Sewing Quarter: An interview with Philip Jacobs (Kaffe Fassett Collective Designer)

welcome to Saren quarter on location we don't do this very very rarely but for some people we make an exception and our gentleman today is as an incredible exception ladies if I'm really really honored to be sat here with Phillip Jacobs hello hello thank you for inviting us into your treasure trove yes a lovely of you all that comes out oh we've had a lovely day we've had a superb time down it's so beautiful so we find ourselves in Dorset which is where Philip you may go home for a majority of the year and yeah and here from March till November so the best part of the year yeah when I arrived this March it was fixed now and I only just made it here there are some steep hills we found coming down yeah which was fun when they'd closed the road and we had to then turn around and anyway now at the moment you're here you're designing and bringing together glorious new artworks and this is why we've we've come to see you today because on sewing quarter we have the privilege of launching your latest range which is called Arcadia how did this all come about um well Arcadia is a new collection from my own label the free spirit fabrics which is my labels called Snow Leopard designs which I mean going for a huge amount of time has it this is still relatively new it still quite a new brand Snow Leopard and because my work with the Kay facet collective was selling so well the people at free spirit asked me to produce another line and I've always loved snow leopards as they're such elusive mystical creatures I thought Snow Leopard would be a fantastic name for a new line of fabrics it's a sneaky one here yes behind you you have to be careful I think he's so snow leper came about and this is the range that we are now now launching which is absolutely exquisite but I think there might have been a little AR har moment there for for a lot of you at home that's where I recognize this star from because of course you have been part of the K fasiq collective so there's k4 he describes it as sort of three musketeers there's yourself there Brendan and of course case but he takes cave takes your designs and then plays with the color because actually you do so much there's not time to do all the color that's sort of how it works I go along and visit cave at the moment about once a year normally in November and we call it caves Christmas that's when I I um you know during the year which I've done and then together we pick out which designs would be good to go in the K facet collective pledge and with human Brandon when he first asked me if I would do designing for perhaps work quilting I said to him is it okay if you work on the colorways cuz though I absolutely love color I'm not an absolute natural at it in the sense that colors are absolutely pouring out of me all the time I've got a more limited color palette whereas with cave I regard him as as the best colorist in the world we always say cave has all the color yeah you know and that is the beauty of it so he gets the luxury of your stunning designs and they are so if you're sitting with a classic collection bundle at home you have some of Phillips work in there and they're generally the floral botanical shell prints the the real natural with the real the real earthy oh just just gorgeousness and it'll always be down the selvage so you can always you can always have a look and see and then the colorways obviously Kaif works with to then blend in with the others and then you've got Brandon's quirkiness and case glorious designs and it works so well as as an eclectic collection in a way it's absolutely stunning so then does he get first dibs on it now that there's Snow Leopard as well or do you do those separately that's an interesting question and it sort of works both ways I've normally in my head and physically got about five different snow leopard collections going at one side yeah so I'm in different stages working on about five flex and some from adjust ideas in my head others I just unwrap sketches to indicate what I want to do others are completely painted up Alvers arrive at the factory being printed and others being launched with with cave I do a lot of work just for him I know what cave lights I know what sells really well so often the cave I'll do the more really big powerful designs things like great big ornamental kale plants so there's really huge ones which I think you're gonna sell miles I give them two K or I try and take a look at this I think you need you definitely need this one in the clique and but and there sometimes time is right I'll show you somebody clave Kate and I think he's gonna would do love this and he just sort of looks at it blankly yeah which has a fan idea about this because then the next C or shipped him again and he said oh why have I never seen that before and he sees it again for the first time is that because it's it fits with where he's at yes with with what he's yeah he knows what he wants in a particular collection and I can do something which i think is amazing but it's not what he's looking for at that moment say then the next year you might think that's amazing but if he goes on staring blankly and I build a whole snow leopard collection around so he had his chubs so that's sort of how it works but all the time anyway I'm I'm composing Snow Leopard collections in my head and it's and painting the map right they often cave never gets to see you them okay case in point is this carp and petals from yes wish I never shaved case because I think he'd wanted that we might not tell him that let's talk about about the carp here because this is part of the range that we are launching today and it is absolutely stunning I know that you have a love for oriental ants and I had made the assumption possibly turns out wrongly that this would have been inspired by oriental art but then I read somewhere that it was a pool that you'd that you'd walk past where a spring breeze had had blown the petals onto the water so you can't always assume it yep you're right on both both counts okay um everything I saw this Japanese woodblock print which was very like this it was a woodblock print of carp swimming under petals it was such an amazing image that I took it when I developed it my added more cars and more petals no till I've got a whole a whole design but then again when I'm explaining it and what it also feeds into is when I've seen ponds with carp swimming and the petals and the spring breeze blowing down off the mountain into the temple garb so it's like both things you see the image and it fires up some memory inside view of something you seeing the venue develop it and then you get it onto cloth so you're right on both counts this collection that we're surrounded by I mean it's just stunning a lot of it was inspired by just local local nature local feathers how does a cop end up with guinea fowl feathers from the local farm and eggs and and how how does how do you gather a collection together that seemingly didn't necessarily have a connection that's a interesting question again because it's like an organic process and you start off often with the designs not quite knowing where they're gonna go right this was going to cave is this going to Snow Leopard then I definitely think they're bats I definitely want that for Snow Leopard then I start to build up other things around it I think