Michael Brennand-Wood is a textile artist who combines his knowledge of ancient craft techniques such as hand embroidery and lace-making, with modern techniques such as digital printing and computerised machine embroidery to create textile multimedia pieces. Brennand-Wood is keen to extend the possibilities of textiles both in terms of practical realisation but also across time, through the hand-over of traditional techniques.
Return to Origin (2022) was commissioned for the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, in relation to the Arthur H. Lee & Sons archive. Lee-Fabrics was a Birkenhead company that ceased trading in 1970 and its archive contains extensive design records, photographs, advertising material, pattern books, printing stamps and publications. When the factory closed, the contents were sold and for many workers it was the first time they had been able to afford the goods they were making. Items disappeared into the local community and beyond. The prominent British weaver Peter Collingwood (1922-2008) bought a collection of threads which, years later, he gifted to the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, as he had not used them. These now form part of Michael Brennand-Wood's commission.
Return to Origin is a reference to the dispersal of Lee-Fabrics. Images from the company archives, such as chairs upholstered with different Lee-Fabrics, form the base pattern of Brennand-Wood's collage. Each chair has a personable figurative quality, even with the absence of any human form they seem like ghosts of another era. As Lee-Fabrics enhanced their fabrics through the fusion of print, weave and stitch, Brennand-Wood has done the same, with threads woven through and pinned on.
