Dreams of Amarna – planning the design
After a lot of thought, puzzlement, and general head-scratching, I decided to produce two panels.
The embroidery will be worked on linen, and mounted on board, and in front of each embroidered panel will hang a gauze panel. The gauze will be screen-printed with the most familiar images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, in a pale “faded” colour. The idea is to reflect the dominance of the historical personages in the work of the archaeologists, who try to interpret what they discover in the ground to tell us more about the historical life of the place itself, and to provide an echo in fabric of Mary Chubb’s own imaginative response to the site.
The linen panels will be made up of several sections. The main sections, in a sandy colour, will be embroidered mainly in monochrome. One panel is to show the map of the site, and the other will provide the links between the work in the office in London and the work in Egypt – sketches of the office building, a steamer, and maybe the Pyramids (visited when they paused in Cairo).
Around these panels smaller panels will be attached, embroidered with representations of some of the finds, with pictures of the excavation, and with any other illustrations I can gather together.
All this came together in a rush, a couple of years ago, when I was helping my cousin to clear out our Great Aunt’s house after her death. You can’t talk about banks and inventories all the time, and the final idea just happened to come together as I began to describe my nagging Project. It deserves the capital letter, don’t you think – ten years, I’ve been thinking about it, maybe more!
Looking forward to seeing the results!
Rachel,
All this sounds wonderful to me! I too have a life-long interest in archaeology. And 10 years isn’t a long time to mull over a project and how you want to execute it. 40 years after living in Morocco I am now adapting Berber rugs to needlepoint. I really look forward to seeing how this project develops.