what's going to work really well with this but not necessarily be exactly on the same thing okay so with Arcadia in the word Arcadia is a Greek word it means a vision of pastoral beauty taking it back to nature yeah so I'm thinking of natural forms in nature which you'll see in your daily life we don't always see cars which are incredibly beautiful then you start putting it all together and it all seems to fall together and into one it is beautiful because you've got the eggs you've got the feathers you've got you've got the fish and the the florals as well it's all so exquisite of these react to what yeah they sound the actual feathers from the farm shop when I go down to a local farm shop to buy my supplies and they've got all these Bampton held hens and things and and turkey is wandering around can I pick up their feathers and then I come back and just start laying them out and they're sudden you've got a design ready-made yeah I this that it's it's you you collect me a great collector and you can see that from I call it a treasure trove your home because it just is your studio and is that how how you start to see patterns you layout collections of things and a pattern emerges which comes first if you are an intensely visual person as I am I sort of I see everything I always think visually rather than thinking analytically you see something and it completely odd anything that just completely inspires you and then you start thinking how's that gonna work in repetition mm-hmm then suddenly bingo you've got your design but it just starts off with you're going about your daily business quite innocently and you just said me see something it might be a ammonite down on the beach or a shell on the beach anything just met and putting that shell in repetition or having the shell in a stripe or having it in ourselves the exact path the idea some more ideas you produce the more designs you produced some more ideas bubble up inside and you're almost tumbling over yourself in witters desire to make these things manifest now you mention ammonites yeah Christmas when we when we were looking to find well it's fine we just need to find a place that has a whole load of ammonites on the doorstep and that's that we'll know that we've arrived yeah one of my favorite quotes that that I've heard from you is that you know the key to happiness in life is to have many things that you're passionate about and nature obviously is one of them dinosaurs another and your fossil collection is extensive and just just behind us out on on the terrace is our whole collection of ammonites that you've just found this year but your I must be because I walk on beaches I don't find ammonites I don't trip over ammonites how is your eye so keen to find these I thought too like in it a bit like your sort of mind and your eyes are sort of like a computer and you have to switch onto ammonite mode or if you're looking for dinosaurs may forget ammonite maybe switch onto dinosaur made okay and we're friends with dinosaur bones they have this very sort of particular grain to them okay it's often it's like it's the grain that you see in an ordinary bone but it's fossilized often they're brownish in color particular when they're wet in the sea and so if I'm walking on the beach looking for dinosaurs I switch my mind in to look out for brown speckled hangings okay then you won't know your mind you're Ivan just Holmes you know anything which is brown and speckly okay whereas with ammonites if I'm at Miami night place which is a lot of valley up just below payments then I think now you have switched into another made which is ammonite when you're looking just a foot the sort of circular edges of the ammonites you'll see a little one door sticking out of the mud or out of the rocks and then you just your mind homes in on it so it's like you have to turn your computer mind on to register in these different forms in different places but you have to know what you're looking for your next step I think that's the key cuz I had wondered because you grew up near water doing you grew up near a river yeah and and used to spend a lot of time on the water and and I remember reading that as you grew up you found an immense feeling of happiness and bliss just being in nature and just looking in depth at natural things so for me I wondered if it was almost a skill and like a muscle memory that you'd developed of seeing more than your average person sees because you're looking for these patterns because you're looking for what how does the light work with that but you're saying it's just it's just a mode it's yeah it's like I said maybe it comes from experience when going back to cave because he's so fine he tuned to color hmm I remember years ago back in the seventies going on the tube with him in London and all the time he sort of going on into ecstasy's when he sees two people in different colored clothes sitting together he'd say finely attuned to color and how color works you absolutely see these amazing combinations everywhere with me it's it's more about form and path but it works so well yeah all of it together remember case being very taken we're where we are based in Birmingham very taken by all of the graffiti that was around color in it okay yeah yeah I suggested his next book should be you know quilts of Birmingham but you can't imagine why now you haven't always designed fabrics for for quilting have you I mean you went to boarding school and yeah I know you found out I was free officially a math teacher please don't hold that against me and a mess wasn't your favorite subject but then where did you go from from boarding school was are encouraged for you and I was quite lucky it wasn't a very academic boarding school okay and I'm not a very academic fellow say my brother who is much more academic went to a very academic school as a scholarship right and I went to a boarding school out in Berkshire quite near reading and it had to use about 300 acres of woods and lakes Wow in the end I even got my very own room I started off in the dormitory I had my own room I even had my own antiques in it and all my favourite books and I painted had all my paintings on the walls did they know they were into someone quite special at that point when a teenager has antiques and those sorts of collections and because actually from the age of 14 you asked if you could go and meditate to meditate now they wouldn't let you interview was 16 yeah but that's not that's not a usual request I think it confused them quite a lot does it see yes succeed at boarding school and it's best if your academic and very good at rugger or cricket yes I used to get put in the first fifteen firaga because I'm a big fairway I didn't really like it that much I preferred cross-clamped you running because that's like going for a walk at high speed you can enjoy the mate and say gradually what happened was all the maths fell away very early on because that kill you was on my path and the Latin and all the sciences fell away and I managed to get it so nearly all the time almost every lesson I was up in my room painting I don't know how I managed that my wrangled it like that what I salute you I'm sure there there are many many a child that would reach that I could have that and then I sort of what how can I earn my living by painting because that's the main thing I'm good at and I applied to a couple of art colleges which I got accepted