Winged Reflection

For a long time I wanted to embroider with the wings of beetle. Inspiration always disturbed this plan, until this previous winter.

To use such delicate parts of nature the pouch can not be used in ways pouches normally are intended. So to level this out, I wanted to incorporate leather.

Now I had a handful of aged and sturdy beetle wings, a piece of fabric dyed with goldenrod and a leather jacket that I’d found in the forest.

But first, the start…

The fabric went with me when I walked for 6 weeks through Andalusia in Spain. The wings of beetle carefully wrapped in the folds of the golden colored fabric. It might look odd to use parts of insects to embroider with, but to me it comes natural. When I cycled through much of South America, I passed a lot of dead animals. Each time I stopped and inspect the wondrous animal that had been hit by a car. To be bend over a fox, which I normally only meet in camp spots, is seeing the animal up close. A nutria and skunk were never a possibility to see in detail. I found much more natural material. Like ostrich feathers, rabbit fur, deer hairs, llama wool, and wild boar hairs. The wild boars were hunted and eaten when I stayed at a military camp in Paraguay and there is where my very first inspiration came from.

Looking at a killed animal and seeing humans only using it’s meat, discarding the rest, I found the boar skin quite interesting. So I started to collect it’s hard stiff hairs. Along with the handful of cacti needle I already collected, this wasn’t a far reached idea.

Over the course of the cycling year I collected all kind of hairs, armed with a pair of scissor to cut them off. Together with feathers I made elaborate pieces of embroidery. These pieces are now framed and adorning my kitchen. Strange? Not when I remember a piece of art, huge and impressive, in a Dutch hospital. Vividly I remember the ‘painting’ that made such an impact on me, I can’t even remember why I was in the hospital, but for the artwork: entirely made up by horse hairs.

Wings of bugs are clean and hard surfaces. I have hardened them with glue in the hollow of their armpits. They are secured with a stitch that originates from the Indian continent, shisha mirror application.

Inspirational nature makes for good embroidery

‘That is a beautiful project! It looks entirely different than what you usually make’, said Geo, while he rolls by on his grass mower when I am photographing this very pouch. Yes, I am fully content with this one. It became not what I had in mind yet, as always, came into its shape it wanted to be. Also, the story behind this pouch became not what I intended. It is not about walking in Spain, rather about the reason to use wings of beetle.

Although I very much dislike using leather as I don’t have the sewing machine for it, it makes for a total different look. Much of it is handwork with a special leather needle. Sturdy leather is not very bendable and because of this I opted for a double layer so the pouch would stand on it’s own. Becoming a holder of stuff that needs to be held together on a table in a very original way: a pouch stitched with wings and light.