Finding inspiration in passementerie of the past

Above, a close up of my Ring for Champagne tassel made for the Second Life exhibition curated by Zoffany and The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust. This tassel will be auctioned in the Design Modern and Contemporary auction at Chiswick Auctions on the 12th December 2024.

Before my Ring for Champagne tassel is auctioned at Chiswick Auctions in their forthcoming Design Modern and Contemporary auction, I wanted to write about some of the inspiration behind this glorious tassel. I was commissioned to create this oversized tassel for the Second Life exhibition held at Zoffany’s HQ in London, Voysey House. Curated by Zoffany & The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, the exhibition brief tasked me with creating a spectacular passementerie show piece largely created using ‘waste’ Zoffany fabric that had been used in Zoffany’s WOW!House showroom at Chelsea Harbour Design Centre earlier in the year.

Benedict Foley’s spectacular Zoffany showroom at WOW!House Chelsea Design Centre earlier this year. Swathes of Long Gallery Brocade fabric (in grey) adorn the walls and entrance way.

The ‘waste’ upholstery fabric is from Zoffany’s collection called Long Gallery Brocade, a spectacular heritage design entirely woven in the UK using natural fibres including silk, wool and linen. This striking fabric had been used to line the walls of Zoffany’s showroom at WOW!House. The showroom was designed by Benedict Foley and he created a stunning and dramatic space that placed textiles, colour and craft at the forefront of his design. Usually, after a showroom exhibition has finished, the fabrics, wallpapers and objects on show are usually put in a cupboard, or worse, the rubbish bin, which is a terrible waste of items and resources. Zoffany decided to take a different approach this year, which is how the Second Life exhibition came to be.

Install photograph showing the incredible range of approaches exhibited by the nine Queen Elizabeth Trust Scholars that took part in the Second Life exhibition.

Nine Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust scholars were tasked with reinventing the Long Gallery Brocade fabric, transforming ‘waste’ into exciting new outcomes which transcend traditional ideas of how ‘waste’ textiles can be reused. I was especially inspired by this idea of transforming waste textiles in order to give them a ‘second life’, partly because in the past passementerie was often made using waste materials, especially silk that was leftover from other areas of textile production. These precious silk scraps would have been gathered together and passed into the hands of the Passementier who would transform these leftovers into beautiful designs such as knotted fly fringes and tassels. I’m sure that many new passementerie making techniques and designs were created in response to the want and need to use every scrap of yarn and thread.

This practice not only demonstrated a resourceful use of materials but also elevated what might have been considered waste into objects of beauty and significance. Passementiers, with their intricate craftsmanship, were masters of turning these remnants into embellishments that adorned garments, furnishings and accessories.

Robe à la française (1775 - 1800) in the collection of the Met Museum. I don’t know whether this particular passementerie was produced from textile waste, but creating fly fringes was a popular method of using scraps of silk as only small lengths of yarn were needed in order to create the signature knotted tufts found within fly fringes.

This photo above shows a close-up of a section of a women’s dress which is covered in many meters of handmade knotted fly fringes, puffs and intricate ribbon work. Fly fringes were often made using tiny pieces of leftover silk thread that would have been formed into a little group of threads. This group of threads were then intricately tied and bound together to create a little fringe, before being attached to a longer thread using a crochet chain. This was a very common technique for making passementerie for both garments and furnishings in the 18th century.

The front view of my Ring for Champagne tassel complete with handmade bullion skirt, pom poms, ric rac, rosette and cartisan.

In all of my work with passementerie, I frequently look at textiles (not just passementerie) as a source of inspiration for creating new designs. I love the creativity and ingenuity of makers that take ‘waste’ textiles and transform them into spectacular new designs, whether the motivation for doing so is through choice or practicality. For a long time I have been particularly drawn to the challenge of transforming the overlooked or discarded, using intricate techniques to transform what might otherwise be deemed unusable into something of beauty and value. I keep all of my yarn scraps, left over lengths of warp, individual lengths of thread - everything! These precious scraps are added to my many ‘confetti’ jars and I frequently work with these scraps to create new passementerie designs (and watch this space, more about this way of working coming soon..)

A section of my tassel showcasing a range of approaches to merging traditional passementerie making techniques with ‘waste’ fabrics to create three-dimensional textile embellishments.

Handmade Ric-Rac cord trims the edges of the tassel beautifully. Hand spun from cotton threads, the Ric-Rac is made using complex traditional cord spinning techniques - a craft that is even more endangered in the UK than passementerie.

Second Life exhibition install shot showing the diversity of approaches used by makers to transform waste lengths of Zoffany’s Long Gallery Brocade fabric into new objects, fashion, art and furnishings.

When Zoffany commissioned me to create a piece for their Second Life exhibition, it presented the perfect opportunity for me to explore a new way of working with passementerie. The Long Gallery Brocade fabric posed quite a few technical problems when transforming the offcuts into passementerie. The biggest issue was the weight of the fabric - perfect for upholstering a sofa, but tricky to work with on a small scale for passementerie. I had to spend a lot of time exploring the fabric to understand how it would behave, drape and hang. Because of the heavy weight nature of the fabric, I had to invisibly reinforce the shape of the tassel in several places in order for the fabric to be supported properly when the tassel was displayed. As the tassel was displayed hanging freely in the exhibition space, various considerations had to be given to make sure the weight of the tassel was evenly distributed and properly supported - more of an engineering task than a creative adventure!

A typical interior of a horse drawn carriage from the 1800s showing a wonderful array of passementerie and tassels. The tassels would have been used as pulls to assist in opening the windows and doors of the carriage. Photo from Word Wenches

Upholstery weight fabric is not commonly used within tassel creation because the material is so tricky to work with. Contemporary tassels are usually created from a combination of yarn, cords and covered wooden moulds. When looking for inspiration as to how I could use the fabric within a tassel, I discovered the wonderful world of antique carriage and antique bell pull tassels (the kind that would have been used in Downton Abbey to summon a ladies maid). I came across the most fabulous examples of these tassels, both of which were largely made using long strips of fabric in combination with other hand passementerie techniques.

The swishy bullion tassel skirt is handmade from spun cotton cords, tightly twisted together to create a weighty, yet swishy, skirt that hangs beautifully. A profusion of handmade pom poms adds charm and whimsy.

My Ring for Champagne will be auctioned at Chiswick Auctions in their Design Modern & Contemporary sale which is taking place on December 12th.