Ulysses Black writes of a concept he came up with, exploring how narrative threads can cross over, reflecting the method of making a lace stitch: There are so many interwoven themes in The Lace Maker project, finding a way to navigate them all, to organise them and see how they fit together was a task …
Meet the smuggler and learn more about lace smuggling generally and his struggle with a corpse… Puppets, puppetry and voice by Daisy Jordan. Video editing by Ulysses Black. Music by Gemma Khawaja. Below: Earlier experiment with making a corpse prototype with a removable head: Below: Prototype dog rod marionette
Above music: Maiden Maiden by Gemma Khawaja. Lyrics by Ulysses Black. The little puppet prototype pictured is the character of the lace merchant. The lacemakers were commissioned to make lace by lace merchants or dealers. These merchants would order particular patterns or styles of lace and travelled from village to village, supplying the lacemakers with …
Above music: The Night Tangler theme by Gemma Khawaja. Above audio: Ulysses Black talks about our Night Tangler character More about our fictional folkloric character The Night Tangler… Here are some character sketches showing him crawling through gaps, collecting lacemakers’ eyes and spinning yarns into webs as thresholds – the veil beyond which lies the secret …
Above music: “Needle pin” by Gemma Khawaja. Based on lacemaking tells. Video animation below: The two propagandist characters capture Old Bob and pin him down.
(Videos below text) When I was researching lace folklore, one thing that I found really fascinating was the fact that a lot of the lace legends didn’t seem to surface until the nineteenth century – after the invention of machine made lace. There were many patrons of handmade lace (for example, the Catholic Church) and …
Above: One of our own original lace tells by musician Gemma Khawaja. Lyrics by Ulysses Black This is a paper prototype I made for the character of the Lace Mistress – in the lace schools, children as young as five would be taught to make lace by a teacher, who was often a woman with …
I am currently thinking that I would like elements of the puppet show to reflect the process of lacemaking itself. I have decided (so far) that I want to use marionettes (or rod marionettes) because the strings reflect the threads that are used to make lace. I would like these small puppets to be carved …
I recently found out I had to self-isolate for ten days, after having left all my puppet prototypes and props at the devising space. Without my material, or access to the space, I had to think in a different way. So I spent yesterday building tiny sets using scraps of cardboard and photos of my …
Above audio: Gemma Khawaja’s version of A Shirt of Lace Very quick animation experiment exploring the legend of the young lacemaker being visited by the Virgin Mary. Animation by Daisy Jordan, words/poem and film editing by Ulysses Black. Music by Gemma Khawaja.