Mr Bampfylde’s Handkerchiefs. 2019-20

Embroidery.

These 39 ‘handkerchiefs’ (each 13 x 13 inches square) were produced for the tercentenary celebration of the life of gentleman and artist C.W. Bampfylde (1720-1791).

His watercolours and drawings of various ‘romantic’ landscapes around Britain (such as the lake district and the Peak District) inspired my embroideries, mountains being a subject I have returned to again and again in sketch books, carvings and woodcuts.

I was intrigued by the fact that Bampfylde was painting a subject about little was known at the time - geology in the 18th C hadn’t yet been invented as a science . Was the hand of God at work here? Or water, or fire? I know little more about geology, and the act of depicting something one doesn’t know much about is an interesting road to travel.

You approach it from a sentient and visual point of view.

I further imagined these handkerchiefs to have been produced by his wife, ‘Mrs, or Lady Bampfylde’, who actually had the reputation of a fine embroideress. She would have taken his designs with even less knowledge of the subject, perhaps, so the likeness (my likeness) is not exact - they have changed slightly in translation, just as when sketching a landscape one might exaggerate or distort forms.