‘Stitches in Time, 2013’

 

Glass Installation for City of Culture in Derry

30 screen printed and slumped glass ’tiles’

Dimensions: h35 x w210 x d180 cm

Date: 2013

This piece was commissioned by the Culture Company as part of the City of Culture celebrations in 2013. It is based on the rare Derry ‘shirt quilts’ held at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra. These quilts were handstitched by the shirt factory workers for their families. They would have been allowed to buy bags of scrap shirt fabrics to take home for the purpose of quilt making. For a period of about 100 years the City of Derry had a massive industry in the shirt factories, which has all but gone now. I want the glass quilt to be a ghostly reminder of the industry and specifically the women who worked in them.