Crafting a new future for passementerie
My bespoke passementerie is made to order using traditional and heritage hand techniques.
“There are just a handful of people in the UK who practise the craft full-time, and London-based Elizabeth Ashdown is one of them: ‘the unofficial tagline for passementerie is jewellery for the home, which I think is a great description’, she says. ‘These finishing touches are made using such interesting materials and colour combinations, which can be richly decorative in a way that large stretches of textiles can’t’. ”
Handmade passementerie is one of the rarest, and the most special, of all the textile crafts. As one of the UK’s last remaining hand passementerie makers and designers, I was delighted to be interviewed by House & Garden magazine as part of their feature ‘The ancient crafts that nearly died out and the people saving them’.
The article celebrates the artistry and skill involved in revitalising heritage crafts, highlighting the importance of protecting traditional UK crafts in order to stop them from becoming obsolete.
A contemporary passementerie braid called Crete being hand woven using one of my looms.
Handmade passementerie is a delightful feast for the eyes and it adds a glorious and unusual finishing touch to any interior or garment. I’ve worked on all sorts of passementerie projects so far this year, including writing a book, weaving luxurious braid for millinery and hand weaving trims and tassels for couture fashion, to name just a few projects!
Contemporary hand made passementerie combines the very best of creativity, ingenuity and hand craftsmanship to create modern, fresh and exciting designs. The ethos behind all of my work with passementerie is a desire to revitalise this amazing, yet endangered craft, in order to make sure that it not only survives, but thrives.
A precious spool of passementerie gimp - a traditional material that is used to create all manner of hand woven passementerie, rosettes and off-loom work.
Every year, Heritage Crafts publishes the Red List of Endangered Crafts and my craft of passementerie has been listed as endangered since 2019, signifying a critical threat to its continued existence. As a passionate advocate for handmade craftsmanship, my ethos is to honour the heritage of passementerie, while infusing it with contemporary creativity, design and application. Through exploring innovations in colour, design, materials, and scale, my approach to hand woven and handmade passementerie is dedicated to championing and celebrating passementerie for what it truly represents—an authentic, modern and exciting art form.
To read the full article please click here.