One of my favourite capitals is a circle of carved oak leaves – I just love how the stone masons brought nature in from the outside and made the stone come alive.

John Ruskin was a big fan of their bringing the outside in approach in such a free and effortless way. I learned all about his love of medieval sculpture when I visited and researched the amazing Tyntesfield House near Bristol

This is the feeling I wanted to create when I designed my Sussex Oak design – partly inspired by the carvings but also influenced by local patternmaker Peggy Angus who lived not far away. Do visit her archives at The Keep near Brighton if you can. Many of her wonderful prints are boxed up as she left them – she worked with such energy. Partly because she had to (she was a single parent) but also just because she was just that kind of person. She had quite particular views about history and as a teacher designed a wonderful scheme of how each age developed it’s own patterns. She got the students at North London Collegiate School for Girls to paint this as a mural around their art class. She was interested in the meaning behind patterns and this is one of the reasons why she inspires me so much.

My Oak Leaf pattern has been in my mind for over 20 years since I made a little oak leaf print many years ago – sometimes I work very slowly and I just needed the extra time offered by lockdown and my connection to the beautiful church carvings to finally finish the design.

When it came to cut the block I worked in my usual way, cutting and printing and recutting and reprinting until the design had that sense of movement and balance that I seek to create in all my designs.

I printed it onto fabric and paper and because we were in lock down and I had more time, I started to paper our hallway  – the colours made me very happy. I’ve also been printing it onto fabric that I mordant with oak galls that I forage for in the fields around me here in Steyning.

I’m pleased other people like this design – I feel it connects me to the past and also offers some ideas about how we might go forward in the future – making beautiful textiles that are kind to the environment.

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During lockdown I’ve had more time to explore and document my pattern making process – and share with other makers too.

I have so enjoyed the online workshops I’ve done with students all over the world – something I would never have expected and which has been a real treat in these other wise quite isolated times.

Sharing time together has been really special and gaining an understanding of their practice and their particular approach to pattern making has been an ongoing source of inspiration to me.

I thought it might be nice to share a few tips from some of things we have learned together.

Firstly, it seems to me that good pattern is all about creating a sense of movement AND balance. This is something the exercises we do together really help to explore. Together we go through a series of sequences that explore repeat print making and all the endless possibilities of the block. This sequence is something I hope students will take away with them and use to expand and develop their pattern making practice.

Space is your friend. Good design is all about learning how to harness negative as well as postive space. Again – in my workshop we spend time exploring the different properies of negative and positive space and how to create the best balance.

As well as exploring the pattern making  I’ve also been helping students to get better results transferring their marks onto fabric.

When printing blocks onto fabric there is a lot to consider including the block, the printing medium, printing bed, fabric and how to best apply the ink – getting all these ingredients right can help you get a great print or not as I have learned from my many mistakes over the years. It’s important to me that I give my students as much technincal help as possible so they can get the print results they deserve.

I really hope to be back teaching physical workshops in my Sussex studio soon but in the meantime if you would like to take your pattern making skills onto the next stage do get in touch by emailing  sarahburnspatterns@gmail.com

Happy patternmaking!

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This is something I’ve been fascinated by for a very long time and over the years pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have gradually fallen into place. Finally after much trial and error I have developed a simple process of block printing with natural dyes that I’m reasonably confident in and am able to reproduce and share with others, though I still feel I’m very much a beginner. I owe alot to many people who have shared and taught me along the way – most especially Shirley at Handprinted

My process in no way compares with the wonders of Indian block printing. The intricacies of block printing with natural dyes were so very complex that English traders from the East Indian Company were dazzled when they first set eyes on Indian fabrics: layers of colour were laid one upon the other using a complex system of mordants, dyes and resists. It took the Europeans centuries to understand how the Indian craftsmen made their beautiful chinzes and many decades before they were able to replicate pieces that looked a little like them.

I first fell in love with the colour palette of cutch browns, madder reds and indigo blues when I saw the textiles of Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher in the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester many years ago. I started trying to print with onion skins and did get some marks but it was only when I was researching my book into Barron & Larcher 20 years later that I got a few more clues.

