Acts of Care: The Lost Letters of Liverpool

Over the course of this project, in addition to the usual collection of friends and collaborators, there has been another figure present in my studio.

In each of the Acts of Care there’s usually a person; a mix of fact and fiction, who acts as inspiration for when head and hand come together.  These characters help me to create a narrative, a set of rules when designing the tools and subsequent intervention, and it’s always nice to have someone else around.

Throughout the research of the Acts of Care projects I meet many people to talk about making, skills and old industries.  In Liverpool people in libraries, at bus stops and in Polish community groups all told me stories of Liverpool, old homes and of making.  In these conversations, many characters are introduced to me.  When I then return to the studio to make models and test ideas, the characters tend to come back to mind, now merged and with bits forgotten, new histories and re-imagined futures.

Shlomo Keller is one such person, a man born in the early C20th who worked in his father’s hardware shop in Rymanow, Poland and was married to Sara, a curtain maker.  I know him from an archive photograph. I’ve found it to be common that in women’s piecework employment, the husband often makes some tools or jigs to assist in the tasks.  An example of this is Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic flower makers, whose tool pot often included old combs with teeth removed and a variety of smooth wooden formers made by partners so the various different leaves and petals could be easily formed.   This got me thinking, what tools and templates might Shlomo have made for Sara, and how would these skills manifest themselves in the future?