into and even when I got to art college I didn't know I just knew I wanted to earn my living painting colors with a paint brush you'd know that since the age of five yeah and your mother asked you you said I wanted to be an artist yeah this this is this was set out for you we had a famous artist lived up the road from a school parents cubanía and he was very well known for painting train pictures my mother ever painted never came over said what are you gonna be when you grow up and I said I'm gonna be a famous artist like mr. Kuhn yeh that was at five after that I wanted to be a soldier and I wanted to be a farm and other things and then empty a little bit then it came back again well you've got the antiques I mean we're surrounded by by stunning stunning pieces and the art is is here clearly I mean you mentioned before we started filming that I'm gonna photograph the Milky Way this evening so actually I'm not sure you left the Sciences behind I think you just found them in your own way I think I'd find science more interesting now if you ought been my teacher it would have been a different story because I'm sure you were a really inspiring teacher but the way it was presented it was just basically to get you through your GCSEs or whatever it was your levels as they were called them and it wasn't inspiring and he's a different way to learn even history was made so doubt my riveted by history but it was all about the repeal of the Corn Laws and 19th century English history now all of it really rivets and fascinates me even science because even the dinosaur bones I'm when I find new bones from new species I'm adding to science now hang on a minute because this isn't this isn't a general sentence that many people can throw out there when I discover new species of dinosaurs but you have yeah you you actually have and her name's Brittany Brittany um was she found locally as she was found at Kimmi Ridge in a belt or exactly August 2000 and 2003 I found Brittany so you're walking on beach and just oh is that a dinosaur vertebrae I see there I was on the beach a girlfriend and I was looking for dinosaurs because that's what I do I'm sure she was thrilled she seemed to quite like it she used to race a hit with me and say is this and anyone this occasion I saw this single vertebra in the rock hooray I found a vertebra so I got my hammer and chisel out and I said chip in it and it had another vertebra fused to it I got to birth breath and I chipped it and I got three the to brevin I kind of had this whole spinal column going off and then I started finding ribs going out sideways from it so what point do you get seriously excited I would have been quite happy with the vertebra I would have been very happy with two vertebra and I've always wanted a whole column of vertebrate and they looked a beautiful yeah them famous fossil collector Steve H is walk along at that point he now has his own Museum you see these things just happen yes obviously you know as you do you think you've stumbled across yeah this and then a world-famous guy comes along just to help or he advised me first of all he said you need you've got a whole scale it and now I don't know if it's heading towards a scale or heading towards but they and all that that you need the way to do it is the digger trench around that you mustn't break it up you must bring it out in huge slabs big blocks so you have everything fully articulated still and then you can bring it out of the blocks late she told you of being very Victorian about this you are doing it yes you're being you're like the Victorians you're just collecting the spine because I mean how would you know how to excavate a diner I mean you would it's not something that you do every day you know how often do you find an entire diner so how would you know the best way to to remove it yeah I've been finding a lot of sort of limb bones and things on their own and I'm huge vertebra but I've never found a fully articulated skeleton before so I didn't have the knowledge of how how how you're meant to go about it but he very kindly showed me how to do it and he came and helped for one day with when we were working on the skull which was huge and now since i gifted it to his museum you've been incredibly kind and and gifted a lot of your fossils and find some of you I hadn't had to run out of space to put them to the office I read somewhere and I or an interview that you've done so when he said well this dinosaur saying with that friend of course I mean for me it's finding a dog sitter for you it's a dinosaur sir yeah due to life circumstances I don't actually physically own a home and when you've got a whole dinosaur museum and a whole oriental art museum and a whole textile museum there is half a museum that's quite difficult you have to keep me always been an avid collector yeah I used to collect elephants when I was about going back to five years old really yeah happily not life-size mines okay I'm sure your mother was pretty relieved yeah they were smallish and is that the first thing that you remember collecting yeah elephants what's the first thing so where did you progress from elephants what's the next two elephants it went military after that and you still have a lot of things military and well I got rid of all my military stuff away right but we've walked past a whole load of class that's new again you this is new military new old military time military was about sort of eight nine ten eleven twelve then I became a hit piece a military fit military didn't fit I gave most of it away to be I also wanted to join the army in that ok right so I realize I didn't really want to be in the army after all because I'd have to play rugger and things oh right yeah um so but as you say just recently I've been walking again the way I do I walk down to the beach for my swim and walking across the plowed fields I suddenly found like picking up mortar bomb tail things in the plowed field never that's interesting because it's like this place has obviously got a history to it which I don't fully know about but a feeling you'll find out about it yes you know yeah then I sight even find an American ammunition and I hope that's interesting it must have been Americans here just before d-day say then for my birthday I got a metal detector that's only about a month or two ago because you share your birthday with John Scott yep we will all remember that yeah yeah lots of present say no just it's just a brand new interest is the military suddenly coming full circle and just over the last two or three weeks some of you things when it's cooled off a bit I'm down there just seeing what I can find it really fascinating look at in the future for collections with a military edge I think I'm gonna introduce into the textile or somehow dinosaurs maybe but military things probably not okay so it started to take a look at your new range there's so much I want I want to ask you about everything and the ammonites obviously are what you found locally I have an image that I can't get of my out of my head of you dragging dinosaur bones back from the beach over your shoulder I that might just be in my head but I you have to get them home somehow I'm guessing but the ammonites was this another case of you laid the mount and the pattern came because you've got a stunning M&I print in in your new collection I'd sort of always been fascinated by the actual pattern of