Fairy stories initially seem soothing but contain hard truths that rub and chafe as a rough jumper against skin.

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The commonplace and ordinary are oftentimes overlooked and through the elevation of these into fine art objects I re-establish forgotten connections. I foraged local plants for dyeing and signet feathers which have been bound alongside nettle, wool and silk yarns. These contain the memories of action and place, the sunshine and rainfall, literally dyed into the wool.

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I pay homage to trade routes as conduits for materials, skills and stories. Yarns travelling to Scotland are transformed in response to a distantly remembered version of the fairy tale ‘Wild Swans’. The links and loops of ideas, materials and language allowing me to take up the next evolution of the story.

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Nettle yarn from a woman’s collective in Nepal where hand skills are a valued commodity echo the use of nettles for fibre tracing back to the first recorded textiles.

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Shetland wool skeins, fluffy and scratchy (not smooth and slick) are thoughts with tangents floating off.

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The copper tags in my work come from end of season lines, reduced to clear, finite resources manipulated and disregarded as unsaleable or without value. They were also used as part of my natural dying process.

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Fiona Percy 2018