I was lucky to able to make a trip to Europe in April and I saw Paris for the first time. If I ever need to run away it will be to Paris. If I ever need to loose myself for a week it will be in Paris. If I ever need to have my own solo jewellery art exhibition, can it pretty please be in Paris? So, I might have loved Paris a tad, and I also loved an exhibition of rag rugs that we saw in Paris. I wrote about the exhibition and shared photos on my Patsy Kay Kolesar Design blog. It was at the Swedish Institute and called Re Rag Rug – An exhibition of 12 rugs made entirely from waste and excess fabric from the textile industry by Studio Brieditis & Evans. They spent 12 months making the rugs using 12 different textile techniques. Here are a few photos
After posting about it on my pkkdesign blog I got an email from my Mother, with some photos of rag rugs made by my Grandmother. My Dad’s mom immigrated to Flin Flon Manitoba from Slovakia. I remember going to visit her as a child and her floors were filled with colourful rag rags. My mom said that my Dad had taken some of them and he has been using them in his garage for years and years. One of them is pretty covered with paint and rust. When my Mom looked closer at the rugs she noticed that one of them is actually made from old socks, you can still see the toe seams in some places and the other’s she recognizes as clothing that my Grandma used to wear. My Dad had never looked closely at the rugs so he was surprised that one was likely made from his childhood socks and that he had been spilling paint on it all of these years.
My Grandmother never gave us jewellery, that was my Australian Nana’s role. My Grandmother made the best pierogis, cabbage rolls, and sugar dusted donuts in the world and had the most colourful floor that I had ever seen as a kid. She may not have influenced my love for jewels, but she certainly must have influenced my love for colours and patterns.
My Life In Jewels 