lost legacies 1 - baby makers

I have already posted about this piece, but wanted to say more about how it has developed

when Ruth suggested the theme of  Lost Legacies for Maker Members i was delighted - this really fits with some of the ideas which came up for me after Damage 

i have long wanted to work on a meaningful series and feel that i am now on my way to achieving that aim, which is something i had almost given up on - Lost Legacies really light a fuse for me which was put in place by developing Hidden Histories and i am now taking in a different direction, but still based around children’s clothing

the children’s clothing is an odd starting point for me as i have never had or wanted children of my own - i have chosen to use it as something which was worked by the hands of other women - for Hidden Histories i did not know the maker, but for Lost Legacies i am using a baby’s chemise (?) made by Marguerite my paternal grandmother, for my older brother, then i hope to work on a couple of items made by Simone my maternal grandmother, for her children, my mother and uncle

i want to leave the clothing as unaltered as possible, a process inspired by Ruth’s Imprint project and Textile Traces workshop - so i was delighted when i recently found a course on an approach which i could use to build a structure to hold the chemise with minimal or no alteration - after a short period of reflection i decided a cage would be appropriate, both structurally and in terms of meaning

choosing to work with items made by my grandmothers led me to comparing their lives - it seemed to me that beyond the basic despite similarities they must have been quite different, particularly on the issue of choice and control over their lives - Simone expected to work for a living as her own mother had, i know little of my Marguerite's expectations but she never worked outside the home and seemed to live a much more constrained life in many ways - i may be misinterpreting the little i know but i suspect life in colonial Mauritius at that time was much more Victorian than a parallel life in France 

i’m working on the impression i got of Marguerite when i met her in the mid 1970s, when she was around 70 (around my current age), the few things i heard from my father, mother and other family members and a vague impression of life was like in colonial Mauritius for people like my family members

the picture i get is that women of this “class” were seen as future wives, mothers and carers - not expected to have careers outside the home beyond any “charitable works” they felt inclined to do - my impression of Marguerite was of a woman who accepted her role as wife and mother, knowing that she would have the practical support of servants and little say in her husband’s decisions - she may nominally been in control of household activities and a budget but had little or no practical experience of managing anything beyond that - how much of what i saw was the product of her life experience i can not tell, but i saw no spark of independent will or spirit - so either she was content to live within the restrictions imposed on her or she was by then completely sapped/stunted by them - whatever potential she may have had seems to have evaporated or been submerged under the effort to simply be

this attractive, apparently lively young woman was married to a controlling man from a large family - they were catholics and she is said to have been devout - i hear she was a great letter writer although i recall no evidence of my father receiving many of these despite him being the first of her children to leave home for a distant country - i’m sure she was constrained by the morality of that time and place, which were to my modern eyes mysogynistic and hypocritical - i also heard that she tended to express her will for control through passive manipulation, which she may have seen as her only recourse 

from my point of view she lived in a cage and was not averse to colluding with the caging of her own children - i would love to hear that i am wrong  

this is the wrork in construction

the textile scraps are being tried out, so they are pinned in place before stitching

the cage is a close fit for the chemise, speaking of the restrictions the women lived  with

i am trying to use textiles which would have been familiar to the women, although i don't have access to period textiles, i have some vintage fabric 

i also have needle cases which i currently aim to suspend from the cage top into the cage