555 x 575 mm and 315 x 300 mm and 260 x 280 mm
When we moved into 12 Ripplevale Grove after, at least for me, twenty-two years in 217 Liverpool Road, we had the terrific opportunity of re-thinking the space in which we lived. Our new house was considerably larger and offered, amongst other things, a separate study for both Dais and I. This allowed each of us to express ourselves without compromise and gave us some privacy and an ideal place to work. We also needed some extra pieces of furniture, albeit that everything from Liverpool Road did find a place in our new home. On one sortie to a furniture warehouse under the arches in Camden Town offering an eclectic range of styles gone by, I found a beautiful oak chair carved in the gothic style, which I bought for Dais for his study. By that time we had commissioned Kris, my girl friend from aged eight, to paint the door and shutter panels of his study and he wanted the design to be based upon nasturtiums. Kris duly got to work and the result was beautiful.
The gothic chair had been re-upholstered and finished in natural linen and I thought that if I stitched a needlepoint to cover the linen adjusting Kris’s nasturtiums to fit, the effect would be charming. I went to work and now the seat, back and fronts show the result of my labours. Once I had finished the needlepoint I knew that I needed some braid to finish the edges and it was then that I remembered something from my junior school days. I could make my own braid. I needed an old wooden cotton-reel into which I hammered four thin panel-pins, positioned in the four corners of a square at the top of the reel with the hole centrally placed. With the aid of a crotchet hook, I wound the embroidery wool around the pins and pulled the lower level of wool over the pin and moved the reel around and did likewise to the next one. Doing this in a continuous fashion is a form of knitting and the result is a woollen tube which works its way down the centre hole of the reel. I remember sitting in the blazing sun somewhere in the tropics on a lounger on the QE2 busily working away making this braid much to the amazement of passing fellow passengers, who wore a bemused look that suggested - What on earth is he doing now? Many, of course couldn’t resist asking and much chatting accompanied the tatting.
Chair upholstered by Nigel Quiney.
SEASON’S GREETINGS
David Evans