Lacemakers Café

(Hidden high street series)

Lacemaker’s Café is a visual meditation on heritage, memory, and the transformative interplay of light and reflection. Set in Honiton, Devon - a town celebrated for its lacemaking tradition - this piece draws inspiration from authentic lace imagery that once adorned the walls of a historic café. By re-appropriating these delicate motifs, the work pays homage to a storied past while reimagining tradition for a contemporary audience.

At its core, the piece explores the subtle art of transformation. The imagery of lace - emblematic of painstaking craftsmanship and elegance - is interwoven with a dynamic arrangement of colours and patterns that emerge from the café’s original window. This aged glass refracts light in myriad directions, dispersing a vibrant spectrum and creating an intricate collage of reflections. These fractured visuals evoke the tactile beauty of handcrafted lace while symbolising the multifaceted nature of memory and identity.

The structured grid within the composition acts as a metaphorical framework - a nod to the precision of lacemaking - yet each segment pulses with its own life, much like the unique, handmade nature of traditional lace. No two sections are identical; each reflects a subtle play of hue and texture, suggesting both rigour and spontaneity. This juxtaposition captures the delicate balance between preservation and evolution, inviting viewers to contemplate the continuity of craft as it’s distilled through modern reinterpretation.

In celebrating Lacemaker’s Café, the work also stands as a quiet yet potent commentary on the fading yet enduring presence of independent, locally rooted spaces. As much as it is a tribute to Honiton’s artisanal past, it is also an exploration of British high street culture - how cultural legacies are refracted through the prism of everyday life. It is community spaces art that honours the shifting light of modernity cast upon venerable traditions.

Ultimately, Lacemaker’s Café invites its audience to pause and reflect on the beauty inherent in overlooked details. It is print art celebrating local life, where memories and traditions are not preserved in static images but come alive in the interplay of light, colour, and form. By intertwining the poetic language of lace with the evocative quality of fractured reflections, the work creates a dialogue between history and the present - a dialogue that is as delicate as it is enduring.

This work is from the Hidden High Street series - an exploration of the often unnoticed spaces and everyday encounters that form the essence of our shared communities.

Read more about the Hidden High Street series here

Produced as a limited edition - hand‑pulled in the studio, this work is signed/stamped and numbered to ensure their authenticity and collectability. Each edition is created using traditional silkscreen techniques on archival paper, with every layer printed by hand.

Collectors can choose to acquire these works in two forms:

• On Paper — the edition in its purest state, unframed, offering flexibility for personal presentation.

• Artist‑Framed — mounted and framed by the artist, using bespoke methods to present the work as a complete, ready‑to‑hang artwork.

This dual approach allows the work to be appreciated either as a print to be lived with and framed to taste, or as a finished object crafted entirely within the artist’s practice.

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