End of year wintery - rather than summary : January 2011

Time for an update from freezing South West England. It's been a busy year but the Financial Advisor, Head Gardener, Editor-in-Chief-plus-Fixer and I managed to enjoy a holiday together last month. I should explain that this collection of skills is represented by one supremely talented person and I didn't have to hire a bus for an entire support team. We travelled to Spain and spent a lovely few days meandering down to Lisbon where I was to give my paper at the DHA (Dyes in History and Archaeology) Conference. We know Spain reasonably well but have never been to Portugal before. We were not disappointed. The cork forests, ceramic tiles and textile collection of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian head my list of memorable sights.The tiles and cork forests aren't of course, in the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian but the addition of punctuation to clarify seems less fun than the alternative possibility.

The DHA Conference contained some particularly interesting papers on conservation and dye analysis. There were two historical papers which linked loosely to mine either though orchil or via the nineteenth century. My own paper concerned my research into the orchil trade from Angola through Portugal.

I also gave a paper at the Textile Society Conference held at De Montfort University in Leicester. You can read a succinct summary of the event here written by Dr Mark Nesbitt, Curator of the Economic Botany Collection at Kew. There was a small but very interesting exhibition set up during the conference by several of the speakers. I took some orchil related material - see the image opposite.

The Journal

In my last entry here I wrote that since March I have been on the editorial team of the Journal of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. Some months before I joined the committee I submitted an article on acid dyes / French Dyes for silk-painting. It has now been published.

The Journal has a website here. If you are interested in my article, it is available in Issue 236 and you can buy it online from the Journal website. It so happens that in the same issue there is an interesting profile by Anna Champeney of Danish weaver Lotte Dalgaard.

I spent several days with Anna Champeney in 2008 when she taught me how to dye with orchil in Galicia, Spain. She has just been to Lanzarote and has written up her visit to the cochineal project there. I wrote about my dye experiments with it here earlier in the year. Anna has written up her own experiences on her November 2010 blog.

Tiles from the Convento de Cristo, Tomar, Portugal

Me, showing a length or orchil dyed silk during the Leicester Conference organised by the Textile Society. Photo thanks to Mark Nesbitt