Edrica Huws

The Fabric Art of Edrica Huws

As part of the 2007 study tour to England and Wales a stop is planned in Wales on the Isle of Anglesey to see the exhibition of quilt-art made by Edrica Huws. Val Shields of North Wales has been instrumental in spreading the word about Edrica's work and has written the following about the Huws exhibit in Anglesey, I have used it here with permission. Edrica who is knows as the first textile "artist" was certainly a visionary in terms of fabric art, and worthy to be noted in the world of textile history.

For more information about the August 2007 tour to England and Wales - click here.

Although the first impression is that these are paintings, they are actually the fabric art of Edrica Huws.

CENTENARY EXHIBITION of WORKS by EDRICA HUWS.

ORIEL YNYS MÔN, ANGLESEY – Fri 17^th August – Sun 23^rd September 2007

You may not have heard of Edrica Huws. Her name impinged on my consciousness just four years ago and since then I have learned a good deal about her, her family, her life and her work.

I was told that her family were anxious that her work should become better known in the British Isles. She is much more famous in France and in Japan than in her homeland though she exhibited at The Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool in 1971. I cannot trace an earlier exhibition by any textile artist in this country.

My approach to her elder son was welcomed. The family had been wondering how to make contact with the Patchwork network here and a series of coincidences led me to them. I was able to offer to show some of Edrica’s work at the next Quiltfest in February 2003 and this meant that five of her works were seen in Britain for the first time. They created much interest amongst our visitors that year being so very different from anything seen before.

Edrica trained at the Chelsea School of Art and also at The Royal College of Art where she worked under Professor Tristram who was a specialist in Murals. After graduation she showed in several London Galleries. There are two panels in a church in Essex which I am trying to trace – a commission that Edrica Tyrwhitt (her maiden name) was given in the early thirties.

Marriage, children, the war and a move to North Wales meant that Edrica did no painting in the following years. In fact, she never painted again. She learnt how to make clothes for herself and her five children and struggled with the daily chores in a small house with no electricity, no water and no indoor sanitation, not to mention the difficulties brought on by wartime shortages and rationing.

She kept a ‘rag-bag’ into which she put all the scraps and off-cuts from her dress-making and any salvageable pieces from household linens. She had decided that she was going to try to create art by making patchworks. She lived with this idea until 1958, almost twenty years.

She remembered sleeping under a patchwork coverlet (hexagons) when visiting the home of a relative as a child and she knew the rudiments of constructing such a piece. The thought of making something geometric did not appeal to her nor did the laborious way of using paper templates and then removing them. She was not interested in making useful household items such as coverlets or quilts. She was looking to make pictorial art from the contents of her scrap-bag.

She was going to make Patchwork Pictures. She was an artist. Artists painted pictures. Their work was framed, often glazed and people hung the results on their walls where they might look at them and enjoy them in their daily life.

This was what Edrica Huws proceeded to do for the next forty years of her life. The first, The Greenhouse, took almost a year to complete. Edrica was developing her working methods and she was working as an artist would, not as a needlewoman.

Visitors with P&Q backgrounds who see her work in Exhibitions are struck by the relative crudity of her stitchery. In the early years, she used only black or white thread, extending her palette slightly over time. Her daughter Catharine has described to me the amazement on the faces of Japanese quilters when they have first set eyes on her Mother’s work.

At Llangollen, I suggested to visitors that they first view the pictures from the opposite side of the Gallery, rather as one sees the work of The Impressionists best from a distance before approaching closer to study the technique in detail. It is easy then to appreciate her composition and understand her subject. Closer inspection reveals just how masterly her choice of fabric was. Her understanding of tone is unsurpassed. Her work is not photographic in her depiction of her subjects. It is painterly. She was the first Textile Artist and remains the greatest.