Textiles period drama

Textiles period drama

Period drama textiles

Period drama textile work is our new adventure.  We decided to create a ‘look book’ in order to demonstrate how easily we can capture the essence of a picture for creating unique textiles for period drama film work.    We chose pictures from many different  periods throughout history and then matched colours and textures to those images.

For our research we journeyed through history right from the Dark Ages to the 1930s and 40s.  While exploring the huge resource of pictures on the internet for the Victorian period I came across two paintings by my great grandfather, John Cheltenham Wake.  I had heard stories of him being a painter and that he had painted the ceiling of the Music Room in Buckingham Palace – was he a painter and decorator?

The family stories relate how John Cheltenham Wake had been commissioned by the then Prince of Wales to paint Lillie Langtry.  These two paintings were called ‘Night’ and ‘Morning’.  I have never been able to find out anything about these pictures which are now only in the misty family memories.  Over the years I have found a number of seascapes and buildings but never, until now, any pictures of people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cheltenham_Wake

This picture are a perfect example of what we say about the way we paint fabric as an artist does by painting with all sorts of hidden tones that build up to the final colour.  The shadows and highlights that capture the fluidity of the cloth.  The texture of the folds and creases is what we try to capture to give the fabric a unique dimension before we carry out the hand printing, texturing and pleating.

Period drama textiles

We have already started on this film adventure by making most of the costumes for a horror film at the end of last year.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3111516/  Now we want to do more so this look-book has been created to whet the appetite of any costume designer, line producer, costume buyer –  where it will lead us – goodness knows!

textiles period drama

Artist John Cheltenham Wake

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