Eirian Short has been a household name in embroidery for over fifty years and celebrated a recollection of her career with an exhibition at the Knitting & Stitching Shows in 2005.
"The first piece of embroidery I ever showed I put into the Pictures for Schools Exhibition on my wedding day in 1951". Eirian had discovered embroidery at Goldsmiths a term earlier with Constance Howard - as a sculpture student. Her interest turned to machine embroidery but she had to study at a trade school (now the London College of Fashion) because Goldsmiths had only one machine.
Working in hand embroidery techniques, Eirian noticed the developments in materials and variety of media in use. For a while she became interested in designs on hardboard that were cut out and covered with fabric and reassembled on a chosen backing. "Moth Against The Moon" was one piece that resembles an immaculate inlay. Larger panels followed and her fame became international.
With Eirian's first book, "Embroi-dery and Fabric Collage", in the late sixties, and part time teaching at Goldsmiths and Hornsey College of Art - the latter position being terminated for over indulgence in a student sit-in, her outlook on life changed. At this juncture her work took a more serious approach and thematic works became known as her Death Period, Fox Period and Snake Period. Each subject was studied in detail, with Eirian immersing herself in the subject matter.
In the early seventies three books were published and she became obsessed with the swan, both as a beautiful creature and as a popular motif in art and other media. She made about twenty panels, many in high relief and exhibited regularly with three artists, and also with the 62 Group.
Whilst walking in a South London Victorian cemetery, Eirian considered a different approach to her work. At first she developed soft sculptures of graves (some old and some contemporary) but soon she developed rich symbolism and the customs associated with her subjects.
"The Pearly Gates" was conceived when Eirian read an in memoriam in her local paper: "The trumpet sounded, St. Peter called 'come' - the Pearly gates opened and in walked Mum".
By the late seventies Eirian and her husband had bought a rural cottage in Pembrokeshire. The surrounding landscape heavily influenced her work and led to the Fox Period based on the local custom of hanging up dead foxes at lambing time to deter predators.
"When in London I worked on symbols of happiness and based my designs on popular images found on artefacts sold in our local street market - biscuit tins, glass paintings etc. "Dream Cottage" was based on a firescreen and epitomised everyone's ideal fulfilled." This was shown at the Tolly Cobbold Exhibition.
For Eirian, the eighties began with an exhibition at the Welsh Arts Council's gallery in Cardiff, showing the late seventies' work and the new Pembrokeshire landscapes. She was now stitching building up layers of straight stitches as in "Sunset", or massing French knots as in "Moonlight". Eirian had a long cherished wish to base a work on the television programme "Come Dancing" and her embroidery of a formation dancing team was named after the programme.
In the mid eighties, Eirian and her husband sold their London home and moved to live permanently in Pembrokshire. This led to a greater involvement with landscape and nature. The solidly stitched "The Crows" was the largest piece in the genre, taking ten months to complete. It is now in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Many pieces by her are in national collections and her commissioned work is owned worldwide.
In the past decades the themes have possessed a perennial nature - seasons, trees, flowers, the Creation and still life. In the nineties "The Parlour" was a one-off and contains very detailed stitching of home decoration and furnishings.
The Snake Period arose from the sight of a black adder sunning itself on a rocky outcrop. Eiran's reaction was a mixture of reverence and fear, echoed in the serpent's place in religion and mythology. Revered as a god in Mexico it epitomises evil in the guise of Satan in the Garden of Eden. The serpent is in many primitive religions seen coiled round a tree at the centre of the world. On tombstones the serpent swallows its tail as a symbol of eternity and is immortalised in the poem by D. H. Lawrence.
For several years in the nineties Eirian helped create a one hundred feet long embroidered tapestry to commemorate the last invasion of Britain which took place at Fishguard in 1797.
In the last decade Eirian again changed her approach to embroidery with a series of free standing potted flower and fruit studies. "Open Window" sees one of these in a three dimensional painted setting.
After embroidering "Primmy's Dog", a life-size portrait of a whippet, after fifty years of stitching, Eirian developed carpal tunnel syndrome (RSI), and she had to find another way to continue her work. She began to experiment with papier-mâché, wire and fabric.
"I began by making wire shapes and stretching fabric over them. The most pliable fabrics I found were those in tights which I used in their natural colours. This resulted in "Sombre Flower Piece". The vase was first modelled in clay as a base for a papier-mâché shape. I have gone on working in this vein, but using a variety of fabrics including stiffened velvets and satins which can be moulded with hot irons as in "White Roses". The pieces have become bigger, more complicated and in higher relief and the last two, "Summer" and "Winter", incorporate figures.”
There are other aspects of Eirian's work it is not possible to include in this Recollection. When at Goldsmiths, religious subjects were in vogue and she produced some abstracts "along the way". On the whole, however, Eirian has been happier working with recognisable, figurative subject matter. "I am now eighty-one and continue to spend most of the day in the studio, wishing time did not go so quickly. There is much I still want to do. Looking back over my half century of stitching, the thing I remember with most satisfaction is the sheer sensual pleasure of pushing a threaded needle in and out of the fabric and watching the work grow."