Friday June 11th dawned greyish and damp but by about 12.30 when we were all assembled at Ann’s lovely house and garden in Dulwich Village we were able to have a garden party. Some of us even ate out of doors!

Ann showed me round the garden which was looking splendid; I was excited by a pink rambler rose called ‘Bush Noisette’ which filled the air with scent while covering quite a space with small but lavish pale pink flowers – I am now hankering after one of my own, especially as it seems to like shade. (Mine is in full sun – Ann)

I was also particularly impressed by the central pond filled with white waterlilies, and the flourishing lemon verbena (my favourite plant of all) by the door into the garden.

No garden is complete without a cat in charge and I said hello to two very beautiful ones who were kind enough to let me invade their territory.

The lunch was delicious and the conversation fun: all in all I had a great time and as a non-embroiderer feel very pleased to have been invited – thank you very much!

While all the work was of a high standard and  sensitively displayed, there were some outstanding pieces which lifted the spirits. I would like to mention a few of these which did it for me.  For sheer colour and a good sense of design, works by Sue Merifield, Ann Rutherford, Janice Lawrence, Pat Cove and Margaret Griffiths gave the show a vibrancy and contrasted well with smaller and quieter works such as Peggy Field’s painterly Woodland Walk.

Moyra McNeill’s touching and beautiful memorial to her brother sat comfortably alongside the major and extraordinary work by Liz Holliday documenting her family history.  Nearby, the smaller pieces by Bridget Barber showed an intensity of colour with a richness of stitch.  Surjeet Hussain drew on her cultural heritage producing three charming embroideries incorporating mirrors whilst Liz Ashurst dipped into her passion for Poland producing a surge of colour rippling through her  wall hanging. On a similar scale, Liz Longhurst’s subdued and unusual juxtaposition of colour produced a well balanced piece.

Overall, a very impressive show.

John trained originally as a Silversmith Designer  at Canterbury College of Art and later at Goldsmiths’ College, London where he was privileged to have Constance Howard as his personal tutor.  He has taught for a number of years in adult and higher education helping to formulate the Degree course at Sir John Cass Faculty of  Arts, City of London Polytechnic, now London Metropolitan University.  More recently, he has been working freelance as an Interior Designer.

Despite threat of ash from the Icelandic volcano’s eruptions, we were able to leave Gatwick for Krakow on time. We stayed in the historic centre of the city at the Hotel Royal. Poland is emerging gradually from the communist era and this is obvious in cities like Krakow where historic buildings are slowly being restored.

Our first visit was to the LUD ART WORKSHOP where we were welcomed by a group of skilled embroiderers who maintain and interpret the traditional embroidery of the Krakow area. We watched a demonstration of lace making and were shown how to tie the traditional woman’s head dress and were allowed to photograph and sketch their work. The next day Liz and I saw similar historic embroidery on costumes in the ethnographic museum together with samples from other regions of Poland. Our first day ended at Polonia House, a concert hall where we listened to a wonderful Chopin piano recital.

The next day we visited Wavel Castle opposite our hotel. The castle is now a World Heritage site so has attracted overseas money to enable a programme of restoration. We saw some superb tapestries and embroideries but there was no lingering as our formidable guide swept us along. The castle and its history are highly symbolic for Poland, a country that has been fought over and occupied over many centuries.

Before leaving Krakow we had an evening meal, entertained by live music in one of the many small Jewish restaurants in the Ghetto. Although life is coming back to the Ghetto, it has an air of melancholy with many empty unclaimed buildings and few people on the streets. We saw the factory where Schindler sheltered Jewish people during the Nazi occupation. The building is due to open this summer as a museum.

The next day we set off into the country. We visited the Wielicza Salt Mines descending 379 steps to the lowest level to see caverns dating back to the Middle Ages and a whole cathedral carved in the salt and rock by the miners in their spare time! We drove through Spring countryside with orchards of cherry trees in flower and more wild flowers than I have seen for many years to stay at Nowy Zmigrod.

A highlight of the trip was a visit to the Magurski  Park Museum at Krempna This is a new museum with excellent displays of the local ecology. It is involved in environmental research and in running a schools education programme. We had a very good evening meal cooked by Zbys and friends and a lunch with more friends the next day en route to Zakopane, a mountain resort. We spent the last part of the trip here. We visited craftspeople in the surrounding villages including a woodcarver and the studio of a remarkable woman icon artist who paints on glass. This part of Poland has a rich craft tradition, passed down through the generations and inspired by a Catholic faith. We sketched and photographed, encouraged by Liz, and came home with plenty of material to remind us of an inspiring holiday.

