Talk | Pattern and Print by Sarah Burns

Discover the world of patterns with Sarah Burns.

Sarah will talk about what patterns mean to us and why – through an exploration of her own practice as well as exploring patterns further afield, how they travel, how they change and how they come to resonate with us. She will draw on her great love of pattern and her 2010 collage, Map of World Patterns, which enabled her to explore many personal global pattern stories. She will share her own fabric printing and dyeing practice based in Steyning and her fascination with major 20th-century pattern makers like Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher, Enid Marx and Peggy Angus.

This talk is part of our February Late event. By purchasing this talk ticket you gain free access to our Galleries, exhibitions and drop-in activities from 5-8.30pm.

Sarah Burns is a patternmaker and textile printer working in the South Downs with her partner Alice Garner. Together they hand block print textiles for interiors mostly using natural dyes which they forage for in the woods and fields around Steyning. Their work has featured in World of Interiors, Country Living and as part of the King’s Foundation celebration of British Craft and is supported by the Endangered Craft Fund.

Last year they were awarded their first solo show ‘The Art & Craft of Block Printing with Natural Dyes’ at Dartington Hall, the utopian community founded by Dorothy & Leonard Elmhirst.

Sarah wrote the 2018 monograph on 1930s block printing duo Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher and has worked as a hand printer at one of the last screen printing factories in England. She studied Politics at Jesus College, Cambridge and worked as an economist for the New Economics Foundation before going on to study textiles at Chelsea College of Art. She has designed for the Dartington Trust, Virginia White Collection and Cloth Collective and continues to design and teach widely.