Marion Elliot’s New Papercuts

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Favourite illustrator Marion Elliot has spread her wings and taken flight with this superlative series of large papercut collages for the Shop Floor Project

 

The Gingerbread & Cake Makers

‘Christmas preparations are underway as two bakers prepare a magnificent Twelfth Cake complete with elaborate paste decorations. At the end of the table, a gentleman makes a batch of gingerbread biscuits by pressing the dough into wooden moulds. Gingerbread was a commonly sold in the street and at fairs, and gingerbread figures of kings, queens, religious figures and symbols became very popular during the sixteenth century. The elaborately carved wooden moulds are themselves things of beauty and offer wonderful insights into the fashions and preoccupations of our social history.’

 

 

Twelfth Night Cakes

‘I have long been an admirer of the work of the food historian, chef and confectioner Ivan Patrick Day.  He recreates historic food and table settings, making visual and edible feasts that delight and astonish. I was particularly taken with his Twelfth Cake made to celebrate the feast of Epiphany on the 6th January and embellished with moulded paste kings and queens, crowns, decorative swags and fleur de lys, all on a tinted cochineal icing base. For this collage, I imagined a Georgian confectioner’s Christmas window display with a centrepiece of a Twelfth Cake surrounded by quivering jellies cast from ceramic moulds.’

 

 

At the Milliner’s

‘I love haberdashers’ shops and enjoy browsing through the incredible stock of places like VV Rouleaux just off Marylebone High St. Inspired by this, I created a milliner’s shop of my own, the sort that might once have been found in any market town, with a stock of ribbons and trims to embellish hats. Here, a Victorian lady exclaims in delight as she carefully balances an ornate, feather-trimmed hat upon her head. The milliner stands ready with extra feathers to complete the arrangement, whilst a wistful shop girl waits to cut lengths of velvet ribbon for their excitable customer with her huge dressmaker’s shears.’

 

 

At the Florist’s

‘This collage was inspired by my love of ironmongers’ and the vast array of things that they sell, including gardening tools. I was also very taken with a lovely photograph from around 1900 showing an East Ender standing proudly beside his potted hyacinths and tulips to be entered into a floral competition. I wanted to show the variety of tools and equipment available to gardeners at the turn of the nineteenth century, including spades, forks, hoes, shears, flower stands, hanging baskets, and sieves. These were almost invariably things of beauty, elegant and solid and built to last.’

 

 

The Quilt Makers

‘I wanted to convey the peace and quiet of a winter’s evening in a Welsh farmhouse kitchen where a woman pieces a quilt whilst her mother drinks tea and sorts through coloured fabric scraps. The scene was inspired by a visit a few years ago to the St Fagan’s Museum near Cardiff which opened in 1948. It was created to reflect the lives, culture and architecture of the Welsh people and is an open-air site, where historic Welsh buildings were transported and re-erected. I particularly liked the row of terraced houses, each one decorated to reflect a different era and full of wonderful furniture, pottery and framed pictures.’

 

 

The Basket Weavers

‘I admire the craftsmanship and skill that goes into willow and straw weaving and the traditional way that willow was harvested in wetlands like the Norfolk Broads. Straw weaving has many connections to folklore, country traditions and customs such as corn-dolly making. One of the best-known twentieth century century straw weavers was Fred Mizen, who lived around the village of Great Bardfield in Essex. His skill led to a commission to create a giant straw Lion & Unicorn for the Festival of Britain in 1951, each figure over six feet tall, which were displayed in the Lion & Unicorn Pavilion and Selfridges shop window, before they were devoured by mice.’

 

 

The Farrier

‘At one time, blacksmiths made horseshoes and shoed horses at the forge, but eventually farriering became a separate trade. I was interested in showing all the different tools that would have been used for the tasks a blacksmith carried out, including making horseshoes, producing household tools, repairing farm machinery and even pulling teeth! The Industrial Revolution became a double-edged sword for blacksmiths because, while they produced tools and machine parts to support its rapid development, the rise of mechanisation ultimately reduced demand for their skills.’