ammonites not done for cave had done quite a few shell packs and ones yes it's very tongs there's one I'd call spiral shells which I've made up of snail shells and then they thought yeah my Knights will look really great as a tonal design just to two tones of one color making sure yeah I'm watch I'm looking at two of them right next there we've got the actual artwork yeah because you you're working doing don't you they work in Girish which is like an ape a multicolor and I never realized you could get the depth I always assumed until I met cave that you worked in oils and in acrylics because of the depth of color that you managed to get for the ammonite design Wow so then up here is there are these different Calloway Oh me me thinking out loud in Calloway ideas I did it original two tones of blue and then they thought of doing a very sort of stay stay in the color way she's beautiful for neutrals yeah and I thought it would look good on the black and white because people like black and white but the actual color ways they've done it's one right by your elbow yeah yep here we go there's this they've changed my blue it made it a deeper blue but that's the same print science isn't I mean they're pretty much I think they reduced this slightly yeah I don't mind cuz they know more about quilting and I had you I knew nothing about quilting so how do you start designing for quilters with no knowledge of quilting and and learning on the job okay and basically what you have to do do you have to produce yet so follow your instincts and you have to produce something which you think is visually amazing okay and if you think ick yeah if you think it's visually amazing other people tend to you just have to get go with gay with a sense of amazing gay with visually very powerful and then other people find ways to work with it within within there that leads me on to my next question because you have a large beautiful print of of the the carp then you've got your midsize still quite large florals and again quite a large print here feathers but then there's also the leopard spot and and you describe this as as a tonal blender now does that come once the rest of the collection is in place to go actually I need something that's that's gonna let these really have have the focal point and just be there in the background supporting promotes the area to learn how to put a collection together okay and from my background I for many years I was doing furnishing fabrics so I learned how to put a furnishing collection together and it's not that different from a quilting collection you need you need big de a big design which is like your statement yeah which people say wow you need a good dense or laser which is very practical and usable in multiple ways and you have to need a stripe you need something with a bit of space in you need a tone or design which is like the blender which from a distance works as a solid color if you're if you're making it quilt it's almost like it's as you call it a solid then you often have in the furnishing world we called it a ditsy which is a very small little satin which again the quilters will sort of use often use around the larger images and I'm learning all that on the show you know I'm very impressive very impressed and and now you've picked this out so I can't I can't ignore this pens is it school for you viola sk's I've really got a design called pansy so as you're painting do you always do a block of the color down the bottom yeah I have to do that for the printer okay and I'm limited by how many colors I can have according to the upward repeat of the design right so in this case I went for 16 inch repeat which is I've got the 13 colours I can use for that in this particular one I based it on an old antiques an old antique attempt botanical illustrations I had which is very similar to that it's like all these pans is tumbling over each other in profusion that would make such an amazing print because this is another place that you get your inspiration isn't it is is from from antique antique art yeah yeah antique textiles I've got hundreds if not thousands of old antique 19th century fabric some will pay so if we thought that we had a big stash at home and so is it a matter of the the Carper they're the feathers are there and then do you just go and rummage you go watch Li I sort of think how is it going to fit together what's gonna work really well together I also know I've learned from experience what the ingredients for a classic collection is and in my case my best-selling collections are the ones where I'm there's quite a bit of nature it's not all floral there's some powerful floral but you might get shells and feathers and other elements all working together and I found those are my my best work because you like you say you haven't always done quilting fabrics you did interiors and furnishing designer working for the likes of Liberty Sanderson the big name yeah the really big names how does that come about working yeah and it just sort of happens because I I read somewhere that were you still at college and getting collections together and and did that then fuel you to then go into into that side of the way it started his game game back to art college and at first all I knew I wanted to do is paint and my mother said you should do graphic design because no one can earn a living as a fine artist because I love painting landscapes and say I went on to our college and the huge and said what do you want to be and I said I think I want to be a graphic designer right and when I did the graphic design course I realized I did not want be a graphic yes she said I hate you you'll be good at doing big posters and things okay which is fair enough but once I actually saw it was electro set and say boring from my point of view in one of three yuto's a very kind man called mr. Hemmings Li said I think you'd be good at textiles because he was both a graphic designer and a textile design he looked at the right copies are done of Tibetan paintings and Japanese paintings and he said you'll be good at textile so I went and did the degree course in textiles and it suited me and then at my degree Shay which we had in the basement of Liberty's an agent yes I met an aged and he's dead now he was called Barry Daniels and he started sharing asked if he could show you my work say I've inside doing collect designing collections for him which he sold around the world in Japan and America and France so all these artists that wait for their big break and yours came straight out of Christ and one recognize this this passion he thought he could sell what I've been producing and Bennett it just built from there I was so you say follow your bliss I've heard you say thankful follow your bliss and then everything else comes if that was in American mythologist called Joseph Campbell and he said if you follow your bliss doors open for you where you didn't know doors were going to be and that's exactly my experience so you find where your bliss is what is the thing that really likes you are what's the thing that makes your eyes shine and then you go into that fully so it doesn't matter what it is everyone's bliss is different and you work away at it and for a long time you may have very little money but that doesn't matter cause you're happy and you're doing what you're doing what you love but more or less certainly almost certainly at some point money will