In 2005 Dovecot approached British artist, art historian and author Liz Rideal to collaborate on a tapestry inspired by a series of photo-booth images of textiles and human hands. The resulting work, Tapis Volant, was incredibly detailed and led to a further collaboration with Rideal the following year to create a new tapestry, Verdure.
Taking inspiration from a tapestry by Alfred Priest titled Verdure Piece 1938, Rideal worked with Dovecot weavers, in particular Master Weaver Douglas Grierson, to create a contemporary tapestry design. The work references the tradition of depicting pastoral scenes in tapestry re-imagined through a contemporary lens, with the striking composition and palette connecting to Henri Matisse and Yves Klein.
Both Rideal’s grandmother and artist Henri Matisse were born in Le Cateau in Northern France. Wanting to reference the style of the artist, Rideal created designs with a nearly abstract quality, and further nodding to a prominent French artist, Yves Klein, the blue in the piece is aligned with International Klein Blue. The boxed composition of Verdure is typical of Rideal’s style, with the design derived from black and white photo-booth photographs of nettles.
