William De Morgan & Fine Cell Work
September 16th – November 3rd 2011
For our re-opening, we will present an exhibition of Fine Cell Work in the re-designed temporary exhibition space. The charity trains prisoners in highly skilled and paid needlework, using William De Morgan’s tile designs for many of their cushion ranges. The De Morgan Centre has had a long-standing relationship with Fine Cell Work and now once again visitors will have a chance to see and purchase from a range of cushions, bags and small items.
The charity currently brings skilled craftwork to a sector of the population which would otherwise have no access to it, and shares De Morgan’s commitment to making craftwork a day-to-day practice in the modern world. Victorian philanthropy embraced these dual interests and William De Morgan’s mother campaigned alongside Elizabeth Fry, who first brought paid needlework into prisons in the 19th Century.
The sense of continuity with the past and connection to the outside world is of great value to men and women separated from society, and they frequently express the self-worth it gives them:
“It opens up another world, one that is long-forgotten. It is reinventing the craftsmanship of yesteryear. Then there is the pride and usefulness in seeing something of beauty come together, and the thought that my cell work will bring pleasure, now and hopefully long into the future…”
Fine Cell Work was founded by Lady Anne Tree, who had a calling to help those in “more confined circumstances than my own”. She perceived the match between time-consuming, skilled craftwork and prisoners’ endless hours locked in cells:
“I pondered the necessity of prisoners having something worthwhile to do during their long hours of lonely idleness. I wanted that work to be creative, enjoyable, worthwhile and saleable. I was determined that the work should be a professional standard, no whiff of charitable acceptance about it, and should be something of which its creator could be proud and our future buyers wish to own. I wanted the prisoner on release to have as much money as he or she had earned.”
Lady Anne Tree
