At the last Acquisitions Committee meeting, two works by Sharon Ting were accepted into the collection including Long Scarf (1992) a silk piece, dyed and screenprinted with colour discharge (see image above). Sharon has been a member of the CSC Acquisitions Committee since 2013 and Programme Director of Textiles at the University of the Creative Arts (UCA) from 2015.

 A photograph of Long Scarf adorned the cover of the catalogue for the major 1994 Crafts Council touring exhibition Colour into Cloth curated by Margot Coatts (former consultant and Acquisitions Panel member at the Crafts Study Centre), which travelled to the Whitworth in Manchester and then on to CSC when it was based at the Holburne Museum in Bath (see below). The exhibition described as ‘a celebration of Britain’s finest hand-coloured textiles’ and regarded a seminal marker in studio textile practice, featured the work of 32 makers from across the twentieth century - including Barron and Larcher, Susan Bosence, Georgina von Etzdorf and Enid Marx (all in the CSC’s collections) - as well as contemporary makers, including Sharon’s work. All of the makers were characterised by a hands-on interest in colour, print and textile - how the ‘colour soaks into cloth, is resisted by barriers, and makes patterns in the process,’ as Coatts describes in her foreword. This represented an alternative approach to the ubiquitous commercial logic of handing over two-dimensional designs for manufacturers to work with.

 Sharon’s scarves emerged from commissions she received to create banners, as a more viable, sustainable and commercial trajectory of practice. However, the interest in layering was consistent; masking cloth, painting it in layers of colour, using a silkscreen to define the boundaries of a design, and exploring dye discharge to achieve variation in tone. Rightly positioned in the Crafts Council exhibition as interpreting anew traditions of twentieth century innovations in hand-colouring textile, we are thrilled to have Sharon’s work in our collection.