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Rosemary Milner
Rosemary Milner is a London based surface pattern designer and embroiderer, whose work is inspired by historical narratives and natural imagery. The North Yorkshire moors and surrounding area is reflected in Rosemary's work through the recurring motifs of birds, hares, foxes and marine life.
Maker's Story
Rosemary Milner is a London based surface pattern designer and embroiderer, whose work is inspired by historical narratives and natural imagery. The North Yorkshire moors and surrounding area is reflected in Rosemary's work through the recurring motifs of birds, hares, foxes and marine life.
After graduating from Leeds School of Art with a First Degree Honours in 2011, Rosemary moved to London and began working on various creative projects. She set up her studio at Bainbridge in Elephant and Castle in 2015 and has occupied a space there ever since. The studio hosts a wide variety of facilities including screen print beds and a relief printing press.
Over the last few years, Rosemary has worked on a number of freelance projects including custom linocut illustrations for Trevear Farm in Cornwall.
THE PROCESS
Rosemary begins her creative process by experimenting with the blending of drawing, collaging and printing. Once she is happy with the designs, she begins to produce the pieces using silk screen or intaglio and the final details are highlighted in stitch. The final embroidery element transforms the piece through the use of delicate detailing, adding colour, texture and definition. Each piece is carefully finished in her South London studio.
Q&A
1. What motivates you to make?
Seeing a piece materialise before your eyes is quite special and it is this that grounds me to my craft more than anything else. There is something quite emotive about revealing a print after you’ve positioned the screen or plate. The culmination of many hours spent developing the piece by hand and on the screen, to then ink-it-up and print it in a seemingly-simple gesture — the artwork you’ve so carefully created suddenly comes to life on the fabric.
Sustainability and the careful consideration of materials is also a key motivation when deciding on how a piece will come together, linking the natural world and my coastal upbringing into my practise. I also love the idea of making a functional piece to be used every day, and to be cherished by someone. It gives me a real incentive to produce beautiful textiles.
2. What and/or who are you most inspired or influenced by?
Inspiration can come to me from many places, though nature and my surroundings have always heavily influenced my pieces. The inspiration can start from a simple walk, foraging and collecting botanicals from land and sea in order to create potential motifs and designs.
I’ll often reference beautiful books and the works of artists, old and new, and works outside the world of art and design. I’ve also recently reignited my imagination through process: be it collage, lino-printing, natural dyeing or silkscreen printing. Ideas come to life for me when I’m continually developing and playing, and pushing myself to do more, try more.
3. What is your unique approach to your craft, and how have you honed your skills?
The development of my work has always stemmed from using sketchbooks. I’ll begin with a lot of drawing, collaging, printing and generally experimenting, and documenting anything that I have collected. This then transitions into either silkscreen printing or intaglio, depending on the imagery, and the final details are highlighted in stitch. For me, the final embroidery element transforms the piece through the use of delicate detailing, adding colour, texture and definition that is hard to achieve in the printing process alone. Throughout the whole process, working with my own hands is paramount – from collecting and sketching, to larger gestures of printing with tools, then returning back to intricate hand-sewing.
4. What is your defining or proudest moment as a maker so far?
It takes a little while for me to produce something I’m truly happy with and it’s been a wonderful process to create this collection for the New Craftsman, and see it come to fruition. The seaweed collection in general I’m really proud of, as the development work was so enjoyable and took me to coastlines all over the British Isles.
5. What is your dream project?
I love the idea of a residency somewhere wild and isolated where I can just create continuously with the natural world at my doorstep for inspiration, and wonderful people and facilities at my fingertips, to experiment and push my craft. I’d then create a collection based on the experience and have it displayed in a beautiful old interior setting – I think that would be wonderful.
