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Rosie H. Cook

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Conservation and Climate Change

The Sound of Shadows

Making Connections

2017 Asialink Arts Residency

Asialink+AsiaSoc.23March(1)

  Crazed Puppets

Crazed Puppets 04

 This is not a Kowangan

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#APTCCARN5

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My mother came to visit recently bearing gifts: a mini tapestry kit from Aubusson by #véroniquedeluna. The Aubusson-Felletin wool is so fine and the colours are beautiful —the stamped background is not representative! Starting a new project with a new style of needlework - it’s like learning a new dance or a new language. At first the directions are confusing and then suddenly the flow makes so much sense and the true fun starts! I have completed the yellow flowers and must go to bed…It’s tempting to unpick and redo the first flower I did, also very tempting to keep going but I must be strict with myself when I’m stealing needlework time… by the way I have almost finished my counted cross stitch from the previous posts, but I don’t like the visual effect of the very last section of back stitching and have therefore put it aside. I have too little time for stitching to waste a second of it on things I’m not enjoying! #aubusson #tapisserieaupoint
I hate metallic thread. I had many misgivings about the instructions to use metallic thread for highlights on this pattern, but I took a leap of faith, because this piece was so beautifully designed with all its blended colours. And now it looks like a Christmas tree decoration. I’m going to have to unpick all this nasty tinsel thread and try again with a golden-coloured yarn. Why must metallic thread make us so saaaaad 😭 it’s all the more frustrating because I have so little time for stitching and I have wasted hours stitching the gold in, and will have to waste yet more time unpicking it… and it’s going to damage the smoothness of the floss stitched around it 😭😭😭 #crossstitch #metallicthread #fail
The tragic thing about these projects is that even though it looks so close to completion, the back stitching / outlines are going to take so long that this is probably only half the work done 😣 but I *will* complete this project! Thanks in part to the delight that is the “Easy Guide Ball-Tipped Needle”. It’s a bit of a mouthful but I started using one about 2 weeks ago and it really upped my stitching game. I’ve been wondering how it might help for textile conservation — it has a tiny ball on the tip of the needle so it doesn’t split the threads of the fabric but instead finds its way to the natural interstices in the weave. #crossstitch #easyguideneedle
I tried to sneakily snatch some stitching time but I got up off the couch and someone stole my seat
My small town here in France has a lovely mercerie (haberdashery) and I often go in to admire threads and yarns and patterns. The owner told me she only recently picked up and finished a cross stitch she started when on maternity leave... the child just turned 19! So why not just pick one and set it up and come back to it on rare occasions I do have a few hours to myself... I have four kits currently waiting for my attention, but one is wool and I prefer not to work in wool in the summer. One is on black canvas which is making life unnecessarily hard for myself. Then I have these two... one very cheugy Klimt (no shade, I wouldn’t have purchased if I didn’t like it) and the other a misleadingly minimalist “sunset”. I actually started the sunset 3 days before Taiga was born but it involved a LOT of counting and unpicking. The Klimt is an advanced kit with lots of Klimty mottled skin tones which will be a nightmare I have no doubt... on second thoughts I am starting to realise the sunset is probably a better choice (or maybe the nice wool one after all!).
DONE. #rosielovesteal
I’ve made a separate account which will primarily be baby-related, because I don’t have much room in my life for other things right now. Scrolling through my Instagram used to be a source of delight and inspiration, because I had curated such a strong collection of conservation, textiles and art. But recently it just hurts, to be honest — it’s like I’m twisting the knife, salting the wound constantly. I know this is just a stage of my life and I will be back, but for now I am going to be scrolling through @taiga.times. You are very welcome to follow along there if you like pictures of babies and dogs and messy living spaces, and I will still post here when I can scrape together time to work on my textile/conservation projects. Xx
I will finish this cushion cover this week. I *WILL* finish it this week and then put the insert in and then never go near it again because it’s beautiful but itchy. Certainly not cushion material! #rosielovesteal
My first Fête des Mères 🍰🍫💐🏞🪡. I saw first the UK and then the Australian Mother’s Days go by unacknowledged in our home, and realised I needed to listen to @biglittlefeelings and tell James that I actually wanted and needed him to do something (in fairness we usually don’t do holidays like Valentine’s or even Christmas to be honest). Luckily for us we get three opportunities in a year since France celebrates on their own date. He really stepped up with this beautiful bunch of flowers and lovely card and chocolate. I picked out the cake myself and also selected myself this bib (last slide) to embroider in all my spare time as a mum #lol
