Map of patterns - Paisley and Chinz

When Bilal Abdullah, a British-born Iraqi and Kafed Ahmed, an Indian citizen, travelled to Paisely airport in June 2007 and tried to blow themselves up in a Jeep Cherokee truck, I started thinking about the Paisley pattern or cone design and how the consequences of it's global transformation are still being felt in the form of suicide bombers and flaming jeeps.

Paisley began life as a fine embroidered woven shawls from Kashmir during the 18th century for the likes of Napoleon’s Josephine. One could take as long as 5 years to weave and could cost as much as a London Georgian town house.

By 1850 shawls were being mass produced on Jacquard looms by Mr Paterson of Paisley, Scotland. Cheap imitation shawls flooded the market undermining and ultimately destroying the ancient Kashmiri craft of weaving and embroidery.

The paisley I have used on my map isn’t woven or embroidered - it’s from my husbands’ great-grandmothers housecoat purchased in Harrods sometime at the beginning of the century.

Then there are my sitting room curtains. Also inherited from my husbands' family. They were made by Sanderson in the 1960’s and are called Kandahar. This meant nothing to me when they hung in our spare bedroom, but when we moved house, we hung them in the sitting room next to the telly. I found myself watching pictures of the real Kandahar going up in smoke surrounded by the beautiful mohgul, chinz pattern of a mythical Kandahar, dreampt up by an English textile designer at the height of the Cold War.

You can see a small part of this pattern where Afghanistan should be and on the big map you can also find Kandahar in the English home counties. I've really got into this pattern and have made a short film with my friend Karin imagining what would happen if this pattern came to life.

Kandahar is now the place where the American drones take off – pilotless planes, angels of death, killing with precision and impunity.

Map of patterns - Wax print and Blaudruk

I knew about a few more patterns that had travelled far: one was batik and wax print which came from Indonesia via Holland to West Africa in the 19th century thanks to the enterprise and flair of Dutch traders who managed to marry the ‘sparkle’ of the cracked wax effect with more local African designs and meanings. The best ‘Veritable Hollandaise’ is still made in Dutch factories.

The pattern I have used on my map, is one my friends Hannah and Patience helped me buy in Brixton market. The pattern is called ‘Afe Bi Ye Asen’ in the Twi language of Ghana and it means that ‘Every year things happen’ – life is never straightforward as you would wish but takes you on detours and roundabout ways, which in the end can be beautiful and life-giving – just like this pattern.

Another ‘pattern on the move’ I have used in Southern Africa, is very familiar to me from an ancient and beloved skirt of my mothers. It is called ‘shwe shwe’ or ‘Isishweshwe’ which has a distinctive pre-wash stiffness and smell. During the long sea voyage from Europe to South Africa, starch was used to preserve the fabric from the elements and gave it a characteristic stiffness. After washing, the stiffness disappears to leave behind a beautiful soft cotton fabric.

Perhaps the name is derived from the swishing sound this starchy fabric makes as the wearer walks along. ..the inspiration for Shwe shwe comes from the Blaudruk (literally blue print) cloth once produced in small towns and villages throughout most of central Europe.

Genuine blaudruk was first resist printed and then dyed in indigo – but by the second half of the 19th century, European factories hit on the idea of using indigo discharge or pattern bleaching to imitate the genuine resist printed blaudruk. The cloth was intended for export to South Africa – to be sold to German and Dutch settlers who were accustomed to the look. But english missionaries made use of the cloth to cover up bare-breasted indigenous Xhosa and Zulus, who then absorbed the fabric into their own culture.

Blaudruk was being produced by Mycocks of Manchester until 1992. In 1992, Da Gama, a South African company, purchased the sole rights to own and print the branded Three Cats range of designs, and incredibly had all the copper rollers shipped out to their Zwelitsha plant, based in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Map of patterns - Gunta Stozl and Ethel Mairet

I am collecting patterns from around the world and sewing them into a big Map of thte World. My map started when I discovered that my favourite skirt (Liberty Furnishing fabric c.1970ish) was infact based on the weavings of Gunta Stozl, the famous Bauhaus weaver, in 1930's Germany.

Most people know this pattern as a waxed fabric as a waxed cloth which they ate their dinners off in the 1970's, but it began as a weaving in 1930's in Weimar. You can see it on my map aroundabout where Germany should be.

I found out more about Gunta. How she came to visit Ethel Mairet, the woman who revivived English handweaving in the 1930's at her South Downs workshop, The Gospels. And how they experimented together - weaving wool from the local South Downs sheep together with plastic and cellophane.

I don't know how long they spent together, the pioneering Modernist and the more severe grand-dame of the Arts and Crafts movement - but you can still see the results of their labour in the myseum at Ditchling, fabrics which are a fascinating forerunner of todays textiles, combining the natural and the synthetic. Here is one of Ethel's handwoven jackets.

Ethel is fascinating for many other reasons. Before moving to Ditchling, she lived in Ceylon with her husband Ananda Coomaraswamy documenting the dissapearing arts and crafts of the island. To them, the Ceylon of the early 1900's, seemed like an ancient medieval society of priests and craftsmen, united in spiritual life and practice - untainted by the superficiality of modern industry and commerce. For them it was like a vision out of William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'

Ethel was most inspired by the embroidery she discovered: she undertook rigorous technical research, took thousands of photos and persuaded the local British-run technical schools to abandon Berlin work and Victorian samplers and instead revive local embroidery skills.

On my map, I've covered Sri Lanka with the kinds of stiches and colours that Ethel so loved. You can find them in 'Medieval Sinhalese Arts', the book her husband wrote and handprinted at their Arts and Crafts home in the Cotswolds, using one of the original Kelmscott presses.