Embroidery

Hawthorne & Heaney for Luke Edward Hall

February 27, 2020 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Hands up, who wants to live in a space like this?Luke Edward Hall

If you are anything like us then you haven’t got enough hands to express that completely. This shot is from the cottage of Luke Edward Hall, artist and designer who curated this space in his destinctive style. Hall graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2012, setting up his studio in 2015 and has not stopped since.

Luke Edward HallHawthorne & Heaney

His historically influenced, slightly eccentric flair has sucessfully been adapted to many different outcomes, having collaborated with the likes of Lanvin, Burberry, Berry Bros. and Rudd on wine labels, slippers with Stubbs and Wootton, ceramics with Richard Ginori and home accessories with The Rug Company.

Luke Edward Hall

Since 2018 we have had the pleasure of working on the occasional piece for him, using our skills to bring his style to an embroidered textile outcome. Once upholstered they make for really striking center pieces.

Luke Edward Hall Luke Edward Hall

We work very closely with the original artwork to maintain the immediacy of Hall’s illustrations, to emulate their charm in stitches. Thinking carefully about the way that would have been drawn initially, the order of the strokes and the charater of the drawing medium used.

Hawthorne & Heaney

Hall’s choice of colour is always spot on and is one of the main features that gives his works such a destinctive style.

Hawthorne & Heaney

To find out more about Luke Edward Hall, check out his website or his unsurprisingly beautifully curated instagram account.

Hawthorne & Heaney visits McQueen’s Old Bond Street Show Space

February 6, 2020 by Natasha Searls-Punter

London is very lucky to be able to offer a wealth of great free exhibitions and museums on many subjects. This open to all attitude really helps to keep feeding the minds of our designers and innovaters that one can go out and have your eyes opened to all sorts of information. One such jem that might be a little lesser known is the top floor of the flagship Alexander McQueen store on Old Bond Street.

They have started to use the stop floor as more of an exhibition type space, sharing insights from the vast archives that the house of McQueen holds. At the moment, the space is dedicated to roses, curated by the Creative Director Sarah Burton.

What we found really special about this space, as an embroiderer in particular is that you can get right up close to the pieces to see the details often lost in show and large scale exhibitions. Something that we found even with very well done exhibitions like Savage Beauty. In addition to this they are sharing a lot of the background research and technical craftsmanship that goes into making a collection and show with this kind of dramatic results. There are development moodboards, fitting notes, embroidery placements onto pattern pieces and draping directed onto the model. There is also a viewing booth with footage from the shows to fully round out the experience and see it in the final context for which it was intended to be consumed.

If you find yourself in the area, it’s definately worth a trip it to see some beautiful things and get some of the background scoop on how these things all come together. The notes and quotes from behind the scenes really give you a sense of being emersed into their world. We are already looking forward

Hawthorne & Heaney for Watts and Co.

January 30, 2020 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Just a short one today, but we really wanted to share this stunning ‘three keys’ cope design we produced for Watts and Co last year. The combination of colours really pops, makes us think that yellow is a bit under used when it looks this good on mass.

The keys themselves are all bullion work in silver, in a combination of smooth and rough purl for texure . Edges in Pearle purl for defination.

Hawthorne & Heaney for Nygaards Bataljon

January 23, 2020 by Natasha Searls-Punter

In celebration of their 162nd anniversary, The Nygaards Bataljon from Norway commisioned us to produce a new flag for their ceremonies. The Nygaards Bataljon is a corps for boys from Norway founded in 1857.

As part of the celebrations they toured around Denmark, visiting some stunning locations in Aarhus, Sommerland and back to Bergen (Norway).

Here are a couple of clos ups of the flag now you have seen it out and about in action.

The stitching of the castle was pretty dense and rich on this double sided banned, and I’m sure you will agree that the yellow on the blue ground is very striking. The embroidery was finished off with a luxurious navy fringing around the edge.

Hawthorne & Heaney visit’s S.E.W’s International Contemporary Stitched Art Exhibition

December 26, 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Last month, the Society for Embroidered Works held their very first exhibiton dedicated solely to embroidery. The International Contemporary Stitched Art Exhibiton was held in a characterful space in Clerkenwell, the turn out for quite a niche exhibition looked to be pretty good.