 

 

Making a Shell House

‘Shell grottoes originated in Ancient Greece, evolving into temples and garden features, before being popularised by Renaissance architects and becoming hugely popular throughout Europe in the 1600s. The trend was enthusiastically adopted by the designers of grand houses and outdoor, often subterranean rooms, lined with shells, became hugely desirable. Shells were also used in many aspects of folk art, from shell-encrusted frames and sailors’ valentines to shell-lady figurines and elaborate maritime dioramas featuring ships and mermaids. My collage is a mix of all these things, a grotto in the form of a house, that is also a love token or valentine, and a diorama.’

 

 

In the Sail Loft

‘My parents lived in St Ives for many years and I was a frequent visitor. The beaches are backed by old sail lofts and you could still visit these vast spaces and imagine the huge expanses of canvas hanging from the ceiling as they were made into sails. I researched the tools that sailmakers used to fashion the sails, which were traditionally hand stitched, and included them in this picture, laid out on a bench. Sailmaking is now a critically endangered heritage craft, so I enjoyed making this collage as a celebration of the immense skill needed to make sails and rope by hand. The main sail being hand finished in the foreground bears the initials PZ, the identification code for Penzance.’

 

 

The Butcher’s

‘This collage is inspired by Victorian butcher shop dioramas. These were miniature shop fronts encased in a wooden frame and featuring tiny replica cuts of meat, strings of sausages and animal carcasses, all neatly arranged in the windows. They often contained a plump butcher and his assistant in aprons, in front of striped cutting blocks. It is thought that these were not toys, but displays placed in butchers’ shop windows to show what was on offer. In my version, a butcher watches his wife twisting a string of sausages as he garnishes a plate of chops.’

 

 

The Wool Dyers

‘In Hebridean tweed making, raw wool was dyed before spinning, a practice known as dyeing in the wool. This gave a deeper colour than dyeing the spun yarn. Islanders, mostly women, gathered natural materials such as lichen and plants to produce dyes. To dye the wool, a large metal pot was placed on the beach with a fire beneath and the wool was layered into the pot with natural plant matter, and boiled for hours until it reached the desired hue. Then the wool was carded and spun into yarn, ready for weaving. Once woven, the tweed was taken off the loom and pounded by hand to shrink and thicken it.  This was known as waulking the tweed and was done by groups of women to the accompaniment of traditional waulking songs.’

 

 

The Tweed Weavers

‘I once visited the Outer Hebrides and was lucky enough to buy some lengths of Harris Tweed straight off the loom, from a weaver who worked from his home. The colours echoed the landscape and it was incredibly soft to the touch. Here I have imagined a weaver weaving tweed on an enormous floor loom, worked by foot pedals or treadles to lift the heddles up and down as the shuttle glides through. Her assistant measures up a customer for a jacket in front of bales of cloth in a variety of patterns and colours. Harris Tweed is incredibly hard-wearing, both thorn proof and water-resistant and will last a lifetime if cared for properly, so this may be the customer’s only visit!’

 

 

The Dolls’ House

‘I have a great affection for dolls’ houses. I like the feeling of getting a glimpse into a miniature world that has its own life, even when you are not there – a totally self-contained environment full of excitement and drama. One of my favourite childhood books, The Dolls’ House by Rumer Godden, concerns a wooden doll named Tottie and her family who are badly treated by the beautiful but cruel doll, Marchpane, when they move from a shoe box into a beautiful dolls house…a very heart-rending tale! I read this story many times as a child and it reinforced my belief in the reality of toy houses and their inhabitants’

 

 

The Visitors

‘I wanted this collage to show a great house preparing for a celebration as the dolls await their visitors, who arrive on foot and by (wooden) racing car. The rooms bustle with activity as a maid serves a reviving cup of tea to the hostess, who has just had forty winks in her boudoir. One sister soaks in the bath whilst another combs out her wet hair. In the stairwell, the chandelier is being polished and, downstairs, the maid does a last minute sweep up in the hallway. In the kitchen, the cook balances precariously on a chair as she ices an enormous cake and Father tries out a few parlour songs on the piano. The action unfolds under the watchful gaze of a wooden soldier, who has caught the eye of the driver.’

Images copyright © Marion Elliot

 

Original papercuts and prints available from the Shop Floor Project

 

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Marion Elliot, Printmaker & Illustrator