Barron and Larcher didn’t leave any technical notes but in her wonderful speech ‘My Life as a Block printer’, Barron describes how after making her first patterns using indigo and nitric acid (not something I am keen to try) she made up a paste of cutch using gum traganth (she compared the gum in it’s raw state to toe nails). I spent a whole winter transcribing Barron’s talk and in the process got to feel quite close to her and the way she worked.

I don’t have a steamer large enough to steam lengths of fabric so I decided to try and work with mordants instead; different mordants fix different kinds of natural dyes allowing you to print with a range of natural print pastes.

When I visited Bagru, the village of printers outside Jaipur in Rajhastan, I discovered how the cloth is first dyed with a tannin so that it can fix the iron dye and how alum is used to fix madder. My process is hardly comparable to the the beautiful and intricate patterns produced in India but I  still enjoy the process – preparing the mordants, fabrics, dye stuffs and pastes. It’s very sensual process that is sensitive to the slightest change and one that always entrances me everytime.

Most importantly for me is the fact that my workshop is becoming less toxic, involving more natural vegetable and plant based dyes and pastes. Not only do I feel safer working around my family and students, gardens, insects and animals, I also feel like I am  making things in a kinder way.

So many things in the textile industry look quite beautiful but when you scatch the surface you discover a toxic and environmentally damaging process that destroys any superficial beauty: I want the things I make to have a positive impact on my environment  – supporting organic farmers and growers and becoming truly beautiful in the process.

I hope this blog  inspires you to think about printing with natural dyes – do get in touch if you would like to have a go at making things in a different way.

All the images here are taken from my book ‘Barron & Larcher – Textile Designers’ and from the Block printing with Natural Dyes workshop that I have run with Alice Garner at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft and as part of their wonderful Women’s Work show (it’s on until October 2019 so do go if you get the chance) plus from workshops in my own studio – thanks to all the students for their wonderful experimental work.

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I’ve called my textile dyeing & printing business Dora Fabrics since I graduated from Chelsea – somehow it felt safer to be someone else but now I’m finally coming out as me – Sarah Burns Patterns and it feels good!

Here is more about me, what inspires me and how I work (thanks to www.handprinted.com for originally publishing this blog)

About me – Sarah Burns Patterns

When I’m designing, I start with an initial idea and cut my block vey soon as print making is an integral part of designing for me. I’ll keep printing and cutting and changing the block, editing the idea as it develops and being attentive to detail, colour, marks & scale… My goal is to create something that creates both harmony & movement – at the same time.

Although I went to Cambridge and studied politics, I had a lovely friend who was at art school and we used to block print together – after that I never really stopped even though I was working in a very different field (community economics where I met my husband the writer David Boyle). When I was 40 and my youngest son went to school full time I decided to take the plunge and applied to Chelsea to study textiles – I could cycle there and back to Crystal Palace in time to pick up the kids up. Studying with lots of super talented 20 year olds was terrifying (I was the only mature student) and exhilarating at the same time. I got a first class degree and learned how to work very hard & really shifted in my approach to colour and design.

When I was in my second year at Chelsea I started interning with Michal at Christopher Farr Cloth; she took me to the wonderful Ivo’s screen printing factory in Southall and when I graduated I got a job there as a handprinter. I worked at Ivo’s for 3 years, commuting between Sussex and Southall and probably learned more there than I did at college – about colour, technique and the craft of printing. I wasn’t very good at it but it gave me a unique insight into commercial production and English manufacturing. The waste and toxicity of the process also made me want to do things differently so when I set up my studio in Steyning I decided to work in a way that was kinder to the environment – I do believe that beautiful things should be made beautifully otherwise they aren’t really honest.

I’ve just spent two years researching and writing a book on the 1930’s block printers Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher –who combined block printing and natural dyes. Their work has really inspired to work even more with natural processes.

One of the reasons I love print because it intervenes between my intention and the final outcome – it always surprises me and acts like an unknown collaborator. I also love that I am working in reverse – removing the line that I don’t want to print. I’m drawn to resist printing for the same reason. Colour and pattern is also very important to me – it’s a very emotional and playful thing in my life.

 I now feel very spoilt and have a workshop cum garage in Steyning where I live. I do most of my dyeing outside using whatever plants, fruits or roots are available seasonally and I always have an indigo vat on the go. I also grown lots of dye plants on my allotment and try to get up there most days with my dog Gwennie. Being outside and part of the seasons is very important to me – I try to plant something everyday, even if it’s just a handful of seeds thrown into cracks in the pavement.