I feel there was a real missed opportunity to call this (delightful) book “De vers et de terre”, don’t forget the little silkworms... 🐛 #shelfie #rosielovesteal #rosieshelfie
Some charming but somewhat blurry photos from the Fondation Baur collection — baby always grabs my hands when I try to take a photo! I got notes on none of them, from memory... the beautiful tiny square dish is stunning cloisonné work; the kimono is early 20thc and the BIZARRE and disturbing bowl in the last slide is mid-18thc, Chinese porcelain inspired by European pictural style.
The sun is shining, the sky is ridiculously blue, the terraces are open, we are all vaccinated, so we crept into a crêperie where Taiga had his first galette!
Every day I strap on my 8kg of baby and walk up the steep hill where the Chateau de Gex once stood. Most of the town was burnt to the ground in 1590 by Genevese soldiers, this abandoned house at the top of the hill is therefore fairly modern with its 1776 lintel. I love the gradient patina on the door — obviously much more recent with its 20th century paint, but still, #rosielovesteal and I also love the hand-shaped knocker 👇. I will try and capture some more pictures from around the town, baby doesn’t like it when I stop to take out my phone — he is a harsh taskmaster!
A very Instagram textiles moment, using my @bawntextiles x @jenerates.shopwindow square ruler to check the scale on the @zenzietinkerconservation pattern 🧵🪡📐
Yesterday I learned that my grandmother Joan had passed away overnight, at home in Devon. Because of living in different countries my entire life, I am lucky that we had such a good relationship, thanks to her being so great with the Internet. I would send emails full of photos and anecdotes about what I was up to on my travels; I’m grateful for iPhones which made it always easy to open up an email and drop in some pictures and then just start writing. Granny also followed my various blogs over the years, as well as my Instagram (getting a Like or a comment from her was always the best feeling!). After Taiga was born, my emails became scarce, but Granny downloaded Tinybeans (a private app for sharing baby photos with family) to her iPad and followed along, sometimes leaving comments which were always so special to me. For Christmas we sent her a printed album of a family photoshoot we did with Taiga and Karl in Taiwan, and it went missing for weeks before finally being delivered in January — I’m grateful she got it in time because that would have broken my heart. My grandmother made my career possible; she approved of my decision to go back to university to become a conservator, and my family knows how important her approval was to us all. I’m incredibly sad that she never got to meet her first great-grandchild, who was born so far away in Taiwan and then was so close in France but not able to visit because of Covid, and the isolation she experienced over the last year make it all the more frustrating. I have to keep focusing on the things I am grateful for, including the visit I made in Christmas 2015 with my sister, and more recently in November and December 2017 with James for her 91st birthday and in September 2019 with my mother. I’m also grateful she was independent and living in her own home until the end. When we are finally able to attend her funeral (Covid and Brexit making things much harder than it should be), I hope very much that the service will be at Weare Giffard, it will be so comforting to assemble our very small family in such a quiet and beautiful place, the church I always remember her attending.
Very grateful that baby Taiga is being chill and letting me watch the fantastic presentations for day 2 of the Icon Textiles Group spring forum! Currently on break, I’m crossing my fingers he lasts long enough to see @ksyniamarko and @may_b_textile_conservation’s talk next. I really feel so lucky to be able to double up on my professional and parental commitments (as you can see, that doesn’t involve tidying the living-room — nobody’s perfect!). #icontextilegroupforum
These are a few of my favourite chairs! Day 1 of the #icontextileconservationgroup Spring Forum was very chair-oriented. My paper on conserving chairs belonging to Chiang Kai Shek was followed by an amazing array of much more glamorous armchairs. This spectacular suite re-upholstered in poison green is from Heather Porter’s presentation and wins most eye-catching; second favourite chair of the session was actually one of Siobhan Barratt’s “sad chairs” of the National Trust: apparently it’s a semi-standard practice to place a pine cone on historic chairs so people won’t sit in them? I laughed out loud alone at my computer screen, anyway; and my third favourite was this much more modern iteration, which was treated to a customised cover at the V&A by Isobel Harcourt. I’m hoping to get to see more tomorrow... today James took the baby out so I could manage unimpeded, but the next 3 days will require me to somehow watch/listen whilst wrangling Taiga... 😥 #textileconservation #upholsteryconservation #upholstery #conservator
Some rare textile conservation related news — I’m presenting this paper at the ICOM textiles group spring forum this Thursday 15th of April. There’s a link in my Instagram bio to the online event if you would like to register (free for ICOM members, £10 for non-members). I will be talking about how interacting with Taiwanese visitors impacted my perspective whilst working on chairs belonging to Chiang Kai Shek. #conservation #textileconservation #taiwanhistory #taiwan #icontextilegroupforum
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