Letter from Isabel: Craft

Each year at Connolly during London Craft Week, we welcome the chance to celebrate craft, from silver smiths to chair designers. In May from 13th to18th, we welcome Emily Campbell, a truly creative hand quilter of great skill and knowledge. This Craft week we are showing a selection of extraordinary, quilted works from her practice. There is also a physical demonstration of hand quilting by Emily, in the gallery upstairs during London Craft Week (dates and times below).

Somehow quilting represents so much about what I personally love; its hand and eye coordination at an extreme level and it’s also tidy (using up old fabrics) and useful (it keeps you warm) and highly decorative. But at heart, the quilt is a work of art and love that can be passed down from generation to generation… everything we cherish at Connolly. To celebrate Craft Week we have commissioned Emily to create two beautiful, exclusive designs for Connolly, using off-cut fabrics from our summer collection and hand dyed linens from Polly Lister at Dyeworks; the single bed sized quilts are sold individually or as pairs and are available to buy from the shop.

More about Emily and her studio Pemberton Qwilts…Emily Campbell progressed from an English degree at Cambridge to a diploma in clothing technology and became a pattern maker for the fashion designer Jean Muir. After completing her MFA at Yale School of Art she practised as a graphic designer at Pentagram in New York before a series of national and international programme director roles in the arts, design and education. Her knowledge of sewing now combines with formal and visual principles to drive a return to two-dimensional design via the patchwork quilt. Sheila Frances Hayes, née Pemberton, taught Emily to sew.

- Isabel

@pembertonqwilts
pembertonqwilts.com

Please contact gallery@connollyengland.com for enquiries.