Mulhouse has an unusual history. It started in 803 as a river settlement and trading link; there is now a canal linking it to the Rhone and Rhine. In the C15th  it became a free Imperial city under the Holy Roman Empire but in the C17th  it was added to the Swiss confederation (1647).   Under Napoleon’s expansionist policies in 1798 the city became part of France. After the Franco- Prussian war (1870s) it was ceded to Germany where it remained until 1918 when the Versailles Treaty returned it to France.

The huge success of Indian printed textiles in the C17th and C18th  threatened European manufacturers who could not fix colour till the C17th.  Three Frenchmen, Georges Roques,  Antoine de Beaulieu and Coeurdoux studied the making and manufacture of textiles in the far east. The French had a passion for indiennes or toiles peintes.

In the 1700s a Swiss artist, two merchants and a financier set up a mill in Mulhouse and started to produce printed cottons, much of the raw cotton coming to France from the Levant and Louisiana.  This industry continued into the late  C 20th.

The museum displays fabrics brought back from India and other eastern countries which inspired their designs.  One room shows all the parts needed in the manufacturing process. Origins of dyes from plant, mineral and chemical sources, design books and sample books, wood blocks, metal impressed blocks or coppering are all shown.  A huge machine with engraved copper cylinder rollers based on the inventor James Bell’s patented design of 1785 dominates the display. One example shows the processes of adding one colour print on to another.

Another room is devoted to the Paisley shawl craze which started when ladies wore those seductive muslin empire style dresses and needed a warm wrap or a quick cover up.  The designs of these shawls became so intricate and complex and if one does not like the result one has to admire the craftsmanship. They were popular throughout the C19th but I thought looked best with an empire style dress.

Many examples of textiles they had produced were on show including Liberty designs.

There was also a Christian Lacroix group of exotic dresses using a variety of brilliant patterns and sumptuous silk fabrics all put together to form a dress guaranteed to stop the Paris traffic!

One of the exhibits was an interesting model of the enormous mill and on our way back to Paris we passed the derelict remains of a once glorious industry of printed textiles.

P.S. There is a Mercure Hotel close to the station and 5 mins. away from this museum and several other museums including Cité du Train.

Battling against the weather, on the first wet day for weeks, several of the committee met up at Box Hill. After a very damp walk, the sun eventually broke through. With a freshened landscape, each one of us was inspired to experiment.

Liz Ashurst and Linda worked in black and white. Liz Holliday used inks to produce a landscape, while Linda simplified the telescoped perspective to make an attractive stitch-like piece. Kate and Liz H sat elsewhere dabbling with colour and texture using their fingers to paint. Cathy, having had a crash course in wild flower identification from Liz, focused on small detailed drawings.

Many walks fan out from the National Trust Centre. There is also a café, picnic area and room to hire, so the venue has good facilities. It would make an ideal location for al fresco inspiration.

Liz is planning at least one sketching day in the programme for next year and has already thought about ways to motivate our approach. So bring your chosen materials and join in 2011.

We all helped in the large garden, and in my grandmother’s garden too, growing vegetables and plenty of fruit.  We also kept hens, so provided a great deal of our own food.

After the war my grandmother returned to complicated crochet, making mostly mats and deep lace to edge tablecloths.  My mother made clothes, but with new materials, and also developed a love of crewel wool work.  We still have the firescreen she made for us.  She also enjoyed crochet, which I did not.

I made most of my own clothes, and knitted jumpers, but also did embroidery as a hobby, making plenty of articles for my bottom draw (how old fashioned!).

In the late 40s I entered a local embroidery competition, my stitching was fine but I had used different coloured stranded cottons to the ones in the magazine design, so was heavily criticized.  Thank goodness things have changed and we now have so many threads differing in colour and texture, and stitching is more flexible.

My other grandmother mainly did tatting for edgings.  Her resident maid made prodded rag-rugs – her aim was to cover the floor of the cottage my grandfather promised her when she retired, which she did using mainly wool tweed samples and mens old suits.

My great uncle taught me netting and knotting.  His love was canvas wool work to his own designs.  His garden was his inspiration.  He grew up on Portland, hence the knowledge of fishing, but the canvas work enabled him to keep his hands presentable for working in the bank.

What followed next in the 50s, University, a Science degree, marriage, medical research.  The next big change was four children – three girls and the youngest a boy – so lots of clothes  to make, and stuffed toys galore. In the 60s I went to an Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute.  This started a love of going to embroidery exhibitions.  I developed a fascination with needle and thread and joined the Embroiderers’ Guild. My daughters all made bobbin lace and were taught by an old lady locally.  Much later (in the 80s) came the chance of taking C and G Parts I and II at Godalming, after that to Wey Valley Workshop and the NEG.

One granddaughter is now on a Maths MSc course but did make bobbin lace.  Another, younger, granddaughter also wants to study Maths at university and does cross-stitch.  So crafts will continue.

