This lecture is presented by Dr Lucie Bea Dutton and will be accompanied by an exhibition of her textiles in the Atrium. 

Using a longterm sewing project inspired by Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy, this lecture will explore how her descriptions of needlework have led to a body of stitched artworks including Letters to Cromwell, the Cromwell Cloke, the Cromwell Narrative Cloth, The Book of Queens, and the Wolf Hall Quilt.

Textiles are central to Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy, woven through the narrative as thread through fabric. Stitchery is ever-present: from the child Jo’s awkward little backstitch in Wolf Hall to the treasonous embroidery of Margaret Pole in The Mirror and the Light. Queens’ initials are sewn and unsewn as fortunes rise and fall.
Mantel’s writing of the act of stitching, combined with archival research, inspires my creative practice. An inventory of long-lost objects is reinvigorated when its contents are stitched onto cloth. Letters to Cromwell can be represented as entries on a spreadsheet, or be reimagined and sewn into a reconstituted “letters-in” collection.