Elizabeth Ashdown x Zoffany x Benedict Foley

Benedict Foley’s stunning show room at WOW!House presented Zoffany’s fabrics in a spectacular manner.

I am thrilled to announce that I am one of 9 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Scholars that has been selected by Zoffany and interior design Benedict Foley to reimagine and repurpose Zoffany’s stunning Long Gallery Brocade fabric for the Second Life exhibition London in September. I have created a glorious large-scale tassel for the exhibition, utilising many endangered hand passementerie techniques.

 The brief from Zoffany & Benedict Foley asked me to reimagine and transform fabric that had originally been used in Zoffany’s show room at WOW! House which was designed by Benedict Foley. Benedict created a stunning and dramatic space that placed textiles, colour and craft at the forefront of his design. Large panels of Zoffany’s Long Gallery Brocade fabric adorned the walls of the show room, creating a sumptuous and evocative environment.

 The Long Gallery Brocade fabric is particularly special as it is woven in England by one of the last remaining British silk mills. The design of the fabric harks back to textile designs from the 1700s and whilst more classical in nature, Benedict used the fabric in such a way which felt fresh and contemporary yet rooted in more of a classical country house aesthetic.

When visiting the show room for the first time, I was very intrigued by the combination of narratives, colours, textures and scales that worked together beautifully to create an entirely unique space. I knew that I wanted to make a hand made tassel for the exhibition using the Long Gallery Brocade fabric, however what I hadn’t anticipated was just how thick the fabric is and how large the pattern repeat is. After seeing and feeling the fabric, I had to quickly change my approach to my design, reconfiguring most of the elements and composition. The materials I usually use to create passementerie are very malleable and are easy to work with, however the Long Gallery Brocade proved to be challenge as it largely told me how it wanted to behave!

The commission was especially challenging as I was asked to create as much of my design as possible using the fabric without adding in a lot of new materials. I was given a panel of the Long Gallery Brocade fabric to transform into a tassel and I was very conscious of wanting to use as much of the fabric as possible to create the entirety of my design. I deeply considered how traditional passementerie techniques could be applied in a different manner in order to use as many parts of the fabric as possible - including the little off cuts and scraps that I accumulated from creating the tassel’s fabric hanger. Centuries ago passementerie was often made from scraps and left over materials and yarns – especially silk - because materials and textiles were so precious.

Fabric is not commonly used to create tassels because it poses so many problems for the passementerie maker. I undertook a lot of research into historical tassels and I came across the most fabulous examples of both carriage tassels and bell pull tassels, both of which were largely made using long strips of fabric in combination with passementerie techniques. My use of colour, texture and passementerie techniques within my tassel was directly inspired by Benedict’s show room design and I very much drew on the dramatic nature of the room through my use of pom poms, cartisan and handmade Ric-Rac.

 My finished tassel, along with the work of 8 other craftspeople, will be on show from September 9th to October 3rd at Sanderson’s HQ, Voysey House, in London. Voysey House was originally Sanderson’s wallpaper factory and the building itself is definitely worth a look too. The exhibition is free to visit, you just need to book a complimentary ticket here.

‘Running from 9th September to 3rd October 2024, the Second Life exhibition will showcase the creations made by selected QEST scholars who have transformed the fabric used at the Zoffany x Benedict Foley Entrance Hall at this year’s WOW!House into revelatory new designs.

‘These makers will present – in the forms of fashion to art – a reimagining of Zoffany’s Long Gallery Brocade, a wool and cotton fabric woven by one of Suffolk’s last remaining silk mills and dye houses using traditional techniques and 100% natural fibres.  

These pieces will be suitably exhibited in the historically compelling Voysey House. A Grade II*listed building designed by the celebrated Arts & Crafts architect and designer C.F.A. Voysey, as a wallpaper factory for Arthur Sanderson & Sons, the Voysey House showroom will transform, presenting a gallery from which these works of art can be viewed and experienced.’