This is not our final piece for London Bridge, part of 26 Bridges, a project by writers’ organisation 26…
My creative collaboration with writer Jonathan Holt has been so rich in ideas that for a while, we had two lines of enquiry running in parallel.
This one came from the procession of people crossing London Bridge; its engineered lines; its shadow – and from my history exploring, the haberdasheries said to be the last shops on the bridge back when it was like the Ponte Vecchio.
So, ribbon.
The nearest haberdashery I could find to the bridge was MacCulloch & Wallis in Soho. There, I bought grosgrain, frayed ribbon and tape, for stitching and monoprinting.
The textile piece, I rejected almost as soon as I started it. It will become something else.
The monoprints from ribbon on drawings led to the second piece in our shortlist of two: drawn from a sketch, printed and stitched.
We considered it alongside the lithograph. The monoprinted piece had the line and the light – but the lithograph summed up, somehow, everything in our conversation and everything in Jonathan’s words.
More on the lithograph in the project case study.
Read more about the project on the Bloomsbury Festival website and make a bid on the auction site, which will be live until the online auction on the evening of 16 October.
