In her MA Jackie
specialised in the history of dress represented in works of art,
and came to focus on the fashions and fabrics of Renaissance Italy.
Her first book is now regarded as the international standard
reference on the subject.
Several years’ experience of
lecturing in art and design schools, linking creative connections
between the history, theory and creative practice, evolved into a
fascination for global trade and influences of style across
cultures. Through in-depth understanding of textiles, and teaching
alongside highly skilled craft practitioners, she came to
appreciate the bigger context in which design functions and is
consumed – in fashion and interior decoration. In turn, Jackie
began to explore the environmental impact of design choice and
means of production – and came to appreciate her original starting
point: family roots in the Lancashire textile industry, and making
clothes from special samples of beautiful cloth.
Along the way Jackie has written
essays on recycled cloth (from hand-me-down dresses to patchwork
quilts and the Asafo flags of coastal Ghana), William Morris’
textiles featuring birds (inspired by Italian medieval and early
Renaissance silks); books for teenagers on 1920s and 1970s fashion;
World Crafts, in collaboration with Oxfam Trading, about the role
of craft in developing communities; and chapters on Spanish and
Italian silks for the British Museum's publication 5000 Years of
Textiles.
Mixing new and old, and making
visual links through colour, pattern, texture and scale, is just as
integral to Jackie’s reading of cloth as her design of landscape
and interiors. Her published writing and broadcasts have covered a
wide range of topics that reflect the sequence of studies, teaching
and curatorial projects that she initiated. Each phase influences
the ones that follow – resulting in a synthesis of history, ideas
and practice.
She is author-curator of the
Experimental Pattern Sourcebook, published in 2010
by Rockport – which includes some of her own pattern design among
the international compilation of 40 contributors working in
different disciplines and materials. Jackie was also the editorial
consultant and author for the opening chapter, on dress in the
ancient world, in Dorling Kindersley’s
Fashion: the ultimate history of costume and style.
Jackie regularly contributes features to a range of titles, and for
a number of years curated the monthly Antiques & Vintage and
Salvage news and shopping pages of Period Living
magazine.
Jackie’s selection of honey jars for the Antiques & Vintage shopping pages of Period Living, April 2014