I’m at my most creative first thing in the morning so I try and get all my blocks, fabric & colour prepped the night before so that I can get up early start printing first thing. The process of dyeing and printing has a definite rhythm to it and it’s one that definitely shapes my days and weeks. I normally print or dye all morning and then get on with other tasks in the afternoon – like preparing orders, organising workshops, talking to clients etc After supper, I often like to cut blocks as they are lovely and soft if you sit on the lino as you eat. In the evenings I’m not good for much excepting getting ready for the next day and maybe doing a bit of website admin. I often find that as I fall asleep problems that have been bugging me all day untangle themselves and new images float into my mind just as I doze off …

I’ve been print making for nearly 30 years – it sounds astonishing, especially to me. I’ve had some great teachers – Vivien Lodge at the Working Men’s College in Camden, Kathy Round & Mel Bowles at Chelsea, Podge at Ivo’s in Southall and my children – have all helped me develop in new and better ways. I remember reading somewhere that you don’t master any craft until you’ve put in at least 30,000 – I’m probably reaching the quota now.

I’m originally from South Africa I’m really inspired by the traditional shwe shwe cloth or German print that is worn traditionally by domestic servants – I’ve named one of my recent designs Margaret after the lovely woman who looked after me and my brother when we were little. I love vernacular arts and crafts – like the beautiful Romanesque carvings and medieval wall paintings you find in ancient churches around Steyning. Their bold colours and rthymic patterns are really wonderful. They are very honest and direct, made by incredibly talented and unknown craftsmen. I also like the immediacy and vitality of Peggy Angus for the same reasons. I especially like that she thought about and understood some of the reasons behind pattern making; for me making patterns is full of meaning and emotion and she devoted her life to teaching more people about that.

The actual process of pattern making and printing is what inspires me most – the fabric I begin with, the process of mordanting, preparing the dyes from roots and berries and the act of printmaking itself – at each stage materials change and marks alter, the smells, tastes and feelings – it’s a very sensual process and one I’ve become completely captivated by.

I also love drawing and I mark the beginnings of a holiday by starting to draw as much as I can all the time, everyday – I have lots of sketchbooks. When I’m most relaxed I dream about drawing.

The textile I am most proud is my map of world patterns – it took me several years to make. I collected stories from people all around the world and sewed their patterns onto a massive patchwork quilt of the world. The project taught me so much about our relationship to pattern and how patterns travel and change through culture, tradition and people http://unsewn.blogspot.com/2010/

There are a few pIaces where I sell my naturally dyed and hand printed fabrics: firstly through my website www.sarahburnspatterns.com

The lovely people at Guy Goodfellow Collection http://www.guygoodfellow.com also keep my work at their showroom in Chelsea. Virginia White has several of my designs in production as part of her fabric and wall paper collection http://virginiawhitecollection.com/fabrics/

and my friend Alice Garner and I run the Steyning Imprint together – making tea towels and other lovely things for sale through our etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/steyningimprint

Up coming projects include lots of events around my Barron and Larcher book which I co-authored with Michal at Christopher Farr Cloth. I’ve also been involved in helping with the Women’s Work show at Ditchling which celebrates craftswomen who turned their practice’s into successful businesses between the two World Wars – including Ethel Mairet, Alice Hindson, Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher, Enid Marx, Catherine ‘Casty’ Cobb, Katharine Pleydell- Bouverie, Denise Wren and Elizabeth Peacock. It’s on until October so catch it if you can

My partner Alice and I will be doing a Barron & Larcher inspired workshop at Handprinted in West Sussex in November. I’m really exited to be following in their footsteps – pioneering low-tech, non-toxic textile making.

My advice for other printmakers and creatives is:

*Follow your passion and be brave

*Work hard and keep going – stamina is just as important as talent

*Try and learn something from everyone you meet – everyone has something to teach you

*Find good people to work with – the ideas you have together will nearly always be better than thoughts you have alone and they will be there to keep you going when you run out of steam

*Don’t be afraid to ask for advice and enjoy yourself!

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I’ve experimented with lots of different ways of doing this on fabric – using bleach is really powerful if a little toxic. And there are resist binders you can buy commercially but I prefer a lower tech approach that’s safe to use and completely harmless to the environment.

