to suspend and to add an element of movement to the work, because I really wanted that to come out and almost be a surprise. I wanted to keep that sense of movement that I'm really interested in from these processes, and the way things can change and adapt. I like that curators or whoever's installing the work can change the way the moving components of Winnowing are laid out, so it’s always moving. Then, with Basket, those grain shapes have been carried through into that work, and there’s quite a lot more of them, again, steam bending, but evidencing the chisel a lot more, and creating these curved edges. Also, as a result of Covid, I was thinking more and more about the idea of storing up, and how these communities and these people who are working in tandem with the seasons are always prepared, because they're providing for communities, not just providing for the self. And so I think the image of grain contained in shallow baskets or in taller baskets in my work was inspired by this notion of storing up and provision.

Ash Basket. Photograph by Murray Orr. Copyright © Alice Dudgeon 2021. All rights reserved.

So you've already spoken a little bit about how your faith and your fascination with the Shakers and Amish communities inform your work, but how did you become fascinated with tools and labour and the processes you find in agriculture?

Well, I grew up in a rural village and I think having had access to fields and spending a lot of time just out in the fields, naturally like a sponge I soaked up a lot of what I was looking at. I think a lot of my drawings just look like lots of lines, like flat two dimensional drawings to most people, but I've always viewed them from a bird's eye perspective. And I realised not long after I graduated that especially when it came to looking at fields for example, if you were looking at bird's eye view you would see plough lines like drawings in the land. So I became interested in this idea that ploughs were drawing in the land, and then obviously the shape of the plough is what’s removed from the ground. And from there, I became more and more fascinated by these purely functional objects that are being used to serve a purpose, and yet they have something beautiful about them, whether that's in traditional ploughs, when the metal has been manipulated into these beautiful soft curves; or, for example, I was looking at a really old piece of mine, Plough, which was very influenced by the Egyptian section in the National Museum in Edinburgh. They brought all these Egyptian objects in, and five or so years ago I went in when the exhibition had just opened, and I saw these combs and functional objects that had been carved with flints, and they looked like ploughed land from above. And so it was just, I think, a fascination with these objects and for functional things. But so beautifully made, and so much time being taken. There were no shortcuts, and there was no mass production involved.

Alice Dudgeon and Peter Randall-Page at the Artful Craft opening event. Photograph by Emma Booth.

Each of the Artful Craft exhibitors has a really interesting relationship between resisting and embracing the mechanisation and computerisation of craft processes. How do you feel your work embraces, resists, or responds to the mechanisation of art and craft practices?

I suppose my work resists it. It's not that I’m in any way opposed to mechanisation, because I use machines to take wood from tree form down to these small sections that I'm using. And you can see in the work that I've used all kinds of really tiny drills. I do use machines, but I'm not sure I'm as excited by the possibilities of mechanisation and technology as I am the possibilities of adopting traditional craft processes. I think my method is all about using processes that make sense of my drawings. So up until this point, steam bending and carving have made sense of my drawings: they’ve been a means to bring them off the page and into space. I'm not averse to using machinery, but I think the processes that I'm spending so much time adopting and exploring are kind of… I’m kind of going back.

Your work has a really interesting place in that conversation because you're inspired by ploughs and objects for mechanisation, and yet responding with hand driven processes.

So, it is interesting because most people I speak to who are using the process of steam bending are using it for functional reasons, so it could be for chairs, or it could be Gaze Burvill, who are steam bending huge bits of furniture for the outdoors. So these processes are making sense for them for design reasons, and yet, for me, my use of these processes doesn't really make any sense. Because I'm steaming tiny, really, really narrow sections. And most furniture makers would say to me, why are you bothering? Because the sections are so thin and steam bending takes so much time. So I'm really pushing material to its limits, and yet not really using it in a functional way. So it’s a bit strange! And again, like with carving, spending all the time, but again, not for functional reason… but my interest is in these functional objects. I haven't quite worked out why yet. I think people look at my work, and they don't necessarily know about the process of steam bending. But then they're fascinated that the grain runs through, they can see that it hasn't been cut on a machine. I am interested in people knowing about these processes, knowing that the material has been pushed to its limits.

