Terry Weston – United Kingdom

Chaos / Stability

Description

“Timeless” as a theme can be taken many ways. In any era, there is tradition and innovation, and both are important to the evolution of culture and style I have chosen to use both traditional and non-traditional millinery materials to construct the hat.

My immediate inspiration was the recent Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey. I have tried to capture something of the darkness and chaos of his work through the twisted and knotted rubber, but wanted to contrast this with reflected light through the mirror strips, which also produce distorted and multiplied images of the plywood and interlaced rubber.

The plywood contains the structure and is stabilised by the metal studs. The asymmetric curve at the top of the plywood emphasises the asymmetry of the hat.

Materials

• Black wool felt hood
• Midnight blue wool fur felt hood
• Stiffener for felt hoods
• Millinery wire
• Plywood
• Metal studs
• Assorted sizes of flexible circular rubber rods and see-circular rod
• Carbon fibre rigid rod
• Small wood balls with hole drilled half-way through sphere
• Acrylic sheet silver mirror with white styrene backing
• Black petersham
• Cotton threads (black. navy. dark grey)
• Adhesives for mirror strips, wood balls, and semi-circular rubber rod
• Coconut oil

Techniques

• Stiffening both hoods
• Blocking wool felt on skull block
• Blocking fur felt on turban block with raised crown
• Cutting of blocked hoods to follow required line of crown
• Wiring fur felt crown and folding under edge of fur felt
• Sewing in petersham on inside edge of crown
• Cutting, sanding and polishing outside of plywood with coconut oil
• Drilling holes for studs and making smooth with file
• Attaching mirror strips to plywood
• Constructing rubber rods into interlacing shapes
• Anchoring rods to fur felt crown by stitching
• Making ‘railway track’ for twisted structure around and over interlacing shapes, and attaching by stitching
• Inserting holes in crown for plywood with petersham and fur felt turned out
• Inserting stud screw shafts
• Attaching plywood to crown and screwing on studs
• Inserting black wool crown inside outer crown
• Turning under edge of outer crown and petersham, steaming inside of hat, and putting on block to stabilise