Fabric design: Place mat and napkins

In my opinion place mats look always more stylish when complemented with matching napkins. Therefore I spent time practicing sewing neat seams on my vintage sewing machine and started hand dyeing and painting / stamp decorating napkins and place mats together. The stamps for 

Water Lilies were cut in hard linoleum which creates a less opaque, painterly print.

Cotton canvas, cotton twill, 

Procyon fabric dye, Setacolor fabric paint. 1998.

Sizes: place mat 40 x 30 cm, napkin: 45 x 45 cm

Recycled furniture: Book shelf

Plywood Chic is an original piece of early plywood furniture. It was probably built in the late Forties, when the growing demand for home furnishings after the Second World War was met with cheap plywood.

This bookshelf was in surprisingly good shape, so I chose to just refinish it instead of repainting it. A slot in one of the uprights shows that something broke off and got lost, most likely an ornament. I replaced it with a metal disk, cut according to my design by Colin Southwell, the local 
art blacksmith of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada.

I also had the straight end support replaced by one repeating the tapered front line of the mid support - work done by 
Alex Marcuzzi in North Vancouver - you already know him from several entries further down.
 

Plywood, oil wood stain, oil varnish.

Tarnished steel disk. 1999. 

Printmaking: Intaglio print

This sinister Temple Guard was created using a drypoint needle and carborundum powder on a metal plate. Yes, he does resemble some stoney faced man waving from the garden gate, wearing nothing but a buttoned shirt, but the temple behind him, and the mediterranean vegetation clearly define him as a temple guard.

Aluminium plate, drypoint, carborundum,

waterbased Caligo etching ink on Somerset etching paper. 2009.

Fabric design: Place Mat

I am showing you an early design of an experimental series of place mats which I prepared when I applied for space at the weekend market on Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The top sample is handpainted; below you can see the screenprinted version. No need to explain why I called the image Perspective.

Cotton cloth, acrylic paint, acrylic varnish. 1995.

Size: 30 x 40 cm

Recycled furniture: Small cabinet

This more conventional looking small cupboard had been on death row in an open shed in western Canada for almost a decade. Encrusted with filth, of the doors only the hinges and some broken pieces left. But solid oak and the elegant curve of the top plate, together with those delicate original handles were speaking of better days, back in the 1930’s. 

So I decided to bring out the noble past of this piece. My furniture maker Alex Marcuzzi in North Vancouver, British Columbia, rebuilt the missing doors, and I chose a wood stain in a colour that nicely contrasts the brass handles. Also, I added a contemporary rendition of a lace doily - which made me find a title for this good old piece of furniture as well: Arsenic and Old Lace.

Acrylic paint, acrylic varnish. 1995.

Printmaking: Intaglio print

My recent visit to Cardiff, Wales inspired the motif of a Welsh mining village with chimney stacks belching dirty smoke, the miners' houses in rows on the hillside, village church and the mine owner's mansion well at a distance in a parklike setting. 
I wasn't thinking of any identifiable place, the print Welsh Town is more a summary of my impressions.

As for the printing technique, please refer to the entry of 11 February 2010.

Aluminium plate, acrylic hard ground, 

lift ground, waterbased Caligo etching ink 

on Fabriano Rosaspina etching paper. 2010.

Size: 29 x 30 cm

Fabric design: T-shirts

Layering rolled-on fabric paint and stamped patterns is a way to create one-of-a-kind T-shirts in endless variations. My stamps were made from many different materials: meat trays for the dotted areas, bottle corks, cardboard cut-outs, shapes carved into Speedball Speedy Cut... These T-shirts were made in my Canadian design studio in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, British Columbia, and sold at local markets.

Cotton fabric, Procyon fabric dye, 

Setacolor fabric paint. 1998.