Pragya Sharma

The Sari-Body: Material Engagements with the Body, Landscape and Beyond

£1,000

Considered a ‘traditional drape’ for Indian women, the sari has long shared a complex relationship with the woman’s body. Pragya Sharma’s essay explores the idea of a ‘sari-body’ hinged around the sari’s multi-dimensionality, and following methods of observation and an auto-ethnographic approach. By recording this engagement of the sari with the body, Pragya’s essay attempts to discover new entanglements between bodies and textiles.

Pragya’s research stems from her observations of women sari wearers across various geographies in India, building a case for the ‘Sari-Body’ as a conceptual entity. This essay is about saris and the bodies that wear them, in and out. Pragya argues that while sari-wearing is a cultural practice, it is also an ‘embodied material practice’ with versatility and transformability as a utilitarian garment, not only for the body but for the landscape, the home and beyond.

Jane Rae

Lasting Impressions: The Sensory Language of Gloves in Early Modern Elite Society

£500

For centuries the glove has been adopted as a symbol of love, power, purity and protection, but in Jane Rae’s view, it is often overlooked and obfuscated in historical studies. Jane’s paper offers a new, sensorial investigation of the language of gloves in early modern elite society, considering the glove’s haptic characteristics and presenting them as multisensorial objects – perfumed, tactile and visually ‘lively’.

Jane draws on anthropology, ethnology, dress history, art history and social history. Building on the work of other scholars, her paper considers the glove as an object that evolved to reflect the intersection of social, religious, mercantile and cultural forces. Jane argues that gloves reveal themselves as complex objects, able to perform as cultural and social mediators between genders, diplomatic envoys, elite society, ageing monarchs and their courtly entourage, and between the living and the immortalised.

Beatrice Uprichard

An Exploration of the Creative Communities at Furlongs and Gospels in Sussex, with a Focus on Informal Education and Women-Led Community

£250

Beatrice Uprichard looks at the creative and educational legacy of Peggy Angus (designer and blockprinter) and Ethel Mairet (weaver), considering how their ideas can inform our future. Beatrice defines them as artists, women and teachers, three qualities that were central to their philosophy and the communities they created.

Both Angus and Mairet believed in the value of practice-based experience as opposed to institutional and qualification-centric education. The purpose of Beatrice’s exploration is to investigate the breadth of insight that their respective communities at Furlongs and Gospels represent, and to bring these ideas into the 21st century. Beatrice’s explorations focus on education and feminism, and her own connection with them. Beatrice argues that learning from Angus and Mairet is key to the future of the arts, ‘creating our own creative spaces in protest against the insufficiency of wider arts systems’.

Valentina Lava

Roberto Capucci and the early stages of his creativity. The Parisian period (1962-1968)

£250

Valentina Lava’s research analyses the different phases of Roberto Capucci’s creative production based on her investigations at the Fondazione Roberto Capucci and her analysis of secondary sources. Valentina highlights the importance of the tailor in both fashion and art. Her essay pays particular attention to the 1960s as the most important period for the development of Capucci’s creativity, leading to his more famous fabric sculptures, and later interpretations of colour and form.

Valentina writes, ‘By working closely with his creations it was possible to further comprehend Capucci’s genius and creativity. Seeing first-hand the high quality of the materials used, along with the refinement of the techniques, his signature weaving of silk ribbons, the unthinkable geometrical patterns achieved with pleats, the virtuous volumes or fierce allure of his fabric sculptures, gave me the opportunity to witness the world through his eyes’.