fall away I really wish that as career advisors and schools would tell you that they never say follow your bliss I might really believe you I think this is exactly it follow your bliss and you and if nothing else you'll be happy you'll be happy you know and then everything else some point your property on your living as well what I find very interesting is your your take on that there is a movie you describe it as this movie of life and everything kind of falls into place trust the movie so as a five-year-old did you know when you said I'm going to be a I'm gonna be an artist I'm gonna be a painter did you know then about your movie I've always had a strong sense of that my movie was already there and that I was sort of treading and already laid out and very often I'd think oh this is meant to happen there and all this person's meant to appear and suddenly they would appear so as a philosopher I sort of go on direct personal experience rather than reading lots of books of someone else is director well you've written two of your own instead yeah you know okay and then so what has this experience shown you this is just speaking personally even it might be different for other people but it's shown me that in life you don't have to worry but everything is working out exactly as intended so you're always where you're meant to be yeah always oh you're never in the wrong place ever which is a big thing to believe and yeah you know even on those low days in you're still meant to be there in your life journey some of your experiences will be absolutely horrific which is a nature of of life everyone has total bliss and total horror you need the horror to die like the Bliss yeah you wouldn't know it as bliss if you didn't have the horror so life goes on like that behind both the bliss and the horror in my experience again is something which is always looking out through your eyes when you're five when you're 64 which is total stillness and a lot of happiness emanates from it so just going back to a thing about the path the happiness is being passionate about lots of difference I love that that's one aspect of happiness that's happiness in your life have masses of things you're interested in then you're dying to wake up in the morning and get on with your passion yes because there's so much to put in the day yeah yeah but at the same time when you have moments before you when you have moments of intense beauty which stills you notice your sense of I which lies behind your day-to-day sense of I say this I am Philip I am an artist I am a man I'm born on June the 19th then there's just your basic sense of I am which lies behind that and that never changes and it's always there because it's part of being the bigger it's part of because this is this is another side of everything that you do the influences and actually how you met Kate yeah so we know you as an incredible artist some might know you through Liberty's through Samson's through the work that you've done previously but actually you're a sheikh as well I am technically a sheikh and you met cave back in the 70s through learning to turn yeah and we so in quarter we had the last prints that we had from you one of them was called the whirling and and now it all fits into place I well of course but of course you went at 14 you wanted to learn to meditate and allowed until you were 16 yeah and then you went to a place called call it house yeah and there you learn to meditate yeah and then the dervishes came across Turkey yeah and what happened and what I learnt to meditate when I was 16 because at school they wouldn't let me go over for them and I had to convince a headmaster to let me go up to London one Sunday and learn to meditate from your mother my mother and I threatened my mother said you've got to write this left because I'm going anyway if you date her - less I gonna be in deep trouble so I let ya I feel like I would like Caroline like a character then that call it house a were they had been asked to preserve this tradition which was worth meb leve dervish turning from Turkey which had been banned in Turkey in 1925 when camera laughter - tried to secularize Turkey so all dervish orders all anything they regarded as superstitions in the past was made illegal same a poor dervish is wanted somewhere to preserve it underground he went underground say it was shaped from Turkey came over and talked it in Lund I mean it was carried on it was in 1963 and I saw it for the first time in 1971 and it made me incredibly happy just watching here in the lovely live music and watching all these people it just I went away beaming all over my face like what I'd love to do that inque followed followed in the 70s he growing up in California had heard about about about the dervishes and he had heard about one of your teachers whose name I really cannot pronounce because it's Russian there is he spends yes yes that's the one and and through that knowledge he came to the same place that you did and like you decided he was going to to learn to turn yes he describes it in his autobiography his betray the actual training which is very physically grueling so you can both you can both turn and it is very physical because just the holding out of the arms is yeah easy try holding your arms out for 10 minutes let alone half an hour just amazing but a new 19 1971 and still to this day it is influencing your artwork I actually learned I learned to meditate and 70 when I learnt to turn in 76 right kaif and I met at another dance class and call it in 73 okay and I can still because I've got a sort of video memory yeah I'm gonna replay Annie bit the life back and I can see myself walking into the studio and there was Kaif and his friend Richard wellness Lee and another girl called suka senior standing by the piano and calf was torn had a beard then and Richard had a beard and I can just I got his visual image of seeing Kay for the first time but not knowing 45 years or more later what an impact I mean influence he'd have had so did you hit it off then or has this just been something that your paths just kept crossing we were very good friends then but if he and Richard I became good friends with them and when I left our college I worked with Kaif on one of his collections for designers guild which is a furnishing fabrics and during the seventies and eighties I used to go and visit Cave claves do a lot of photography and I used to do slideshows for I'd used to take he always said I used to turn out of a dolly but I'd do a slide shows I did all these landscapes he doesn't have his friend Steve Levy over he was a famous still life photographer and so but then as I got more involved in the furnishing world and cave stop being a dervish I think it became physically it is physically tough and I think it became too difficult for him and then we sort of lost touch I'd just see him now and again sometimes at the Decker ex trade fair I'd bump into him and then we reconnected again in 2004 when I was I was living in East Dorset and he and Richard came they'd be visiting my brother and they came to visit and Kate said who he thought I was working on said this would be good for patchwork quilt thing and that was the start of an XP site I have to thank Cave deeply they're introducing me into the patchwork quilting world part of your moving it was yeah does it have a soundtrack your movie because mine does I have a movie too and