5 Day Passementerie Masterclass with Jessica Light

Where: Weavers Works, Walthamstow, London E17 7BH

When: 25 to 30 October, 10am to 4pm each day with a lunch break (lunch provided)

Cost: £300 (three free bursary places available for those from under-represented communities or facing financial hardship – subject to availability)

Join the Tassel Queen of Bethnal Green for a 5 day intensive course on passementerie aimed at intermediate textile practitioners. 

With over three decades of experience in the trade, a well-established authority on the historic techniques and one of only a few contemporary practitioners, Jessica Light is a leading figure in the endangered craft of passementerie. 

With support from the Goldsmiths’ Foundation, Heritage Crafts has partnered with Jessica to produce an  film on passementerie, helping to capture and transmit the skill for future generations. Jessica is delivering this five day course for students eager to learn passementerie skills. The film will be provided as a key learning resource to enhance the hands-on experience.

Passementerie is the art and craft of cord spinning, weaving, braiding, and tassel-making first introduced to the UK with the arrival of the Huguenots. With a myriad of applications spanning fashion, costume, interiors, film industries, passementerie is an extremely versatile medium. 

From fringing the Buckingham Palace balcony drape to creating macrame belts for Vivienne Westwood, Jessica Light’s trims and tassels have adorned the worlds of interiors, fashion and film. The last working passementerie weaver left in East London, Jessica hand-weaves and hand-makes trims and tassels using techniques dating back to the 16th century. She brings a design-led contemporary aesthetic with an ‘anarchic sensibility’ to this endangered heritage craft. Her client list includes Burberry, Harrods, and The Royal Collections Trust and has written a book ‘Passementerie’, published by The Crowood Press, the most comprehensive book on woven and non-woven passementerie techniques.

Jessica trained under Wendy Cushing and has been working in the passementerie industry for over 30 years. She has a large cannon of techniques, extensive experience in producing one-off pieces to hundreds of tassels and metres of trim, all of a high end quality. This is a unique opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time with her gaining hands-on experience, close tuition on a range of weaving and table work techniques, guidance on materials and colour, and a look at passementerie notation. 

At the end of the course, trainees will be able to create highly ornamental or pared-back embellishments for furniture, lighting, clothes, and costumes through a rich interplay of materials, techniques, patterns, colours, and textures.

This course is not intended as an ‘experience’; it is for working practitioners who intend to incorporate these skills into their metalworking practice. There are eight places available, providing a focused and supportive learning environment.

Bursaries

To ensure equitable access to this vital training opportunity, we are providing three free bursary places for individuals from under-represented communities or facing financial hardship – subject to availability. You will have the option of applying for a bursary in the application form.

Please note, places will be allocated based on suitability. Please fill in the application form and Heritage Crafts will contact you with news of whether you have been accepted onto the course.

Click here to apply

Programme

An overview of many passementerie weaving techniques and technical notation, how to set up a passementerie warp and some of the main passementerie trim structures, off the loom skills such as cord winding, covering wooden moulds and how to embellish trims.

More information on the structure of the course can be found here. 

• Notation: A system specific to Passementerie and completely different to normal weaving in that it’s written in a form of shorthand rather than drawn. Each Passementerie factory developed its own form of notation and passed it from weaver to weaver, ensuring designs could be recorded, stored and reproduced, even without samples. Jessica will teach the system she learnt and will cover how to notate the warp, reed and weft. A key element of the history of passementerie that’s at extreme risk of being lost. 
• Woven Trim Structures
• Cut fringes
• Weaving with dummy warps to create looped structures. This set of trims include lattices and picot braids
• Table Work [off the loom skills]
• Twisting a cord
• Choosing the yarn / hand twisting a two-warp cord
• Covering Moulds
• Both rolling and yarn covering methods will be covered
• Embellishments
• Ruffs, tassel hangers, how to create lattices

How to get to Weavers Works by public transport

• 3 minute walk from Walthamstow Central Station which is serviced by the Victoria and Weaver(!) lines
• 3 minute walk from Walthamstow Bus Station which is serviced by many bus routes, check TfL for more information

.Lunch

Catered lunches will be provided. You will be asked to provide information on any dietary requirements in the application form.

Click here to apply

If you have any questions feel free to email Finn Arschavir, Projects and Engagement Officer, at [email protected].