'Inspiration': Wendy Pidgeon's embroidery

The last few months have been excitingly busy. Amongst other things, I've been very happily teaching the history of folklore studies to a rather excellent group of continuing education students. Their stimulating questions have been helping as I'm formulating a series of forthcoming conference papers on the topic, and I've also gone back to agreeing to review too many books as a way of keeping abreast with what's going on out there. This has all helped at a time when I currently don't have even any honorary affiliations on the go. (University-based readers, I'm sowing seeds here...)

 

But I remain a folklorist because I'm interested in expressive folkloric culture and the minutiae of day-to-day cultural practices. From my initial interest in folk song, through my doctoral research in folk belief, to my current preoccupation with disciplinary history, I may sometimes have given the impression of not being too attentive to material culture. (A curatorial colleague has on occasion teased me for just this alleged failing). It isn't quite true, though, as my real joy this week at seeing a small but astonishing museum exhibition of embroidery has confirmed.

 

 

'Inspiration' at Havering Museum, Romford, is a small representative selection of the work of the late Wendy Pidgeon, my father's cousin. (She was technically a cousin, but I'll always think of her as an aunt). Wendy had been a pattern cutter professionally until the birth of her children. She later studied and then taught embroidery and was an active and brilliant craftswoman but, as her son Andrew noted in his eulogy for her, her creative practice encompassed art as well as craft, and she saw a very definite relation and distinction between them.

 

The single case at Havering Museum shows more of the artistic thinking, including her wonderful creative experimentation to highlight the range afforded by her technique. The transfer of Picasso imagery to fabric in 3-D models is a good example of this kind of testing of the boundaries of art and craft.

 

Wendy's phenomenal technical ability and wonderful eye are clear, as are her curiosity and experimentation. The case contains one of her many study notebooks, which contain ideas, images, test pieces etc. But even this is only part of her range. She had specialised in ecclesiastical embroidery, and the church of Edward the Confessor just round the corner in Romford Market is rich with examples of her work. (The piece below was displayed during her funeral service). Her craft became active in her belief practice, and she contributed to the very fabric (literally) of her church.

 

 

Such levels of skill and accomplishment in vernacular art and craft would already be worth celebrating, but there was even more to Wendy. She was, also, an organiser and developer of community for the learning and transmission of these neglected and threatened techniques. This was evident in her adult education teaching, but it also led her as a London College of Fashion student to seek out the Embroiderers Guild. On finding that there was no local branch, Wendy and Pat Hamlin set out to form one in 1992. She was tireless in working to cultivate and nurture. Romford Embroiderers (now no longer part of the Embroiderers Guild) continues to this day. Again, this guidance and development of community spanned all of her approaches to embroidery, as she also ran her local Church Embroidery Guild.

 

It was a joy and a privilege to know her and to see her work celebrated in this way. It is to be hoped that we will be able to document her accomplishments in some further, more permanent way. In the meantime, the display runs until later this week.

Latrinalia as cultural commentary

Shortly before Christmas 2024 I saw this splendid piece of latrinalia in the centre of Newport, Isle of Wight. It made me laugh inordinately, because I particularly admired the combination of folk technique - graffiti - and the expression of high standards of folk aesthetics.

 

I've been busy, it seems

I'm trying not to turn this into an annual round-up rather than an actual blog, but 2024 was quite the year for me. I spent it as Co-I on the AHRC-funded 'Folklore Without Borders' research network, looking at ways of embedding greater diversity, equality and inclusion in British folkloristics.

The network was fascinating and gruelling: it raised more questions than it could possibly answer, so we feel a definite need to continue that work beyond the original funded period. Economic privilege and exclusion were already identified as big issues for the network, because we looked to folklore as a broader assemblage of researchers, practitioners, creative industry professionals, entrepreneurs and communicators, all working across the domains of academia, independent stakeholding and cultural industries. Given this, we're looking at ways of ensuring the broadest and most equitable access and participation. It will continue, because the issues it is addressing remain.

The American Folklore Society have been an invaluable project partner throughout, so it was a great delight to return to their conference to present on it in November. (We also rescued a dog, but that's a story for another time). We already have several conference presentations planned for this year to discuss its work further.

Part of this work has involved deepening our historical understanding of our discipline in order to know more about how we arrived at the present position. I'd originally started writing about this rather side-on, through considerations of folkloresque takes on folkloristics. I'm pleased that my latest work in this direction, writing about Doctor Who and the Grimm brothers, appeared in a fine collection of essays published in the summer: Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Folkloresque, edited by Jeffrey A. Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster. Not the least pleasure of the AFS conference in Albuquerque was getting to hang out with the editors and other contributors.

I've also finally got round to talking about that history more directly in various ways. After the slightly pretextual comment on the Grimms, it's been a pleasure recently to review Ann Schmiesing's new biography of the brothers for BBC History Magazine (forthcoming). In the summer I finally published a long-delayed article on 'Some Unpublished Correspondence Between William Forsell Kirby and William Alexander Clouston', which is available Open Access. I'm also shortly to be teaching a course on the history of folkloristics, that I'm intending to be the basis for further published work.

Finally, the end of the year saw publication of perhaps the most personal piece I've yet published. '"The Sky is Too Big": Reclaimed Flatlands and Their Communities, What Happens When the Edge of the World Becomes Its Centre, and Romanticization in Fieldwork' developed from a paper I gave at the FLS conference in 2023. While it's very specific to my own position in relation to Romney Marsh, I think that its questions about the personal positioning of the researcher are more widely applicable. That said, a great deal of my delight in its publication was being able to share such magnificent vistas as this one.