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Progress and MachinesI was very interested in Valerie Campbell-Harding's article To Cheat or Not to...... I wonder why progression in the embroidery and sewing field is viewed this way? I am often accused of cheating when customers come into the sewing machine shop I work in and see the machines running.
Why is it cheating? When I make my coffee I use an electric kettle to boil the water, take the milk from a bottle ( I would not have a clue how to milk the cow) and use Instant coffee. I cook on a modern cooker, not an open fire and use a microwave and if the dentist tried to fill my tooth without an injection I would rapidly head for the door. I am writing to you using a PC and email. Are we all cheating because we do not use the alternatives? Why does this area appear to be left in a time warp, what are we, the professional and hobbyist stitchers and embroiderers doing to perpetuate this?
Valerie mentioned the machines and scanners that automatically digitise but what of the machines that have a software link to a PC that you actually digitise the stitches yourself. To do this well you have to have a good background knowledge of stitches and density and compensation etc. not to mention the basics like understanding colour. Funny, I think the general impression is that cheating is easy! Using modern methods does not take away our ability to embroider and sew in the old way, it enhances our skills and enables progression as in any other field.
Perhaps we have to alter our perceptions first before others will.
Tania Kimmins
Bridgwater, Somerset.
Old Skills, New WaysI was most interested to read the letters by Kay Ward and Tania Kimmins in the January 1999 issue of The World of Embroidery. As booksellers specialising in books on textile arts and having a partner who is also a textile artist, we enjoy conversations with our customers on their current interests and concerns, as they are often concerns we share. Hence this letter.
I can sympathise fully with Kay Ward in wanting to get back to basics, but also agree with the Editor's comment about the world moving on. There are always tensions about change, when people are challenging traditional ways of working by doing things differently. Could it be that the word 'embroidery' is now too narrow a definition for 'textile art', a field in which new materials are constantly appearing, and new methods evolving for their embellishment?
However, my main concern comes from Tania Kimmins' letter, and especially where she says that using modern methods does not take away the ability to embroider in the old way That may be true, providing that one already has the ability to embroider in the old way, but what would Tania say to the teacher in our shop the other day, who was earnestly searching for ways of stimulating schoolchildren in a school which has only computerised sewing machines, and where none of the children has any background in the basics of needlework? I cannot help but wonder where this is leading in the future. Are we facing a scenario where hand embroidery could become a thing of the past?
Looking further ahead, I wonder what readers would make of a view I have seen expressed in an article which looked at the relationship between craft and art, and where it was said that sewing machines and needles are just two tools among many, to be used well or badly; what is important is the finished piece, not the method used to create it. How would embroiderers feel about a redefinition of hand embroidery which reduces its status to merely one means to an end, when it is clear that to many, hand embroidery is something they hold very dear, and enjoy purely for its own sake, i.e., as an end in itself? If the end starts to matter more than the means, what kind of practice is required for this, and how will it be valued, taught and assessed? Is what I have written merely evidence of evolution and change or worrying signs about what the future may hold?
Gordon Hill
Clitheroe, Lancs