it's got a soundtrack yeah there's favorite tunes there's some which I've had all the way from when I was about 12 which are almost like the soundtrack probably and the doors light my fire the long version of the organ solo is one of my sounds right the most amazing thing I've learnt about life not everyone I'd agree with me an EPS absolutely fine everyone sees it differently and that's right but my experience is it's this immaculate we composed movie and you can trust it at the time you're in a horror your life's just falling apart you've lost your health you've lost your house you've lost your work it doesn't look like what's gonna say because I mean let's this is we're not we're not talking that you've just had a really blessed life when everything's always gone according to plan you know you have had extreme highs and extreme lows in your life and and your your career has followed a similar urban flow yeah my career's disappeared at times there was one point where I thought that's it I'll never be a textile decide it again yes when is late ninth is and I've been designed retro big furnishing fabric come here and Sun and rock and then we were providing the world with her floral tints is and floral tints just went completely out of fashion because minimalism oh no it was all beige and white and IKEA and stuff and because they had their phrase check out your Chin's no that's not great for an artist no it's not because we are into decoration so all my work at that point I've had other point it's just completely job when that was there so what do you do in those moments where do you have to try and change to suit a trend or do you stay true to what you love in my case furnishing fabrics have gone through a really hard time so all the companies are in trouble say no one was really gonna want to buy your designs particularly particularly not in ten floors say what you do then is you will may switch over to another mode so I did a lot of dinosaur hunting I'd say that I'd say enough money to live on for a few years and because incidentally someone had told me you're gonna lose your job at a certain point and that was several years before I really started saving and then I started writing books so I wrote I tried to assimilate my life experience in a way which would help other people going through a similar experience that when your life falls apart it's actually okay you don't have to worry too much about it just keep on kickin and eventually it all falls back together again in its own time this has been your experience hasn't it is that you know yes you have those those but you then you come back and this happens yeah and this is just stunning when you're in the low it's almost clearing you out in a way and then after it when you emerge you get this amazing rush of creativity happens and life sort of goes on like that so it's like coming from winter to spring yeah you know and everything blossoms again and is beautiful again yeah and all is and all is good and it's it's better the next time you almost get it fuller after you lose it then you get it back again it's fuller when you get it back because my appreciation it partly has more appreciation and partly the experience of letting go of everything takes you deeper in yourself and somehow I don't know how to describe it when it comes back the ideas you're bringing up a fuller and more beautiful so we've got this collection we are very full and very beautiful but you did send me a picture I thought I got you let you toss that mention the were very excited for as well yeah are we allowed to say that it might include another passion yeah you've mentioned the path called Neddie Neddie the magic now tell us about many of the magic courts because he he's become quite a sensation yeah I've made native a magic horse world-famous his owners don't even though brilliant that way it was it is near where I used to grow up near Hampton Court is where in the wind term tikki I can do my walking along the river we've held them and one day all heals and the river was flooded and this beautiful great gypsy cob stallion had escaped from his field and he was wandering along the riverbank where the water was in the flood and when I saw him I said look this Neddy and I met maybe he was so loving and say friendly and say character although quite relieved as well got a rescue up yeah and then I discovered it ever since family we visited Neddy and fed him carrots and apples and we sing to him and on face but you can see our videos of us singing to Maddie and he comes galloping oh yeah the song he loves the song and then I groom him and he gave very quiet and loving but he's really was great sort of wild feisty stallion he's huge he's done he is doing a beautiful standing so he can become one of your passions he's one of my he's been a passion of mine for a while or has made me maybe even magic horse I've made him there people there in other countries there's um there's some people in America I think it was their wedding anniversary 50th wedding anniversary related all we want to do is come over to England the meet may be yeah this date have a clue absolutely really Adam it is well painless so these passions we've got Neddy no dinosaur bellows and the fossils yeah but also there is the artwork yeah well both the the vintage fabrics yeah but also I mean I'm sitting here looking at a stunning tiger that you said you bought at the age of eleven yeah and but we're also surrounded by stunning stunning artwork yeah you've collected through your life yeah where did this love of this style of artwork company yeah I can explain that exactly it was you got to think it was a 1960s and the Beatles went into Eastern mysticism probably around 65 66 and I remember George Harrison wanting to buy a Buddha and then one of my brother's friends at schools told his mother he wanted a Buddha for Christmas and then my brother wanted a Buddha and then me being five years younger forever I wanted a Buddha say then my brother and I we used to go round antique shops and spend our pocket money on anything oriental all sort of touched us somehow and if you start collecting oriental art when you're 11 by the time you're in your sixties you're actually quite an expert on that so I've had there's been particular areas of it which I've specialized in and one of my main specialities is the Japanese woodblock print artist who Sagara he received emeritus princes and their paintings by him there and if you're collecting anything the Steve etches told me at a certain point you have to specialize will you get to overwhelm so I've now specialized in finding paint actual paintings by Hiro she you are they rarer than than the woodblock much rarer because wood blocks Yod have got maybe twenty thousand impressions of each print printed back then in the nineteenth century natural painting is just a one-off thing he only did one of them and I've just know behind me because I said you know always that a rose would stamp so this love of woodblock because this now influences your work as well yeah and this it'll and and now that you say it's an elephant of course that now fits in with your final itself because what the reason I bought this from India quite recently was we've here ishiki and the other oriental artists they have a seal the imprint on their work of art and I thought oh I'd like to see able to have on the bottom of my works about which I could