The
Gallery
Featured Artist
Jenny Mathews
The Butchart Gardens
Box 4010 Victoria BC Canada V8X 3X4
Phone: 1-250-652-4422 or Toll Free 1-866-652-4422
Fax:1-250-652-1475 email: [email protected]
Please visit our web catalogue at www.butchartgardens.com - then click on Gift Store
Revised:
May 2013
Victoria BC Canada
Toll Free: 1.866.652.4422
[email protected]
Quilling, or paper filigree, is thought to date back to least the 15th
Century when Italian and French nuns may have been amoung the first
to make delicate designs of rolled paper strips. Narrow strips of paper
were cut from the gilded edges of old manuscript and book pages. These
were then rolled up on feather quills before
forming the individual rolls into a
wide variety of scrolls and decorative
shapes. They were then used to create
ornate borders for their religious pictures and other articles.
Jenny Mathews
'Can you teach quilling to the children?' This request from the Head
Teacher of an elementary school in the West Sussex countryside in
England set Jenny to work learning yet another skill, first mastering the
techniques herself, then passing the basics on to the children.
On immigrating to Canada in 1996, Jenny took her first steps into professional quilling. As a keen gardener, her work is based predominately,
but not exclusively, on floral themes. The range of work includes cards,
framed pictures, free-standing figures and miniature plants.
Jenny is a member of both the British and the North American quilling
guilds and active in a local group which promotes quilling and the
enhancement of quilling as an art form.
Jenny's work can be seen at her studio in Langford and at local craft
galleries and craft fairs.
During the 18th Century in England
quilling became a popular art form for
fashionable young ladies. It was taught
along with needlework and other handwork and encouraged as a proper pastime for their leisure hours. Jane Austen’s
character Lucy in Sense and Sensibility is
quilling a filigree basket for Annamaria.
The Bronte sisters, too, were quillers, as
was George III’s daughter Elizabeth.
Coat of arms and a variety of pictures
were made with quilling and it was used to
decorate tea caddies, trays, cribbage boards
and boxes. In Victorian times various pieces
of furniture were especially made with
recessed panels to allow them to be deco- rated with quill work.
Examples of this work can be seen in the Lady Lever Museum in
Liverpool and in the V & A in London.