That’s why I was so thrilled to have three different resist print techniques to explore with at this Springs Wild Textile workshops – ‘dhabu’ or Indian mud printing, ‘Adire’ Nigerian cassava paste & ‘Katazome’ Japanese rice paste, which Honami brought so kindly from Japan.

To make the mud resist we collected mud from the River Adur and mixed it with chalk from the hill & some gum arabic. The chalk had to be pounded until it is very fine – this is the hardest part.  When the resist was ready it smelt of the river but also of the sea (it has a high salt content as the Adur is very tidal near us) and was a lovely smooth consistancy, a pleasure to handle and squish through our stencils, also to flick as we discovered.

Next was the ‘Katazome’ or Japanese rice paste resist which was probably the hardest resist to prepare and involved mixing the rice flour with the rice bran (a kind of poetry here as the rice kernal is re-united in this way) & then steaming it like dumplings. The final resist was very silky and we could apply it with a icing funnel (?) as well as comb through it and make very fine lines.

‘Adire’ or cassava paste resist was relatively simple by contrast. I mixed half a cup of cassava flour and half a cup of water and cooked them together until they made a porridge. This I sieved to get ready of any lumps. Cassava was lovely to apply and once again we were able to make very fine lines through it.

All the resists were left to dry overnight and much of the next day when they could really bake in the sun. They then went into the indigo bath – the mud for the shortest dip, then the cassava, then the rice paste.

The cloths were left to fully oxidise and then we rinsed off the resists and were left with the final prints…

We all agreed that the next thing was to try and combine the different techniques, using what we now know about their different qualities. If you are interested in resist printing and indigo do get in touch about joining the next workshop, which will be in September.

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By lovely chance (I was just dropping off some more tea towels and pouches at the shop), Alice and I got to go along to the private view of the new show at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft –  Elizabeth Friedlander: Typographer, Calligrapher, Designer.

Elizabeth was a design prodigy, commissioned to design her own typeface (‘Elizabeth) straight out of college in 1930’s Germany. The typeface was to be called ‘Friedlander’ but due to the prevailing anti-semitism of the time, it was changed to the less Jewish sounding Elizabeth.

On the brink of commercial success as a typographer and illustrator in Germany, Elizabeth instead had to flee for her life, first to Italy and then to England, where she found work as a domestic servant.

Her skills and talent proceeded her, however and she found work designing advertising logos for The Times, Shell and beer mats! She also designed the lovely twirly Penguin logo. All her work is instantly familiar and recognisable and I found that I had several covers she designed for Penguin in the 1960’s, which I was already rather fond of. Now of course, they are firm favourites and have been rescued from our dusty poetry book shelves. You’ve probably got a copy of ‘Contemporary Verse’ or even the ‘Penguin Book of Italian Verse’ tucked away somewhere… I have to admit that rather superficially, mine was bought for the cover not the contents.

Friedlander’s work is resolutely un-English, it’s not trying to be naive, folky or simple in that Bawden-esque way. Rather, it is modern, decorative and much more European; in it’s execution Friedlander is painstaking, making lovely delicate marks that are often minute in scale (The Museum offers magnifying glasses) and always perfectly harmonius.

With this kind of talent and attention to detail, Friedlander always found work especially through the patronage of her mentor Francis Meynall, but most incredibly she worked throughout the war for the Government’s black propaganda unit, producing items such as forged Wehrmacht & Nazi rubber stamps and ration books.

Apart from one blurry photo of Friedlander, we were unable to find any other images of her – what she wore, the letters she wrote or diaries she kept (there were a few Christmas cards)… all the things that make a subject come to life. This got us fantisizing that maybe she was an invented person or maybe a cover for someone, a bit like how William Boyd and David Bowie invented art legend Nat Tate back in the 80’s.

Real or not, thanks to Friedlander, I am inspired me to be more careful, neater, diligent and professional all round in my work – in fact I’m just off to tidy my studio now…

Do go and see the exhibition if you get the chance (it’s on until the end of April). Friedlander deserves to be much more widely known for the beautiful discipline, rhythm and rigour of her work as well as for her incredible tenacity as a designer in the face of terrible odds.

Thanks to Jen at Ditchling for the invite, to David for looking after the boys & Alice for telling me about Nat Tate.

