Christopher Dresser Residency, V&A London 2004

In 1876-7 Dresser was the first European designer to tour Japan and the Victorian & Albert Museum staged a show exploring the work of this influential man. The particular area of Dresser’s practice that interested me were his early pencil drawn botanical studies and the wallpaper designs inspired by these studies. To connect with Dresser I sketched his illustrations of the growth structures of plants and became fascinated by pencil lines on his drawings surface that gave me clues to his working process and skill.

In the studio I explored basic origami, folding and unfolding and transferring my copied botanical studies in pencil, these intricate patterns were then cut into the paper with a scalpel and refolded. Sprigs and stems began to pop up, the paper appeared to be alive somehow, and growing. From these explorations I worked on larger scale papers while keeping the scale of the patterns small, transferring more botanical studies and wallpaper designs onto handmade Japanese and Indian papers, as well as heavy tracing paper and waxed stencil paper. The visitors to the V&A were interested and positive in response to my explorations, and very generous in teaching me their own tricks with paper.