Subversive Millinery workshop

By Jenny M Wedgbury, on 24 June 2015

Last Thursday 18 June UCL Art Museum was the setting for a meeting of the secret subversive millinery group (also known as our annual hat making workshop).

This successful workshop has been running for a number of years now and is a wonderful way to explore artworks in our collection in new creative ways. The workshop was run by Dr Sue Walker, a lecturer in the Art History Department at UCL but also a talented maker and craftivist who makes hats, accessorises, jewellery from up-cycling fabrics, materials and objects she finds and collects from everyday life.

Last Thursday we had 20 people take part in the workshop and it was a wonderful mix of those who’d attended in the past as well as new attendees. Everyone was asked to bring with them materials from home they’d be happy to share with others and we got some wonderful indian fabrics, fake flowers, old umbrella fabric and toy dolls to use as our pallete for creating new fascinating fascinators.

Before we started, Sue gave an introduction in the Art Museum to a number of our prints and drawings, highlighting the theme for the year ‘inspired by the summer solstice’. We looked at the beautiful deatil of stars and patterns in Albrecht Durer’s The Woman Clothed with Sun and the Dragon with Seven Heads and scenes of woodland fantasy and pagan symbolism depicted in Winifred Knight’s Two Maidens with Goblins and Lady with Skein and Stars.

Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528), The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Dragon with Seven Heads, 1498, UCL Art Museum Collection

Knights, Winifred Margaret (1899-1947), Two Maidens with Goblins, Pen, ink and watercolour, UCL Art Museum Collection

Knights, Winifred Margaret (1899-1947), Lady with Skein and Stars, Pen and ink and watercolour, 1916, UCL Art Museum Collection

After taking inspiration from the collection we set about making our hats and fascinators, using hessian bases and hat elastic bought in advance. There were some fabulous designs created in the course of the evening and lots of fun chatting to other attendees and sharing ideas and materials.

You can see images from the workshop on our UCL Art Museum Flickr page.

Here are a few to give you a sense of the kind of thing created.