Our guide took us on a journey through French art from 1865 to 1905.

The first picture we studied was a copy by Manet of his Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. This painting shows a picnic in a naturalistic woodland setting. There are two women, one in the background collecting water and one naked, sitting on the ground with two fully clothed men. This was considered shocking at the time partly because the artist was painting a modern day scene and he included a naked woman. Nakedness was only acceptable in classical art when related to legend and mythology. He also was exploring the idea of peripheral vision and how this could be used in painting by making some areas of the picture less precise and clear.

Next we looked at Manet’s last large painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère 1881-2. Even though the composition seems fairly simple, it also has complex areas and is painted quite sketchily in parts to represent periphery vision. It is a record of modern day at the time it was painted but it has dark undertones with the groups of bottles, triangles, flowers and the two mirrored figures which do not seem to be at the correct angle. The barmaid’s melancholy contrasts with the general air of merriment.

We continued by looking at Lordship Lane Station, Dulwich by Pissaro 1871, La Loge by Renoir 1874, Antibes 1888 by Monet  and The Banks of the Seine, Argenteuil 1888 by Monet. These showed contemporary scenes and the development of brushwork and the use of colour.

Cézanne and Gauguin were featured. Gauguin’s evocative paintings from the South Seas Islands revealed dark images with sinister meanings in the back ground and Cézanne’s painting of the plaster ‘putto’ shows his interest in different planes and their relationships which heralded later styles of art.

The next area housed two Van Gogh works, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889, with a Japanese print on the wall and touches of unrealistic colour giving the painting more vibrancy.

The second also shows the Japanese influence and is a landscape depicting an orchard of peach trees. Wonderful to see especially after visiting the recent exhibition at the RA. Seurat’s pointillist paintings were also here.

We were then taken upstairs to look at the work of Derain at the seaside at Collioure 1905. These showed the development in the use of colour by the Fauve painters. The guide answered a question that I have often wanted to ask.  Why is cutting edge art  from the early part of the last century framed in such hideous frames? He said that the dealers did this to make them more fit into the décor of the homes of the purchasers.

This visit put work by various artists into context, was a chance to study them in greater detail and made me realise how they influenced each other.  The richness of the colour and texture contrasted with the exhibition of Michelangelo’s exquisite drawings at the same gallery and Bill Fontana’s River Sounding, an acoustic journey, at the basement level on the far side of Somerset House.

For many years they have run day and evening classes for students of all abilities, under the direction of Caroline Bartlett, but last September a new course was launched for advanced embroiderers. Fifteen students were enrolled after interviews and I was lucky enough to be accepted.

The classes are held all day on Saturdays in blocks of lessons, four weeks on and four weeks off to give time for expanding on the work started in class. The aim is to encourage skills and confidence to enable students to develop their own work independently once the course is completed. It culminates in an exhibition.

We have a variety of excellent tutors, mainly Louise Baldwin and Rachel Gornall for design and inspiration and days with Heather Belcher (felt work) and Charlotte Hardy (drawing and printing. By the end of January we were planning our own projects and working on them, with individual tuition from the tutors, and in July  a selection of all the work will be exhibited.

I am finding it quite hard work, but very interesting and stimulating, as one learns not only from the teachers but from the other students. It is fascinating to see how the subject for the year – Unfolding – can be interpreted in so many different ways.

I was persuaded to travel ‘wheelchair assisted’ as we were to travel by Easyjet and Sarah knew I would not be capable of racing across the tarmac to grab a good seat I won’t bore you with the complications of cancelled trains, work on the underground, my metal knee setting off the security alarm, Sarah’s homoeopathic medicines (small phials of white powder) being questioned as illegal drugs and a rather overweight airport attendant shrieking that we were going to miss the flight and then Sarah having to run, pushing me in the wheelchair and pulling my suitcase, but it was worthy of ‘Carry On Up the Airport’.

The conservation department is in the newer part of the university on the south side of the Tagus. It is a marvellous facility, with a huge studio for each of the many disciplines, books textiles, paper, photographs, paintings, ceramics, film and several others. Each studio was so well equipped that I can imagine it being the envy of many UK departments, but then Portugal has the continually increasing endowment of the Gulbenkian Foundation, which provides the funding for many forms of art.

I was taken to see the textile conservation department, where twelve students were sitting along the side of a long bench working on a C16th silk tapestry, which was in a sad state, very dirty and worn round the edges and with several holes. Before it could be washed, it was being mounted on a silk backing sheet with tiny running stitches. What a labour of love. I was able to talk to the students for they all spoke excellent English. Since most conservation literature published is in English, to be fluent in the language is a requirement to join a course. I talked to one woman assistant from Romania, who was in Lisbon because in her country, the only art conservation is on icons. She had, therefore, also worked in Florence and Paris in order to gain the necessary experience of conserving other art forms.

