Journal

Join Emily Jo Gibbs at her kitchen table and have a go at hand stitched appliqué, a creative focus for people who are isolated and missing their usual textile groups and courses. A TextileArtist.org project.

This new series of portraits documents Foreman and their Apprentices working at Berthon Boatyard in Lymington. Highlighting the Value of Making and the importance of skilled labour. A celebration of people who prefer a hands-on approach, whose knowledge and skill is gained through the doing, learnt through making.

Emily’s work is constructed from pieces and layers of hand cut silk organza. Some pieces are cut into specific accurate shapes and other pieces are used as swathes or blocks of colour. Whites are created by leaving gaps or cutting holes in the dark pieces.

When I met Jamie and Sam they were working as a team on a project, reconstructing Ripple a 1925 Berthon Built Yacht.

Curly came to Berthon as an Apprentice Joiner 35 years ago. He left school to start an apprenticeship with a different Boat company but they went bust within 2 days of him starting. He had liked Woodwork at school he had a really inspiring teacher who also taught him to carve and offered him a job making Gypsy Caravans, but Curly had been determined to do an apprenticeship.

I met Brad on my visit to Berton Boatyard before Christmas. After spending sometime with the Shipwrights, I was taken to another enormous shed filled with a white vessel that was in for repairs, we climbed the scaffolding up to the deck.

I'm very excited to have this super article by Mary Schoeser in the Nov/Dec issue of Selvedge Magazine.

Mary came to see me in July on what felt like the hottest day of the year and the builders where in next door! We contended with the heat and the noise, drank iced water and had a lot of laughs. Mary's article reflects that my work is all about conversations which is rather lovely.

I am delighted to have been invited by St Barbe Museum and Gallery to make a new body of work for a solo exhibition in the spring. March 27 - April 26 2020.

I will be making a series of portraits documenting Boat Builders and their Apprentices working for Berthon in Lymington – highlighting the Value of Making and the importance of skilled labour. A celebration of the often maligned (in our increasingly narrow education system) the non-academic student.

For the last month I've been working on a piece called Portrait of an Engineer, it is very large 62 x 71cm and my process is very slow…

Yesterday I spent a fascinating afternoon in the basement of The Natural History Museum, I went to visit the workshops and meet the people in technical production – I was seeking out The Makers.

TextileArtist.org is a fabulous resource and I am really fortunate that they have published several articles about my practice. In the latest; Emily Jo Gibbs: From conception to creation, I describe my making process.

My book The Value of Making launched last month at Contemporary Applied Arts. The book documents the seven portraits I made, of seven Contemporary Makers through the tools they use and has a forward by Design Writer Katie Treggiden.