Back to Essex

Getting to Coggeshall to go to the School of Textile is not a mean feat. Coggeshall is, I’m told, situated on the convergence points of the strongest magnetic lines in Britain. This is allegedly responsible for the village’s complete lack of mobile phone signal. I’m not sure that’s how electromagnetics work, but I do know that the area is a complete dead zone for almost every provider, and even Ofcom considers it forsaken (see coverage map below).

Coggeshall: a desert of modernity in Essex

Despite a comedy of errors in arriving, it was good to be back with Mary and discussing Marian again. We spent most of our visit discussing less about Marian’s career specifics this time, but more about her legacy. Over the last few months I’ve learnt a great deal from Mary about Marian’s ethos and artistic raison d’etre, which Mary defines as her overwhelming passion to educate. I knew my grandmother was a teacher by training, teaching at a primary school in Northern England before her art career began in earnest, but it was fascinating to hear how Marian brought the same pedagogy into her art and commercial success.

Mary’s assertion is that once Marian began producing artwear and garments, she wanted to use the garment as a teaching tool to show the wearer that art was a practice—the wearer themselves becomes just as integral of a piece of the finished piece as the fabric and hemming. Before wearable art became the mainstay of Marian’s career and creative production, the pedagogical thread came more directly from instruction on how to dye and create textile art the Clayden way. Mary informed me that Marian was the first to ever offer distance learning for textile and dyeing by producing a series of slides and accompanying lecture notes in the 70s. Later, Marian would record videos onto VHS and send these as well to institutions looking to educate students on methods of dyeing.

I always enjoy my time with Mary, and look forward to visiting again before too long as there is quite a bit to continue to catalogue and scan from her teaching collection. Amongst the various documents I managed to scan this time, which I’ll spare my dear readers at present until things are a bit more organized, I was able to scan in a photo of a dress Marian collaborated on with the late Ben Compton. The piece is entitled “Nocturnal Moth”, and Marian dyed the fabrics that Ben would later sew into a remarkable piece of artwear. The picture, showing Ben modelling his own dress and signed by him as well, is below for your enjoyment.

Nocturnal Moth, 1974. Ben Compton and Marian Clayden.