One of my favourite parts of the city is the Baixa at the bottom of the hill from the old Jewish quarter. After the earthquake, the area was rebuilt in a grid pattern and the designer, Pombal, intended that the streets take the names of the crafts and businesses carried out there like Rua da Prata (Silversmiths’ street) and Rua da Sapateiros (Cobblers’ street). Although modern banks and offices have somewhat disturbed these divisions, plenty of traditional stores remain: the central section of Rua da Conceicao is lined on either side with haberdashers. Beads, ribbons, sequins, buttons of every sort, silks and fabrics in mouth-wateringly gorgeous colours, patterns and weaves. If you go to Lisbon, don’t miss it.

Whilst writing this letter to you, I am once again in Poland enjoying a break in the spring sunshine. But as you must surely know, all is not well: the country is in a state of shock and mourning after the appalling air crash in Smolensk on Saturday 12th April. Red and white flags are flying at half mast trailing black ribbons, everywhere is subdued. TV and newspapers show us the grim pictures of the fated plane and later the official reception of the coffins at the Presidents palace in Warsaw. This is yet another cycle in the tragic history of Poland. In an age of rapid communication, travel, climate change and the threat of terrorism we must now expect the unexpected, hoping against hope that it doesn’t happen in our back yard. Yet none of us is immune to tragedy and catastrophe whether on a national or personal scale.

Anthea Godfrey preparing to speak to us at the AGM

Sometimes this can lead to an outpouring of creativity and renewal as clearly illustrated in Anthea Godfrey’s lecture at our AGM.  She talked about her mother Margaret Nicholson, an imposing and remarkable lady who I remember meeting briefly at the London College of Fashion. Margaret was born in 1913 in Sheffield. Her family was far from well off but at an early age she showed great talent for drawing. This was greatly encouraged by her grandfather who adored her and at the age of 15 she gained a bursary to go to Art School. Eight years later she began her career in the Fashion industry in Northampton which included designing shirts for C&A and Selfridges. At the same time she became a salon model so she learned both sides of the business. During the war Margaret was evacuated to Evesham where she worked in the local labour exchange. After the war she met her future husband Ian who was an electrical engineer. They settled down to married life and lived in several places including Reading, Potters’Bar and London. During this time they suffered the loss of no less than seven stillborn babies until eventually Anthea was born. It is hard to imagine how this couple coped with their grief but both of them must have had great determination and optimism. Margaret immersed herself in working for the Women’s Institute, the NSPCC, the Crafts Committee and later collaborated on projects with Avril Colby and Laura Ashley.

At some point she also took a course in horticulture because she always loved flowers and floristry. With her boundless energy and idealism she joined the Embroiderers’ Guild and was the first tutor to teach the City and Guilds certificate, one of her students being Audrey Walker.

Later, at the invitation of Dorothy Allsopp, she began to run courses on embroidery for the ILEA. This led to her appointment as lecturer at the London College of Fashion where she revolutionised the department with a fresh approach to design, filling the fashion houses with her students. As a consequence, the College now runs a foundation degree in fashion, embroidery and theatrical costume.

Throughout her life, Margaret somehow found time to develop her own work with a special interest in hand stitchery, gold work, or nué and beadwork. Her commissions included the Mother’s Union banner for Coventry cathedral, the St. Clare panels and 70 pieces for the Guild’s portfolio. When her husband died, Margaret moved in with Anthea and at the age of 65 started on a new series of work. Her designs were inspired by her passion for heads, plants and flowers, Byzantine, Japanese and Aztec patterns. According to Anthea she had a cupboard full of beads, some of which she dyed to make many exquisite necklaces. All the examples of her work and sketchbooks which Anthea brought for us to view showed a sensitive use of colour and pattern with superb technical ability. Today her idealism with her love of embroidery and fashion is still continuing through the work of her daughter who shows the same modesty and enthusiasm as her mother.

At present there seems to be a feast of art exhibitions in London: Arshile Gorky, Paul Nash and Van Gogh. I visited the R.A. over the Easter weekend due to a longstanding interest in Van Gogh. His brushwork seems to have an affinity with stitch and I love his use of colour. The thoughts expressed through his letters to his brother Theo, revealed an articulate and highly intelligent man setting out on a spiritual path for truth – whatever the cost. As you know, his awareness of everything he saw and sought to convey, was heightened by his possible bi-polar condition leading to his suicide at the early age of 37 years. This would seem to be yet another tragedy but seen in the light of today a triumph of creativity over adversity leaving us with a visual record of what it is to be truly human.

In our own way, we hope that our forthcoming exhibition at East Grinstead will inspire others with hope and encouragement to try their hand at some artistic pursuit which will immeasurably enrich their lives.