I’ve been obsessed with trims and tassels for a while now. When living in France I used to buy vintage shop stock, trimmings wound around old cards, from markets. During lockdown, I spent the first few months sewing bobbles around all my seat cushions, and I have a lot – after all, I run a supper club. I like to decorate.
I’m a bit of a maximalist so any decorative craft is like catnip. In the last five years or so, the fashion for interiors in the UK has veered towards patterns, decoration, vibrant colour and vintage crafts; very different to earlier more stripped down, modern, white walls and minimalism of the 21st century.
I discovered Jessica Light, ‘the tassel queen of Bethnal Green’, on Instagram and asked to visit her in her Colombia Road atelier. She runs one of the last passementerie workshops in the UK. It’s a skill that is on the red ‘endangered’ list according to Heritage Crafts. The dictionary definition of passementerie is ‘an ornamental edging or trimming (such as tassels) made of braid, cord, gimp, beading, or metallic thread’.
‘We don’t really have a specific word for this in English. They do in Germany, France and Italy. The craft came over with the Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries. They worked in attics around Brick Lane,’ Jessica says.
How did she start? ‘When I left art college, I studied textiles, I trained under Wendy Cushing in the 1980s. Since 2007, I’ve been freelance on my own. My style is quite different, more contemporary, using non-traditional materials such as horse hair and paper.’
I touch the horse hair, which is really stiff and strong. ‘It’s from the tail of the horse. This is mostly used for violins.’
Jessica shows me something called ‘gimp’ braid, which is a twisted cord with a fine wire inside. It sounds quite BDSM. ‘Some of the terminology is quite similar,’ she laughs. ‘The wire interior means you can weave quite ornate patterns.’
I look at another example: a Russia braid. It looks military.
Jessica says: ‘Passementerie is used a great deal for military uniforms. They all used to be made off Oxford Circus. The style of uniforms hasn’t changed much since the 19th century.’
Wouldn’t it be great if she were commissioned to do a really contemporary uniform using your creations?
The room is dominated by a large 19th-century wooden loom. ‘My mum found that at a car boot sale. It cost me £100. Usually it would have cost £1,500.’ Pinned to the loom is a large landscape newspaper photo of the royal balcony with draped red cloth and thick gold bullion passementerie. Jessica was asked to refurbish this cloth.
She makes this quite fast, about five metres a day, but bullion fringing is expensive to make, using lots of materials.
What does she listen to when weaving? ‘I choose the tempo of the music depending on how fast I need to weave. I like The Damned. Anything syncopated, because weaving is very rhythmic, very physical. James Brown for instance, or reggae. Late at night I like to wind down, so I might listen to Mozart.’
Jessica has also made props for films and TV. ‘I had to macrame the edges of tablecloths for the film ‘Death on the Nile.’
We also discuss being older women artists who are single. Jessica repeats something I’ve often said: ‘I never really think of myself as a boomer.’
It’s an American thing: boomers run from 1946 to 1964. When I left school, during the Thatcher years, there was three million unemployed. We didn’t feel wealthy.
‘We were marching, going on demos,’ says Jessica. ‘We’re getting quite a lot of flack from Generation X and Zoomers. I don’t think that our generation don’t care. I think we’re just so fatigued by the fact that nothing has changed. You got to a point where you think maybe things are getting better, a little bit less racist, a little bit less sexist, but there’s a rise in misogyny. What do you do? You feel like you’re trying to push a boulder uphill.’
We discuss the problem of being freelancers growing older.
‘They want to move the retirement age back, to 71. I don’t think I could physically do it. The weaving is very physical. I don’t have arthritis, fortunately. I recently turned 60. It was the first birthday where I thought – can I do this for another ten years?
‘I find when I do a whole day’s work, eight hours, my hands hurt. I get repetitive strain injury sometimes and I’ve had Weaver’s Knee.’
The decorative arts are undervalued, she suggests. ‘I’ve dealt with quite a lot of sort of sexism from the design industry because it’s a women’s craft, it’s decorative, it doesn’t really have a function. I’ve had some rows with people about this. People don’t value fibre arts, textile arts. There are some who are well known – Sonia Delaunay, who painted but also did textiles. How many female architects can you name?
‘Zaha Hadid is the only one that can be mentioned in the same breath as say, Richard Rodgers.’
How was lockdown? ‘I got the grant from the government as a full-time freelancer. I’ve always sewed, so I made scrubs as a volunteer for hospital workers. Before the end of the first lockdown, work started coming back. Since then, work has been very up and down.’
Feast or famine? ‘Yes. For the last six months I’ve had too much work. The cost of living crisis hasn’t helped, though.’
What’s in the near future? Jessica Light has many projects and collaborations: ‘I’m working with Day Dress at the moment, making belts.’
She also works in trend forecasting. ‘Most cultures have some form of passementerie, Japan, India and Turkmenistan do. The French are very good at supporting their heritage crafts. Passementerie is often made in China today. China has a very long tradition and heritage in braiding and tassels. Some of their work is absolutely incredible.’
Regarding continuing the tradition and the craft, she adds: ‘I’d like to take on an apprentice but honestly speaking there won’t be a job at the end of it.’
To commission Jessica Light to design and make passementerie, visit her website Jessica Light Wares
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