‘Despite her strength she remained on guard 1’ 25×21 cm by Christina MacDonald

The exhibition a great cross section of stitched art in its many forms, as you can see from the few photos included here, the range was quite broad so there was a little something to interest everyone.

‘Lady Gaga’ 34×34 cm by Sarah Gwyer

Providing a platform for stitched art is an important step in elevating the stitched art’s status within the artwork as historically it has been downgraded from art and though of more as ‘women’s work’ or ‘home crafts’. Whilst one might argue these terms to be fair, it would be equally fair to say that given the skills and conceptual strenghts of these pieces shown are most certainly ‘art’.

‘A Benediction from the Old World’ 62×46 cm by Kate Tume

Presenting them in this manner is an important part of S.E.W’s bigger mission to ‘redefine’ the stitched arts to a more apropriate status. If you would like to read more about S.E.W’s mission, have a look at their website.

‘Sisters’ 56x72cm by Bridget Steel-Jessop

Given the level of work on display at this first exhibition, we can’t wait to see what they will present to the art world next year!

‘The girl of the Vale’ 33x30cm by Rowena Liley

Hawthorne & Heaney for Ugg Boots

November 14, 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

With Christmas approaching, we are springing up all over the place for personalisation event. We go into stores, with our machines and personalise people’s purchases from that store while you wait adding that extra special touch.

Recently we have been going to Ugg stores, in a wide range of locations, to add people’s initials to their Ugg boots. Most of these events were all on the same days in all the different locations so it didn’t matter where you were, we were probably close by!

Le Marais Store, Paris

Manchester Store, UK

Oberhausen Store, Germany

Lyon Store, France

St Germain Store, Paris

Bluewater Store, UK

Westfield Store, London

We have a few more of these Ugg events coming up in December, so watch our instagram for details of where you might be able to catch us while you can.

Hawthorne & Heaney for FKA Twigs

July 31, 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

It has been three years since FKA Twigs has given a live performance so when she announced her return to music with new songs and the ‘Magdalene’ tour, it was a safe bet that it was going to be epic. From all accounts, she has not disappoint as many people have been describing as ‘a masterpiece’ (anothermag.com) ‘feels at times more like an avant-garde dance piece than a pop show’ (NME).

Unsurprisingly, when superstar stylists Ed Kay and Matthew Josephs contatcted us, we jumped at the chance to work on the embroidery for the tour costumes. We produced a series of 5 pieces which formed a part of this visual treat and are delighted with how they turned out!Bandana and head scarf with leopard print sleeved corset

Leopard print sleeved corset

Monogram silver corset

Hawthorne & Heaney on Textiles in Art

April 9, 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Embroidery, much like fabric, is not made to last forever. So when we are looking for examples of historical textiles, sometimes, they simply do not exisit anymore as the fabrics disintergrate with age and use. However we do still have a source of what textiles might have looked like in their glory days in the form of painting.

During a recent trip to Amsterdam in the Rijksmuseum, we came across some wonderful examples of historical painting which showed great detail of the textiles that they protrayed.

Girl In White Kimono by George Hendrik Breitner

1894

most likely showing a print of Japanese origin

Pendant portrait of Oopjen Coppit By Rembrandt

1634

Demonstrating the fineness and whiteness of her flat lace collar

Portrait of Emperor Napoleon I by François-Pascal Simon baron Gérard

1804

Depicting traditional goldwork techniques and bullion fringing

We also have had one of our interns, Amy Pickard working on a project for us in house where she chose a painting which featured a beautiful piece of textiles and has been working to recreate it herself.

For the project, she starting point with a visit to the National and National Portrait Galleries. Here she collected primary research of examples of historical textiles. There was a lot of symmetry and geometric shapes as well as a heavy use of floral motifs. It was wonderful to see so many paintings with gorgeous details and being able to name techniques documented.

Hawthorne & Heaney on Textiles in Art London Hand Embroidery

After the trip, the photos were sorted through and drawing were made of some of the details. For this she used a lot of Ecclesiastical paintings or portraits of past nobels.

Along with the photos she assembled a moodboard to help to keep her on track with the aims of the project.

Having attended a tambour beading class with our partner company, (London Embroidery School) she decided to recreate one of the motifs using this technique.

And then followed up with two other samples on velvet in CAD machine embroidery using similar repeats from the isolated motifs.

All in all we are really excited by the outcomes of the project and think that Amy should be really please with them too!