print and then sign my name beneath it and so obviously I've got an elephant would be a good good seal or my artistic CEO like here she is over on your desk which we'll get a look at ya later another another starting a starting point on your work yeah I'm using another vintage yeah a vintage fabric so you find the vintage fabric it sparks something what happens next and you find the amazing fabric you I see it for sale and I think wow just think what I can do with that it's beautiful already I'll make it more beautiful and so I buy it and then I'll either use sections of it and rearrange it and build up a new design or if a design is perfect as it is I'll redraw it exactly as it is probably just altering the colors but of course because they're antique there's no copyright oh yes just stop copyrights being over for about 150 years on most of them they're not gonna mind no no no fair long gone because with them do you think it's something like anyone can produce a volume of Shakespeare but you do your own your own addition of it right so it's in what's known as the public domain so you can use anything as inspiration if it's in the public domain and the way art works is may start at one level is copying you're either copying something you've seen out in nature which someone else designs doesn't have a copyright it's an artist or a designer from history which again is long since it's in the public domain it's fair for anyone and in the 1980s and 1990s when we used to do I did furnishing fabrics you sometimes have three or four fabric houses would actually have their own edition of the same antique fabric and that was fine because they're all doing their own versions of that that's not unusual she likes another case in point William Morris William Morris is out of copyright so anyone can produce the William Morris fabric the thing you can't do is say it's by William Morris because the word William Morris is copyrighted as a trade yeah we get our William Morris through through the correct William Morris channel so it's all authenticated yeah by by his foundation and and then that's how how it comes to us you can have a William Morris print yeah but it can't be said to be it's it's fascinating so is there an original idea it's difficult to say cuz on one level you there's so many things you've experienced in your life then they all come up in your consciousness suddenly and you think is that original there's your own sort of way of putting like the ammonites that's original to some degree and i've found those ammonites might put them together in that combination then but I didn't invent yam that I say it's fascinating because I think I read somewhere that you can process any one time I like eleven million different senses that we are processing but you will only actually be able to focus on around 30 36 I think it anyone goes yeah so I actually we could all expect exactly the same thing but out of those 11 million different stimuli that were getting we're never going to pick the same 30 36 basic things so everybody's experience is going to be different yeah and what I've come to realize is that the quilts and what people make with your fabrics are also so beautifully unique how does it feel when you see your designs in somebody else's vision I love that it's so amazing when you see when you've done all this stuff and then you see the way someone else has put it together and used it and there is a case in point just a few days ago where a lady yeah on Facebook I think her name something like Val Swisher I think I think that's her name and she had put these she'd cut out my different flowers mostly from my KFC fabric and she'd arranged from so amazingly but I thought wow that's a new textile design right there but she had created which I think because I looked at it no this lady she cuts all of these yeah cuz like you say I recognize them from the connection just wow so will that now inspire you to go on and put something together that way I'm gonna do something like I'm gonna do a design inspired by what she's done I should used my pictures of ornamental kale and some latest blossoms oh and my Japanese chrysanthemums and with morning glories stuff amongst them so what I'm gonna do I'll plant in the winter and paint it up next summer is I'll do a completely new really dense design of ornamental K or Japanese chrysanthemums latest flowers and Morning Glory flowers exactly the way she thought it won't be the same plants and he won't be exactly as Leia everyone said if that was a fabric up by miles of it was absolutely and that's her take that's her pay which is feeding back and inspiring me which is amazing and you also have the most stunning quote which we'll have a look at yeah outside it's kind of a star and then it it's just this rainbow of color this riot of color going out and you go to sleep looking at this you wake up looking at yeah that was made for me by a whole lot of women all around the world but it was a brainchild of a very kind lady in America called Pippen Williams and she sort of coordinated didn't did a lot of her stitching together of it in the end she did an amazing amount of work no haven't got around to doing it yet but I'm actually gonna send her one of my paintings as a thank-you gift the quilters eyes I've come to realize are an incredibly generous yeah generous bunch there's there's a lot of love in the quilting yard and a lot of generosity and and we see that at sewing quarter a huge amount so it's it's really lovely yeah be able to see how these fabrics and they're great sharers yeah so the fact that you know your designs people take and and and then share that inspiration that you can then take and reusing in a new way yeah it's it's organically bringing about beautiful beautiful things yeah so will you ever end up designing a quilt I have actually had some ideas for a quilt and Liza Lucy who works with K on the books and who is part of the cave collective and she's gonna if I draw my idea out she's gonna design it properly for me because I don't know how to do it but I've just I've had these ideas of several ideas the quilts actually using ammonites I thought be amazing to have a huge pair a man I in the center of the quilt huge then maybe smaller ones dotted around the outside of it and then I thought of another one where you could have a whole form a pattern like that as the quilt rose all different colored ammonites making up the quilt with perhaps a border about where ammonites around the clock say I'm gonna do a rough sketch of that and lies and we'll draw it up as a pattern there is something very satisfying I think it's called the Fibonacci sequence as this and we see it in nature a lot of pinecones it's in your snails and you're a monoid it's it's there and we recognize and it's very very very satisfying yeah so maybe that's yeah you see science it comes back into it yeah an amazing artist amazing scientist you know yeah they don't have to be even Maps I have to be quite a bit of math getting these things in repeat how do you create a repeat repeats are dead easy okay people think essays complicated is all you've got you've got your base you got your basic design and all its cake this is wrong and all it's got to happen is that bottom bit there's got to join up to that bit there okay well you just the you out of tracing paper so if your work simple as that you're just if you've got the bottom painted