DYCP application images
The Boat Builders 2020
This series of portraits by Emily Jo Gibbs documents the work of the Foreman and Apprentices 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.
“I’m interested in the idea that by taking the time to slowly describe someone in stitch, you convey your admiration. Celebrating people who make things by the investment of time in making the work, a quiet, thoughtful act of care and value”. Emily Jo Gibbs
Bradley Watson - 3rd year Apprentice Sprayer 2020
Hand stitched silk organza on linen
35 x 44cm
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. There was quite a hive of activity, Brad was on the top of the boat, right up in the rafters, clipped on and in his white PPE. He sat crossed legged up above me while we chatted about his route to becoming an apprentice and his future plans. The monotony of the task in hand, rubbing down this huge yacht was not lost on me.
Portrait of an Engineer 2019
I spoke at length to Steve Suttle, Engineering Manager of Technical Production at The Natural History Museum a fascinating and knowledgeable person with a lifetime’s experience of making.
Before coming to The Museum, Steve (like several of his colleagues) worked in the Aerospace industry for over twenty-five years, starting as an apprentice when he left school. Despite being really welcoming and interested in my Value of Making project, Steve was pretty gloomy about the future of engineering in this country he couldn’t see where the next generation where going to be able to learn and grow and practice the haptic skills required to become proficient.
Steve didn’t single out a particular favourite tool but rather expressed the idea that all his tools were an extension of his hands and that he would feel lost without them. Consequently he felt really aggrieved if anything went missing, or was borrowed and not returned. We also talked about having the right tool for the job and developing new skills and enjoying learning to use new tools like CAD.
For me the Machine tools were the stars of the show, the big enamelled beasts, oily and covered in sparkling swarf. I went on to make three large textile pieces based on these machines ‘Portrait of an Engineer’.
Bridgeport Milling Machine 2019
Hand stitched silk organza on linen
53 x 70cm
Selvedge Magazine Nov/Dec 2019
Making Conversation by Mary Schoeser
A conversation with Emily Jo Gibbs is, it turns out, largely about conversations. She speaks with an engaging passion about the craftspeople she has met in the course of her creation of ‘The Value of Making’, a series of portraits of makers tools, exquisitely rendered in layered silk organza, collaged and stitched to a linen ground. This project, celebrating the value of clever hands, began in 2017 and culminated in an exhibition at Collect Open in February 2018. In the beautiful little catalogue produced to document the show, what is striking is the artist’s descriptions of the conversations that took place during the process.
It all began with pincushions. Emily had some given to her by her mother, who had studied fashion and passed on sewing skills to her daughter. Having combined those home-taught skills with metalworking while finishing her degree at Wolverhampton University, she went on – after studying leatherwork in Walsall and shoe making in Leicester (“Very Boring! Leather wallets, men’s slippers...much more industry based. A shock to the system...”) – to run a successful company making designer bags from 1993-2006. Through London Fashion Week and similar shows, she came to know Bridget Bailey (see Selvedge blog November 02, 2018) and understood Bridget’s desire to drive her practice away from the relentless pace of the fashion industry and towards being an artist. “We decided we’d collaborate, booked a little gallery space, and started a conversation about making and textiles. I was keen to make a portrait but just through conversations and being in her studio thought to do tools and noticed her pincushion and that’s how it started.”
What emerged from Bridget’s reluctance (“so nice. When you are a maker you have a close affinity with your tools: they are like your friends...”) were two pincushion portraits, one for each of them. This was 2016. By early 2018 Emily had made visits to seven other makers. The first was the metalworker Ann Christensen (“We talked about people who have making skills and what a vast and diverse group we are.”) Then there was the shoemaker, Maiko Dawson (“We also talked about the makers of the tools, from British shoe-last manufacturers to Japanese scissor makers, and we compared notes on the sound of a good scissor action...”). Some of the tools depicted were surprising: furniture maker Sebastian Cox’s was represented by his shared CNC machine, glass blower Michael Ruh by cone-ended pipes and a bucket of water, weaver Eleanor Pritchard by a calculator (“I did ask Eleanor if she minded being represented as a calculator but she assured me it really is a vital tool.”)
