Dark Shining Wolf – Kennack Sands

£55 – £70Price range: £55 through £70

Pre-orders 1 – 25 May – Orders fulfilled w/c 8 June

Dark Shining Wolf is a new venture, an alter ego; the title comes from the meanings of my three given names. Dark Shining Wolf is a space for making work in new forms with new collaborators.

The first joyful collaboration is with THE WAD, an all female Morris dancing side based in Falmouth who will be dancing with Dark Shining Wolf wavers in their upcoming performances. Named after Joan the WAD, Queen of the Cornish Piskies; Cornish folklore suggests that Joan the WAD would light people to safety, or sometimes peril, across the Cornish moors.

Scarves are for dressing up, for taming your hair in the wind, for matching with your whippet (my dog Lincoln would have loved this) and showing solidarity by wearing shared symbols.

This first collection of 3 scarves features stills from 16mm films of rock, pools and quarries in Cornwall. These sites have special meaning for me – for making work and for losing myself in the elemental. Analogue film has a unique place in the history of St Ives – the Barnes Museum of Cinematography was Britain’s first film museum,  established and run by John and Carmen Barnes from 1963 to 1986. The collection of pre-cinema and early film equipment, including magic lanterns and projectors was housed in a building on Fore St that was once a cinema itself.

Working from my studio in Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, the influence of Hepworth and other modernist artists is felt strongly in the town. The Dark Shining Wolf collection is inspired by scarves from the textile company Ascher (London) Ltd. In 1946 the company commissioned leading British and European artists, including Barbara Hepworth (a great headscarf wearer herself) and Henry Moore, to make scarf designs, or ‘artist squares’. This new collection engages directly with this legacy.

Designed in Cornwall and printed in London on silky lightweight fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. Dark Shining Wolf artist squares are printed and sewn in small batches and sent to you with delight.

Please contact me at info@melaniestidolph.com for overseas postings or if any queries.