Healing through the art of Slow Craft.
Wing of Winter I by Katerina Knight - Photographed by Anna Starmer at Xtant in Mallorca.
+ Creator | Katerina Knight
+ Country | United Kingdom
+ Colour | Cornflower petals, dahlia and English lavender
+ Challenge | How can our craft help us to heal?
Katerina Knight is an English Textile Practitioner, artisan, grower and writer specialising in handmade textile artefacts that reimagine traditional techniques of hand embroidery, needlelace and natural dye.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art 2023 Ma Textiles programme and recipient of the Burberry Design Scholar. Katerina's beautiful and fragile petal lace is featured in Luminary Issue 30, as part of our story - Romantic.
Extract from - Luminary Issue 30 - LOVE
"Modern textile artisans embark on a nostalgic journey through time connecting fragments of memories through natural fibre and seasonal colours. Materials and yarns are home-grown or foraged. A new generation are returning to hand-crafting pieces slowly, mindfully in response to the chaos of our modern lifestyles."
Anna Starmer, Luminary Issue 30
The Healing Lace I by Katerina Knight
Katerina trained as a Print Designer at The Glasgow School of Art, she then spent time working in luxury fashion. Feeling dissatisfied by the structural systems that uphold the industry, Katerina completed a Masters at the Royal Collage of Art in London with the intent to realign her practice; forming a binding thread that intrinsically linked her making to the Earth, with care and compassion.
The healing lace with hands, Katerina Knight. © Ruby Pluhar.
The lace dress above is made from lavender flowers and living threads, the meticulously crafted lacework demands slow attention, and guided Katerina's body back to health, through slow and steady work, over 250 hours. An incredibly precious piece of art, with a fragile story - a reflection of the need to care for all life on Earth.
"Drawing upon the natural rhythms of the Earth as a guiding light; working with living materials I have homegrown, locally foraged and collected over time. From the act of growing, through to the process of making I am present.... in recovery from illness - slow textile craft becomes my most powerful tool in healing."
Katerina Knight
Wing of Winter, Hand threaded homegrown cornflower petals and seeds of English lavender 2023,
In May 2023 I travelled to Mallorca for the incredible textile and craft event XTANT (read more in my next journal post.) I was delighted to see Katerina's latest art piece hanging at the event and see these delicate structures in real life. Wing of Wonder is constructed from petals of cornflowers, dahlias and seeds of English lavender, homegrown in the summer of 2023 in Worcestershire, England. Planted from seed, harvested, collected, and stored. Each petal and seed has been intricately and individually threaded by hand.
In winter 2023 parts of England experienced unprecedented flooding. Katerina, recently moved from London to Worcestershire, found herself stranded indoors due to the flooding Rivers around her new home. She calls this her 'forced hibernation', and turned to the dried petals and flowers grown the summer before - exploring her craft as a route to filling her days with purpose.
Wing of Winter
This work is a deeply personal collaboration with the Earth. Nature gifts us with flowers, leaves and seeds in an array of rich colours and intricate details. Katerina grows, forages and collects plants and transforms the natural materials into threads for embroidery embellishments and natural dye pigments.
"Slowly, at my studio desk, I connected the threads that allowed me to remain connected to our Earth. As I hand threaded each individual seed of lavender and petal of cornflower and dahlia I was reminded of the gratitude we must show for every single, small, and beautiful offering from Earth."
Katerina Knight
Artist Contacts
Anna met Katerina and viewed these beautiful one-of-a-kind artworks as part of 'Roots 2024' Xtant in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
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