SWEET COLOURS are in good taste

Hempolin tea towels

black/white pillow case

sweetie stripes on a grain sack

It was time to re-stock my reserve of rustic hemp, so went off to my supplier, and I had a lovely time rooting through a huge new stock that had just arrived from the furthest parts of Eastern Europe by lorry. I had no idea that the attractive grain sacks in handwoven hemp came in such a vast variation of colour and design. The stripes of colour woven into them were a sort of bar-code for identifying the actual village that the grain came from, so that the empty sacks could be returned to their owners. Most people have seen the common bright red and strong blue stripes, sometimes combined with large cross-stitched initials, known as Hungarian sacks. I have used them for years to cover French easy chairs. Now I was seeing (and buying) a wide variety of coloured stripes and very distinctive weaves, some in very close herringbone patterns, others looser and coarser, no doubt suitable for different crops and seeds that they might contain. Amongst the best were a whole lot in what I can only call toffee, butterscotch and caramel stripes, which with the creamy back ground of basic hemp, were lovely and very subtle in a muted palette. The black and white linen mix was very striking and has the latest contemporary look. I intend to re-cover my own fireside chair with toffee! Will post its portrait when done. You need to choose the closer weaves for chairs in constant use as some are fairly loose-woven and stretch and sag. I am getting very keen on hemp as an eco-friendly material with huge potential and I will keep on encouraging people to use this valuable stuff.

Darn! It's got a hole!

Inevitably, old materials have areas of wear and damage and it is best to do simple neat repairs before washing which will only make matters worse. Holes, if small, can be darned with a strong thread and fine needle, otherwise a neat patch of slightly finer weave makes the best repair. I pin the patch in place, turning the edges under and stitch all round by machine, then turn the work over and snipping four corner cuts into a rectangle shape, turn the damaged edges in and either darn across with a machine or make another neat square in the sheet, machining all round. If there is a split and no fabric missing, I either zig -zag, catching both edges together or machine-darn across the space, using a fine needle in the machine and a normal cotton thread. Some of the old French darns on linen are works of art, they are circular and rather like a cartwheel, the thread is woven round and round in and out of the 'spokes' .

MRS. TICKING

Illustrated first are a nice pile of old tickings, both French and German which I had in vast quantities in the 80s and the portrait was taken in my garden to show them off for an article about the 'new' antiques of the period. The photographer arrived without the usual assistant and had not planned the picture at all. I suggested the iron gazebo already in our old garden and tried to drape the long lengths neatly to make a dome shape - the wind was blowing hard and whipped the ends off the structure and we battled as if in a sailing boat to get the scene under control!
After my climb up a ladder to find and buy a haybarn loft stacked with old tickings, forgotten and neglected by a bedding merchant, I had some very welcome publicity in a couple of decorating magazines. English decorators had newly re-discovered tickings and their bold colours and stripes introduced a fresh look to their 'mood boards' and colour schemes. Americans had always collected and valued tickings as they were amongst the most essential belongings that the early settlers took with them when they travelled across the States and set up home. They filled them with feathers, hay, straw, and corn shucks for bedding. To this day, many people in Pennsylvania and Connecticut display a neat pile of folded tickings as a sign of their ancestry and early beginnings. Many US dealers and designers visited me to buy the most unusual striped colour combinations with a view to getting the copyright and reproducing them - which they did in due course. Ian Mankin found his own designs elsewhere and was part of the ticking resurgence and it all helped my sales. I was very flattered when the photo above showed a pile of tickings from different decorating shops, all of which had come from my own stack! The garden gazebo draped with my tickings caused much amusement in the family who said they had never seen me sitting in the garden till then! The wind was blowing and it was the very devil to anchor all those long strips down for the shoot.

A FLING IN FRANCE

Went to Brittany for a real summer holiday and had a great time on a beautiful estuary at Port
Le Pouldu, simple inexpensive lodging and the best sea food we have had anywhere and we have been to most places. We watched the boats, the sailing classes, the skiers and the swimmers and relaxed completely. However, before this pleasant peacerful interlude we had a very busy two days, first at a big fair at Chartres and the next day at Le Mans - I was looking to top up my linen and hemp sheets and to find chateau length big sets of decent curtains. I found three excellent triple sets from a smart house in Strasburg, next door to an American Embassy, in pale plainish shades with lovely trims, very drawing room (or ballroom if you happen to have one, ) They half -filled my transport, and next day at Le Mans, within the first half hour, I had bought such huge quantities of good linen that I could not fit it all in the van and had to hire some space in another dealer's lorry! Something has happened in the French markets - with no US and UK buyers around, suddenly linen is a drug on the market French dealers just do not deal in old linen! and there were huge quantities available at very modest 'all or nothing' prices. I will be passing on good stuff at much lower prices as soon as it is all washed, ironed and labelled (about two weeks' time). And if you want splendid rich curtains at really good crunchy prices, do get in touch - I now have a choice of 20 different sets, all over 10ft drop, in every colour.

