At the end of March we heard that the Guild had been offered a free stand on the usual condition of continuous demonstration and no selling. It would be up to the local group to run it. It would have been criminal to turn it down so although the Herts group had just had it's six weekly meeting and although I was extremely busy on another job, I said ok.
I was another week before we knew what shape we had to fill. We were given one of the very best stands at the show which was in a brick building not a marquee. We had a corner site with 20' x 12' back walls. The stand was a spacious 8' deep with room for two 6' tables in the front. We were getting excited, we had a flat floor, a real roof, a lockable door and power points! Could we do it justice?
I engineered a copper tube frame to support our display sheets. It was 9' high, we had an enormous area to cover with a sophisticated display, with very little time. We chose blue as a simple coordinating theme and asked our long suffering members to bring in all sorts of paintings that included blue, for selection. We begged and borrowed more. We had glazed pictures; large, very large and small drapeable paintings, free standing outfits on stands, cushions, umbrellas and a lampshade.
Three of us spent a day trying to design a good display by arranging the silks on the floor and making copious notes. On setting up day, we loaded a vast amount of kit, including all the 9' poles. onto Vee Harlow's camper van and went off to Hatfield. Setting up the backdrop frame and cover took a long time, then we had all the silk to pin up. We finished only just before we were thrown out, but it did look good, and could be seen from the other end of the building.
One table was arranged for demonstrating, the other for 'have-a-go'. There was a side table for Guild information. 13 of our members gave up one or more days to man the space. More than 250 people had-a-go, and we recruited 6 new members to the Guild at the show, plus at least 3 later.
Our display was eye-catching and we were congratulated by the organiser. It was all a great deal of hard work for a show where we were not allowed to sell our paintings, but there was a great deal of interest and we felt it was worthwhile. we were very grateful to Living crafts and we hope we may be offered an encore.
Tessa Barnes - Mid-Herts Branch
I really must congratulate all who helped put on this great display of silk painting for the benefit of the Guild and all silk painters and their art. Thank you to all. Ed.