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I was fascinated but my friend told me not to worry – the whole city was covered with beautiful rangoli…and so she proved right. Scattered on pavements  through out the leafy streets of Bangalore were hundreds of these intricately drawn, fragile motifs, no two the same, renewed each morning and fading away through the heat and under the feet and business of the day.

‘They are patterns which reflect a whole cosmic universe in miniature. They are drawn each day by the children and women of the house as a way of propitiating the spirits entering their home – offering them order, harmony and in return requesting peace and blessings.’

Returning home, I noticed that we too had our own daily rangoli artist – Geeta the cook. She filled my sketchbooks with beautiful drawings  and gave me a live demonstration.

Another friend, Samooki turned out to be the daughter of a priestess and temple keeper and was an expert in drawing patterns with out end…

Now back home, with my own rangoli rice powder, I think about how I could make my own rangoli patterns in the street outside my home and what they would look like…

They might provide a subtle orientation to my day and our home, I’m sure, like saying a prayer help to connect us to the day and everything that will unfold and pass away within it.

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Mostly Chris prints the most amazing designs that use over 10 screens so this single colour was a doddle for him. He even spotted that the repeat is about 1mm out. Chris is our printing guru (just like his dad Podge) and he looks out for Mon and I spotting any mistakes we’re making before we’ve even made it. Naturally we adore him because he’s such a master craftsman and also because he’s so nice.

First Chris prints every other repeat, then he goes down the 50m table a second time and fills in the gaps when the first print is dry. Most days he walks over 10km!!

Here I am looking very pleased at how my little lino cut design has been transformed into a 50m length, something that would take me at least a week to do at home. I remember from when I studied politics, reading an essay by Walter Benjamin called ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ – which wasn’t very kind about processes like this which it claimed destroyed the spirit of the original by endlessly reproducing it…. reproduction does change the original but not necessarily into something less, it can also distill essential parts and help to simplify it as well.

Anyway, as a designer, it’s something very beautiful to watch when your idea becomes reality and you see it being produced and going into peoples homes. I also remember something I think Liubov Popova, the friend of the constructivist designer Vavara Rodchenko and a wonderful painter and designer herself said – how she would far prefer for an ordinary woman to buy 1m of her fabric in a department store than her painting to be hung in a famous gallery and just seen by just a few.

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There is a rational way to design a pattern – I remember Orla Kiely suggesting that you first consider the purpose of the design, then the scale and lastly the motif itself. I’ve also got lots of lovely books about the subject, which I could use but rarely do.

Instead, I kind of feel my way out of the dark: for me pattern grows out of a moment in a specific emotional time and place – I’ve often used similar inspiration and yet come up with completely different design ideas that bare little resemblance to each other.

I’ve learnt that by my personal approach is through printmaking itself: cutting and printing and recutting my printing blocks – moving them, rotating them, cutting them up untilI find a little clue of something that intrigues me and offers possible solutions… I’ve also learned from some of my favourite pattern makers like Barron and Larcher and Enid Marx to always shape my repeat unit (never square) and to overlap, reverse and flip patterns – what ever it takes to keep them dynamic and above all to keep off the train tracks. When I think I’m almost done, I look at every line and ask why it’s there – always a good way of simplifying.

Here’s some of the earlier incarnations of the Sompting design that I designed for the Virginia White Collection. This two colour design took me a while and in the end I just cut the block up and collaged the whole thing – messy. I remember coming in from the garage and showing David the final print, knowing that I’d finally cracked it – always a lovely feeling…

The strange thing is that each time, instead of knowing what to do I have to go through the whole strange and elusive process again, experimenting, developing, refining – with no shortcuts or tricks. It’s such an all consuming process that I remember what Sheila Paine says in the introduction to her book on Embroidered Textiles and quietly apologise to my boys:

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We’ll be selling them at Christmas markets at the Downland and Weald Museum and Crafty Fox Market in Peckham.

My print day was the culmination of 2 weeks work outside in the garden with metres of heavy, wet cloth soaking and boiling them in wood ash to mordant them (so that the dye stays)

and then dipping them into my bubbling caldron of walnut and rhubarb dye. All my fabric is odds and ends recycled from the factory. At Dora Fabrics we are very sustainable!

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