New friends - old dreams

A sample card of linen tapes for apron ties and a colourful ticking used for feather beds

Since posting my website, which took me several days to compose with a lot of help from friends, I have embarked on this Blogsite and apart from some good business, it has put me in touch with many new contacts all over the world. I try not to make it a complete chat item, and to pass on a little lore on textiles, and a modest account of the old ways of rustic French life as told to me by the old traditional brocanteurs who have memories of Old France and are glad to have a keen listener to their tales. Many of my new friends overseas have been to France and have wonderful memories too, of armoires stacked with folded linen and bunches of lavender to make it sweet-smelling, of rough old fruitwood tables covered in snow-white linen cloths and laden with delicious local food, vegetables and fruit and jugs of wine or cider, cold from the cellars, I think they might find a lot of this magic gone, but would have to remember that life was very hard for many, that electricity, gas and drainage came very late to many rural areas, just before the last war. The peasant women in Northern France and Brittany wore heavy black cotton overall dresses and did all the household chores wearing a strong work apron, changing to a dressy one for going out. They lived in dark beamed kitchens with tiled floors and brown furniture so it is not surprising that they cheered the place, and themselves, up with bright checked curtains, frilly nets and creamy linen embroidered trims on all the shelves, mantelpieces and pelmets, and they collected bright china with lustre decoration to reflect the fire and window lights.

FLOWERS, FLASHES AND SHOOTS

Gabi Tubbs, journalist and friend, who first wrote about my tickings 20 years ago in Country Living, was here today for a magazine feature with a young photographer, Jody Stewart. He is the son of another old friend, Gloria Stewart, who has done up lots of grand old houses in the Dordogne and is an antiques consultant for Judith Miller of the Miller antiques reference books. So it was a happy reunion and Gabi worked hard for two whole days fixing everything just so. Flowers had to be placed in strategic positions, ornaments tweaked into empty spaces and the lamps adjusted for light and shadow. Peering through the lens of high tech. small cameras, everything was vetted before 'shooting' and it was hard work for the pair of them to get round their chosen spots. I thought it was wonderful that the very experienced Gabi who has worked with many top photo people, was sharing her expertise with a younger specialist, and no doubt, he, too, will make the most of these opportunities - getting into good magazines is very difficult now that they are drawing in their horns and preferring to use 'in-house' staff, all for economy. Gloria will be here at my home in Bradford on Avon with a collection of fine brocante at our July 9th /10th Fair here. Apply for invites to me via dbaer@onetel.com with your full address please. gabitubbs@aol.com Jody 07964 553229

BON VOYAGE

If you are keen to learn a bit more about France, want to go there but are a bit unsure how to go about it, I can highly recommend you start with my friend and fellow dealer, Rosie Murton, who has been scouting round the country for many years - she is a great guide, a good driver and you will enjoy it all with her generous help and advice. Contact her at 01952 883709 and she will tell you more and her dates for travel. She calls her business SAVOIR FAIRE and it is well-named

It is highly recommended by a friend of mine who has launched herself into the brocante trade with some success.

IS HEMP REALLY GREEN?

hemp and linen clothing

Hemp peasant shirt with linen collar


Yes, it is one of the most environmentally 'green' fibres. It grows like a weed, enhances the soil where it is grown and does not need any of the 8000 chemicals used to grow and process conventional cotton which hugely damage the environment. Linen is similarly almost pollution free and both need little water to grow, again quite unlike cotton (even the organic type) and in addition to making fibre for textiles, supply seeds, oil and pulp used for bank notes, building material, and other industrial processes, not to mention cosmetic creams , soap and cooking oils
You could also say that most linen and hemp cloths are re-used, second-hand, in vast quantities, making a huge saving. Most old household linens are passed on to new users until they literally fall to pieces, and the French were particularly good at this. They patched and darned the holes made by the cruel loose iron springs on the beds, the rips and tears from the hedges and bushes used to dry the wash, and sometimes you come across a darn that is a real work of art (probably as taught by the nuns who trained little girls to do it)and the end result is a circle formed by weaving in and out of the spokes sewn across each hole in a spider web pattern. I once had a textile student customer who collected all forms of mending, patching and darning for her thesis, which taught me that everything has a value to someone and nothing should be thrown away! Today I had a customer from Japan who makes very fashion-conscious bags and she specifically chose damaged hemp feed sacks, darned and patched oddments together with every tiny scrap of indigo dyed and printed material I had in my rag-bag. She sells these things in a remote, rural island in Japan and sews them all by hand with some old tape and linen thread I was able to find for her. Her grateful smiles were reward enough and she left happy with lots of new ideas for sewing, while she travelled round the South West. A lovely enterprising girl!