27th April, 6:30pm
Cromwell Place,
London SW7 2JE
In Conversation
Nicola Beauman, Founder Persephone Books
Jo Andrews, Haptic & Hue
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For more information: gallery@graymca.com
Fashion & Textile Gallery, Gray M.C.A is delighted to host Nicola Beauman, the Founder of Persephone Books who has championed women authors since the early 1970s in an ‘In Conversation’ event to be chaired by journalist, hand-weaver and host of the Haptic & Hue podcast, Jo Andrews. Persephone is famed worldwide for the quality of its literature and the beauty of its books. Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly mid-twentieth century. All of their 145 books are intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written. They publish novels, short stories, diaries, memoirs, poetry, gardening books and cookery books; each title has an elegant grey jacket and a ‘fabric’ endpaper with a matching bookmark dated from the period of the book.
Nicola Beauman will discuss her love of literature and textile design and the extraordinary history of over 20 years of Persephone Books.
Haptic & Hue was set up by Jo Andrews. She is a weaver of stories and cloth. She hosts the podcast Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles, which looks at the different light textiles cast on the story of humanity. She spent many years as a senior reporter and political correspondent for the British television network, ITN. Twenty years ago, she went to live in New Zealand and thought: “30 million sheep can’t be wrong – I need to learn to weave.” She went to night-school in Wellington where she was taught by Desiree Paterson and later by Janet Phillips in the UK.
She has been weaving since then, and owns a small herd of looms, which can be found in a studio in Dorset. She has exhibited and sold her work in a number of places. She creates cloth largely with natural fibres: wool, cotton, hemp and linen, and she weaves stories about the role textiles play in our lives and the impact they have on our economies and cultures in her podcasts.