The Textile Study Group marked its 50th anniversary in 2023. For half a century, this group has been at the forefront of innovative making, teaching and textile art practice, and we are still going strong. We celebrated this milestone, and our achievements, with a significant exhibition of new and exciting work from our membership, Making:50
Making 50 showed at:
Crafts Study Centre Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey (9th January – 27th April 2024)
The Ropewalk, Barton upon Humber (16th September – 26th November 2023)
Tweeddale Gallery, Peebles (1st April – 5th August 2023)
Publications, Events and Workshops
To support Making:50 the Textile Study Group have published a bespoke, limited edition book, available in our shop. We also ran an exciting programme of online discussions (‘Making Conversation’), gallery workshops and ‘meet the artist’ events during our anniversary year.
Who are we?
In 1973, under the auspices of Constance Howard, the group was established to support tutors of embroidery. Since then, the group has evolved and grown in stature and is now one of the UK’s most prestigious and well recognised groups of textile artists and tutors.
More about Making:50
celebrating innovative textile practice
Our anniversary exhibition comprised previously unseen works of differing topics, scales and dimensions. The ‘common denominator’ was the ‘theme’ of 50, however tenuously (eg 50 units/fragments/spaces/words/stitches, 50 memories, 50 pages from a journal…). This was not a prescriptive ‘golden’ exhibition, nor did all completed works measure 50cms by 50cms; we expressed ourselves individually in the way we chose, having a wide interpretation of what textiles and textile art mean to us all.
Although former members had a chance to be represented, and there was an archive element to our show, Making:50 was very much about looking forwards, rather than being a retrospective.
The exhibition Making:50 included the following Textile Study Group members: Lois Blackburn, Bobby Britnell, Jenny Bullen, Sarah Burgess, Penny Burnfield, Jean Draper, Janet Edmonds, Jan Evans, Alice Fox, Sue Green, Kay Greenlees, Gwen Hedley, Ruth Issett, Jane McKeating, Sian Martin, Jan Miller, Sheila Mortlock, Amarjeet Nandhra, Mandy Pattullo, Polly Pollock, Shelley Rhodes, Mary Sleigh, Julia Triston, Dorothy Tucker and Ann Wheeler.