{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1810794"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1810794/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2026PN9495/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2026PN9495/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2026PN9495","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9497","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9503","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9502","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9501","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9500","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9499","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9498","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9496","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9504","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN9505","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2026PN1555","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1810794","accessionNumber":"T.39-2026","objectType":"Tapestry","titles":[{"title":"Around the Red Hills","type":"assigned by artist"}],"summaryDescription":"Jilly Edwards is one of the UK's most prominent tapestry artists. Her career spans over five decades during which time she has evolved and perfected her personal technique to create distinctive tapestries which marry colour and form to create powerful abstract compositions. She is one of a small number of UK practitioners who trained on formal, specialised tapestry weaving courses that are no longer available in UK colleges. She has always been an individual artist weaver creating her own compositions rather than weaving within a studio to commission.\r\nEdwards first began her training in weaving whilst studying at the West of England College of Art, Bristol, which she attended from 1966 to1969. For the next eleven years she pursued a career in individual tapestry weaving, her work gradually becoming more abstract in style. During this time she also learned to spin in order to have more control over her creative process.\r\nWhile teaching weaving and dyeing at Dartington College, she developed a love of indigo which subsequently became a key feature of her work, using the colour from its darkest blue-black through to its lightest shade, as seen in Around the Red Hills. \r\nIn 1980 Edwards took up a highly specialised tapestry weaving postgraduate course at Edinburgh College of Art where the Tapestry Department was part of the School of Drawing and Painting. She was tutored by tapestry specialists Maureen Hodge, Fiona Mathison and Sax Shaw but has also emphasised the importance of the fine art training she received, which helped her develop a skill for selecting and transforming visual information for use in her compositions.  This challenge to her artistic expression led Edwards to evolve the new, more personal style for which she is known today which brings ‘the quality of pastel and crayon drawing to the density of wool tapestry.’ [Earnshaw, Alan., Edwards, Jilly., Coatts, Margot, Journeys and Journals: Woven Tapestries and Drawings (Cumbria, 2001), p.12]\r\n\r\nEdwards’ uses photography, drawing, written text and collage to collect initial ideas, which she transfers to sketchbooks, progressively selecting and rejecting material until she finds a concept she can move forward with. Numerous sketches develop the subject, which may or may not be suitable to be woven as tapestries. After many years of weaving, Edwards understands intuitively which designs ‘demand’ to be woven and will be more powerfully expressed through the medium of tapestry, exploiting its particular characteristics to the full. The final sketch is copied onto a cartoon as a reference for proportion and shape, rather than rigidly guiding the work, the act of weaving sometimes requiring new solutions.  The vitality of Edwards’ work is, in part, dependent on this freedom of execution and her sureness as a weaver, enabling her to make continuous creative decisions as the work progresses. \r\nThe intricacy of Edwards’ tapestries is created through a build-up of subtly differing small areas, created both by weaving systems and delicately differing hues. A significant part of her making process, therefore, is the painstaking preparation of yarns, which combine strands of the same colour in different fibres and different ratios to create one weaving thread, each producing subtle colour and surface differences once woven. A group of loaded bobbins will build up one overall area of colour, their small differences giving life to otherwise solid blocks of colour. The deliberately visible build-up of weave in small lozenge shaped areas, thus avoiding hard breaks (slits) at the juncture of colour sections, is a notable characteristic of Edwards’ weaving style. \r\n","physicalDescription":"Tapestry, cotton warp, wool, cotton, linen and chenille weft, lined with cotton. An abstract design of vertical blue bands to the left, wide horizonatal bands of white, off-white and light blue in the centre and a semi-circle in orange flanked by green leaves to the right.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Jilly Edwards","id":"AUTH409780"},"association":{"text":"weaver","id":"AAT25367"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"cotton","id":"AAT14067"},{"text":"wool","id":"x40131"},{"text":"chenille","id":"AAT227801"},{"text":"linen","id":"x29412"}],"techniques":[{"text":"tapestry weaving","id":"x42794"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Tapestry, cotton warp, wool, cotton, linen and chenille weft, lined with cotton","categories":[{"text":"Tapestry","id":"THES48887"}],"styles":[{"text":"abstract","id":"AAT108127"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"T&F","id":"THES48601"},"images":["2026PN9495","2026PN9497","2026PN9503","2026PN9502","2026PN9501","2026PN9500","2026PN9499","2026PN9498","2026PN9496","2026PN9504","2026PN9505","2026PN1555"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"009","id":"THES332868"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"tapestry","id":"AAT61981"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Exeter","id":"x32797"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":"See film on the making of this tapestry: https://youtu.be/Lnkl7Mna5Ng"}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"2010-11","earliest":"2010-01-01","latest":"2011-12-31"},"association":{"text":"designed and made","id":"x39722"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[{"object":{"text":"T.44-2026","id":"O1817129"},"association":"Source"},{"object":{"text":"T.41-2026","id":"O1817126"},"association":""},{"object":{"text":"T.42-2026","id":"O1817127"},"association":""},{"object":{"text":"T.43-2026","id":"O1817128"},"association":""}],"creditLine":"Anonymous gift","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Width","value":"196","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"86","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"","value":"","unit":"","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"'Around the Red Hills' was made for Edwards' solo show at Ruthin Craft Centre in 2011. The tapestry then toured as part of the exhibition for a further 18 months.  ","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Tapestry, 'Around the Red Hills', cotton warp, wool, cotton, linen and chenille weft, Jilly Edwards (b. 1948), 2011","bibliographicReferences":[],"production":"This tapestry was commissioned for Edward's solo show, 'Reflections and Investigations', at Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire in 2011. Nine small tapestries (each 5cm x 10cm), 'Ruthin sketches, Red Hill’  were made as studies for the tapestry and also displayed in the exhibition. The tapestry was then displayed on an 18-month UK tour of the exhibition. In 2013 it was included in an exhibition 'Ori Rythmn' at Kyoto Art Centre, Japan.\nThe work constitutes reflections gathered from trips to her local beach at Exmouth where she was living at the time of the exhibition and her travels around the Ruthin area known for its areas of red sandstone bedrock. Rather than attempting to convey a particular site, the tapestry is an image grown from her study of the landscape, environment and elements of these places.\nSee film on the making of this tapestry: https://youtu.be/Lnkl7Mna5Ng","productionType":{"text":"Unique","id":"THES48864"},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["T.39-2026"],"accessionNumberNum":"39","accessionNumberPrefix":"T","accessionYear":2026,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-08","recordCreationDate":"2025-10-15","availableToBook":false}}