Your sculpture Billow is made from a fallen sycamore tree found on the Scottish Borders. How often do you work with found material, and how does it inform your concepts?

Yeah, well, all my material is from the Scottish Borders. I try to work with materials that haven’t travelled too far at all, sourced as locally as possible. I do work with fallen trees, and if not, everything has been sustainably grown, and I know how and when it’s been felled, and it's become really fascinating to me to work with a tool that I know has lived and grown nearby, because I then have an understanding of the landscape that I'm living in. And I think I then understand more about my place within Scotland, and I find myself walking past trees and thinking, ‘Oh, that's what I worked with.’ That is really fascinating to me. And also, obviously, there is the sustainable element. I work a lot with ash, and there’s a problem with ash dieback, which David Nash is concerned with too. As a result of ash dieback, there are a lot fewer trees because of the disease they've got. And so in terms of working with it, because ash is the best to work with for steam bending, it's important that I know that it's fallen, or I've sourced it sustainably. I also think really carefully about using all of the wood when I get it, and I can do that with steam bending because I'm able to get curves from very small sections, and I'm not cutting great shapes out and getting waste. My studio is filled with these tiny little offcuts and everything gets used, whether that's in models or for carving. There's also no metal in any of my sculptures, everything is pinned with wood, so often with these fallen trees I get little sections left over that will become pins to connect sections together. I hope, wherever I live, that I can work with what's around me. I feel as if I'm only scratching the surface of wood as a material, and also the processes I'm using, but I feel like I'm getting more and more of an understanding of how the trees around me operate in terms of steaming. And also, with steam bending, you really want to work with air dried material. And that often has to have been dried out for six to nine years before I work with it. So I'm also reliant on sourcing material locally, from people that I know have either been given trees that have fallen, because they’ve been a bit of a nuisance to a landowner. So that helps in terms of knowing where a tree has come from, because it has to be stored somewhere for such a long time, and the traceability is very clear, where it's come from and how long it's been there. And it's been great because I've formed these amazing relationships with other makers that are also using the same material, but in completely different ways. And we're always emailing back and forth, ‘I can’t believe you managed to curve this!’ or, you know, ‘What do I do with this?’, or ‘how is this material working for you?’, because we will often be working from the same tree. 

Artful Craft opening event. Photograph by Emma Booth.

On that note of sustainability, how do you want people to feel about their relationship to the natural world after seeing your work?

I think I would just like them to look again, and maybe to look for a bit longer. And for me one of the greatest outcomes, at least from my work, is if someone stands still in front of it and just pauses for a while. And I think that's what I find I love to do when I'm outdoors, and I think we all need to just take a bit of a breather. I think becoming more curious is a great outcome as well. But I don't really make with any particular intention, or thinking this is what I want the audience to do, or to feel. But I think pausing and being curious are great outcomes. I see the works as structures, so to me I want them to be experienced, or I think about people moving around them. In Avodah obviously people were moving through. I want people to be able to move around and for the sculptures to be in conversation with people, not so small that you have to get up really close, but so that you can move around and see it from different angles. People can navigate around the works and be in conversation with them, rather than viewing these really distant, static things. I think I’ve become a lot more gestural and revealing with my processes, leaving chisel marks and knowing when to stop, and not to endlessly perfect or over-embellish or mask the processes. I had a studio at a furniture maker’s and, having just graduated I was definitely influenced by the fact that all their furniture was so beautifully polished and smoothed. Then I moved out into a sculptor’s building, and I think I then decided I didn’t want to finish my surfaces perfectly, but just leave them raw. So if there are finger marks or dust because I’ve worked it in the studio in a certain way, then that’s okay - it doesn’t have to be removed or covered. I think people are fascinated with how things are made, so if people see that, if they see the process that’s also good. I’m still learning about what it is that’s important in terms of response, and what it is that I want to push more and more, or hold back a bit more. I’m still learning these things myself. 

You can see Winnowing and Ash Basket in our Artful Craft exhibition in the Jubilee Gallery until 2 July, 2022.