up you're just trace off the bottom and then put it on the top trace it onto the top and then fill it in a bit in the middle that's that's really easy side repeat you've got various side repeats this one is a hot what's called a half drop so I've divided the design in half maybe a subtle line there yeah see that bottom quadrant there joins up with that top quadrant there and that one there joins up with that one there so it's giving you a more varied repeat so that flower is coming again just whereas if it was side by side repeat what you can do you'd get that flower coming again there this way you won't get that flower coming again there pull over there you get that one yeah half dropping it gives you more variety and you can do any birth variation on the drop it doesn't have to be a half job you could do a quarter drop or whatever so that's repeat from it's dead easy because we often get asked you know what is the size of the repeat cause obviously if someone's making a address then they might want to to end up with more fabric to pattern man yeah yeah obviously this is cotton fabric yeah but I have seen some stunning dress making using your fabric yeah was that was that an accident that you just and then then you see anything oh yeah that works really well do you ever think of dress makers I do cuz when I first left art college my had my age and I was actually doing fabric design for a dress fabric right so um when I'm designing it I'm almost more thinking of dressmakers and picturing it going up someone's long dress or long skirt of how it's gonna repeat up there and how well it would work my fabric very suitable for both and one of the people I worked for in my freelance days was Hardy Amos he was the Queen's dress make but then you also have your furnishing fabrics crop up at the White House yes of the Clintons use my furnishing Pam I recognized that in the American version of House Beautiful it was on the cover and there's an article inside and I have it somewhere yeah I was quite pleased about that so I was hoping if she got in again she'd want some more fabric Donald hasn't save her or any of my fabrics but you know who I or on the Queen on I'd like to see it on the Queen and I know I've been told in the past that the Royals have had my furnishing fabrics oh really yeah does that mean that you can do the I think that it's OK for HP sauce yeah love to see the Queen in in one of my fab brick so what she does have bright colors because she has to stand out does it yeah get John Scott to Whizzer up something yeah yeah it's doing a bit special yeah and send it to us see if we can see if we can make that happen yeah my do some of these shirts but I mean yeah everyone at home knows that John is very very proud of his shine his shirt and I think we should have we should have a Philip Jacob John Scott shirt click yes when I Hays padieu presentism take program top gear used to wear fabric in my shirt sometimes oh really yeah I can't remember his name was at the main hey mate yeah yeah many ways my shirts um so is your do you have a collection of fabrics for dress making as well it's just the same fabric as the quilting yeah nothing stopping any of us know anyone can make dresses and clothes and things out of the fabrics I say I hope they do do you ever walk down the streets and see see some of your fabric in something someone's wearing or in a bag I'm trying to think if I'd seen that I may have done but if something went back in my mind or I have I often thought what Garcia in shops and things and I've seen it my furnishing fabrics I've seen in Hollywood move is not feel it's an exchange me oh I did that it's changed I saw journey it's gone suddenly end up in a in a Hollywood movie is there a feeling of pride or just that's nice to see in a it sort of works at two levels cuz on a sort of temporal level in time I think yes oh that's nice so they should use my fabric but then if you think back to the sort of life movie you think their name at was just all sort of part of the unfolding of the movie and all the movies there's one big movie which is like all these myriad interlocking little move is where we all play these different roles for each other and parts cars and parts craft some people inspire each other and and even in in history the way I'm inspired by William Morris and here is Yogi and Hokusai and others and in a hundred and fifty years time bees will probably be inspiring other textile designers Cezanne people now and and art forms take so many different different forms there are so many different mediums you know look at the quilters this is an art form in and of its own in and of its own right and yes it's adjusted yes it's put together differently but it's it's still being there and it's morphing into other more other beautiful beautiful ways of your image going out there I think it's I think it's just incredible and the generosity that an artist such as yourself has that says you know this is OK mmm take it and make it your own and then to be humble enough to to say actually i love your design i'm going to now use that to inspire me to go on i think it's just it's just incredible have you ever had a block um because so far it's i've got five on the go and did a little littler i don't really ever get block didn't think it sounded like you did but sarah saw so many ideas bubbling up it's more a question of which one am i gonna do next and when can i do that um so no blocks blocks i may have got right in the early days they may have been watch lady in there but now with all my archives and collections there's just so many designs I've got queued up waiting for their moment to be made manifest I don't think there'll be any any blocks or a foreseeable future I'll sometimes think I'll come to be when you come to the end of a night a design you get really excited as you start putting a sort of final catalyst on and then you've got to start all the way at the beginning again and the early bit and the one we'll show you in a minute where I'm right at the first color I'm actually not going at there hammer and tongs I'm going off swimming and looking for stuff in the fields more at the moment but in a few days that will have picked up its own momentum and when I start to see it falling together and the strong rich colors going on it then that dry it drives it like when you start a new box set you get bereft because you've just finished that night yeah and then you start then you get into a new binge-watch it's just like box sets Philip I can't believe where the time has gone thank you so so much for your generosity in sharing all your passions with us and and also lending us your time as well has been amazing and what a beautiful part of the world and we will look forward very much it's a well firstly launching your stunning new collection and the next one's to come that's very kind of you to say so thank you so much as I said before you're such a good interviewer thank you very much but you know it's just it's been an absolute joy and a privilege actually and a long may Snow Leopard be a part of the second quarter family I hate to say very much thank you very much thank you you

Channel: Sewing Quarter

Views: 5,010

Rating: 4.9569893 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, sewing, design, designers, fabric design

Id: pm7xDqwKnaU

Length: 75min 28sec (4528 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2018