Ancient Shards, New Materials

Besides having a go at making books , the TVCQ meeting on Saturday was also useful in putting flesh on ideas for exhibition in Slough Museum  next year. I'd decided to work with the 'Taplow Vase' as inspiration and had got as far as playing around in Photoshop combining different viewpoints. I'm thinking of doing something large transparent 2d using organza and pojagi techniques but was struggling to work out how to stabilise the edges so it wouldn't be too floppy. People were very helpful suggesting wire etc. Then Vicki  introduced me to 'crin' and very generously gave a piece to play with.

It has amazing properties both flexible and  structural at the same time having a mesh of nylon fibres a bit like a trellis!  Never having heard about it before I found some little gems of information about it.
'Crin' is short for 'Crinoline' and  the name was invented by the fabric's manufacturers, who combined the  words crinis (meaning hair ) and linum (meaning flax) or alternatively from  the combination of the French  words crin (specifically meaning horse-hair) and lin (again, meaning flax).
It's also called horsehair braid ( as that's what it used to be made from) and is  applied to the hemline of long frocks to add body without weight , supporting the shape of the hem. Also found a great tutorial on using it. Now just need to order some and start playing !