Lydia is a Manchester-based visual anthropologist and textile artist specializing in craft communities and material culture. Lydia sees her work as a love letter to the long-stitched biography of lives spent bent over cloth, revering their experience whilst reimagining and interlacing my own. Working in the medium of quilting and patchwork, she combines this heritage craft with the alternative photographic process of cyanotype to shape textile pieces that reflect her research on the often overlooked and under-appreciated world of women’s work. Accompanying the material, Lydia threads audio-visual methods of photo essays and exploratory soundwalks to illuminate the values, relationships, memories and meaning hidden and observed in the material. Lydia endeavours to weave together stitching and writing, working with dyeing and print methods to produce textiles that communicate meaning through the material.

What is your favorite design book?

Anni Albers 'On Weaving' (1965). Bauhaus weaver Alber’s seminal book combines a retrospective of her work in beautiful illustrations and photographs with a philosophy on craft practice.

What is your favorite design object?

The Darning Egg. Often obscure and strange, the darning egg’s smooth, arched surface was used to repair holes in stock, stockings and gloves.