Jane Ponsford & Joe Phillips
We are very excited to be working together on this project and are treating it as a period of research as well as a process of production.
It is safe to say that Covid and lockdown have affected our progress. In normal circumstances we would both have travelled over to pick up the wood in June and have been able to make a good start on the work. However the pandemic and lockdown had a big effect and both of us lost workspaces and or storage space and ended up using FaceTime to discuss things and brief trips to deliver the timber and make initial decisions in a back garden rather than a workshop. Months later and some of these problems have not gone away and Joe’s side of the project will have to come along when it’s possible. It’s been a very difficult time for lots of small businesses.
june 2020:
It was lovely to be able to drive down to pick up the wood and at a distance meet some of the other artist and craftspeople involved in One Ash Tree. Only Jane was able to get down so we discussed our choice of timber together via Facetime. I’ve attached some photos from that day but haven’t shown the comedy moments involved in getting the wood into a Fiat 500. However, it was fine. There is much more space than you would think if you fold the seats down!
july 2020
At last we were able to get the wood over to Joe’s and we set up an improvised space to have a distanced think about what we wanted to do and make plans. Looking at the particular pieces of timber some of our original thoughts began to change a little. It was a good day. The photos show some of our sketches and notes from that afternoon around the piece of Ash. At the end of the afternoon the timber was left with Joe who was going to strip the remaining bark while Jane took some sawdust, bark and offcuts to start making dyestuffs.
July/August 2020
Joe continued to strip the bark off. This was not something we originally wanted to do because the bark at the edges was quite beautiful but he noticed that there were beetles and evidence of flight holes so began to strip it.
Jane used some of the offcuts and sawdust and stripped bark to make a tanin dye so we could start thinking about a palette of colours. She used paper and fabric strips in the dye bath to test the colours. Bark and wood chips make a good reliable dye that can also be used as a mordant or premordant to fix other dyes to the fibres you want to colour.
September / October 2020
The situation is still difficult and we have decided to concentrate on the papermaking and paper dyeing side of our joint project for a while. Jane will post some more detailed information and photos about the processes she is using in the next update.