From the days when her studio was in Clerkenwell, she already knew potter Helen Beard and jeweller Sarah Pulvertaft (“What was really lovely was to go and have the conversations, with people who are positive about being makers. That can get lost in the mix when making a living...”). She has since continued the project, in 2019 making three pieces inspired by the lathes and mills in the engineering department of the Natural History Museum. Given her passion for championing manual dexterity and creative problem solving, it’s no surprise to learn that these pieces celebrate the great skill and knowledge of people like Steve Suttle at the NHM. Emily is on the lookout for another project like it. She gives an animated description of a tour of the Bentley factory (“brilliant combination of technology and hand skills. Have development room as well, for people designing things without materials knowledge. So now designers work in conjunction with skilled makers so that they don’t come a cropper. Fascinating.”)
Meanwhile, as we speak she is working towards an exhibition in early August called Vessels of Influence, a pop-up curated by Flow Gallery at St Peters Church, Cambridge, next to Kettle’s Yard. The other exhibitors are twelve ceramicists. The nearly-completed piece she shows me is 'Tea with Sun and Kaori' (Sun Kim and Kaori Tatebayashi). Sun is also based in Camberwell (“beautiful ceramics, origami-like soft forms”) but the portrait is not just a rendition of her pot. Asking what was used when they drank tea, the answer was the seconds made by Kaori, who shares Sun’s studio. (“So that’s her cup, a second. I love those stories. No point of making a picture of a piece, it’s the conversation.”)
It turns out that conversations also featured in Emily’s very first stitched portrait, of one of her two boys. Although to this day making limited edition bags for Gallery Kuga in Tokyo, when the bag business closed, “I had to get a job. Real life! Wasn’t making, sad about that, didn’t know what to do. Had a great tutorial with business mentor. She said, ‘loads of creative people suffer this so go away and make things for yourself without worrying about price points or markets.’ It took away all the reasons not to do something.” Looking in Selvedge magazine she saw a competition to make a doll’s bed; “oh I could do a doll” evolved into “I could do a portrait.” Silk organza from the handbag-making days was plentiful, and thus began the making of literal portraits, the first with painted details that were later eliminated as commissions arrived, to make them more affordable. In that first portrait, she stitched her own words into his hair, recording all her mixed messages, such as “be creative – but tidy!” The chuckle as she says this is appealing; clearly, she is reflective, even ruminative (“Bridget is kind. I say ‘procrastinating’ and she says, ‘that’s your process’.”)
Something of Emily’s warmth radiates from her quiet but perfectly observed depictions of objects and people (“when I’m teaching, I’m constantly saying LOOK”). Their pared-down graphic quality belies the carefully chosen layering of different colours of organza, the sparely but precisely rendered dots of stitches. (“The joy is in the hand stitch. Really labour intensive. They’re considered. Calm.”) And they speak to the viewer, carrying those conversations on.
Mary Schoeser
The Value of Making 2018
Seven portraits of contemporary Makers, a celebration of the skill, dexterity and the creative problem solving of people who make things, recognising the value of clever hands in an increasingly digital and cerebral age.
Concerned about the position of making in the hierarchy of skills we value as a society and how this is exacerbated by the decline of making in schools, Emily made a series of portraits of contemporary makers to reflect how proud she is to be a member of this creative community.
Portrait of Shoemaker 2017
Hand stitched silk organza appliqué on linen.
45 x 46cm
The idea of illustrating the tools of seven makers gave the viewer an intimate glimpse into the lives of the people portrayed which went beyond what a traditional portrait might do. The seven carefully chosen and curated images were thoughtful and beautifully executed and served as an inspiration to audiences at Collect.
— The Value of Making Survey
The British Textile Biennial 2021
‘Connected Cloth: Exploring the global nature of textiles’
Textile worker – China 2021
Hand stitched silk organza appliqué on linen.
62 x 44cm
Emily’s work is made from layers and pieces of silk organza, she prizes the crisp, flat, dull qualities of the material that is woven in China and India. Curious about the people who weave the material that has become synonymous with her work, she approached several of her suppliers to see if they could help her shed any light on the mill workers that produce the cloth.
Thanks go to Nick Moore at Pongees for engaging with this project, providing photographs from the mill they use and helping Emily to try and glean a little more information about the mill workers
This portrait continues Emily’s project advocating The Value of Making by creating work that celebrates people who make things. In this context it is regrettable and intriguing that she remains anonymous. Emily respects her from afar and reflects upon their cultural differences and the silk threads that connect them.