Wife of....

 I've been collecting details from the headstones, decoration, numbers, months, in order to build up a stock of works to use later, I was also seeking out Female names, especially the name Mary. Looking for a female perspective, a story, to create this Character of St Mary. We know the original st mary as the mother of god, the virgin, the saint, the perfect woman. but what about the real Marys through the ages? A church is a treasure trove of history. This has been a site of worship since medeval times, prehaps even earleir., pagan.

what stories can I find?

The majority of the headstones in st Marys Date from the Victorian era and the main thing i noticed  was that nearly every woman's name is followed by " wife of" , "daughter of" and the occasional "sister of" The above. The man has no owner, is listed first, in larger lettering and any females along side him are listed as belonging to him.

Gender bias even in death! I checked out this theory in another church yard, St Johns in Sherwood. The Victorian graves have similar descriptions of women, wife of, daughter of, however, some of the later ones from the1930's list the man as "Husband of" so things did progress, slowly.

In the Victorian times, women belonged to men.

It is a notable of st Marys and I would like to incorporate this in my work, via a piece of women's clothing.

This idea of the aprons, which Ive mentioned in an earlier post, initially came to me simply for myself to wear as  I wanted to make a type of uniform/ dress to wear, to conduct my work, as part of a ritual of gathering research. Now with this in mind I want to transfer the names of all the women in the church yard onto an apron, along with words like wife, daughter, sister. 

Initially my idea was to make lino prints of the names, transferred directly from the graphite rubbing, however, I've tried rubbing directly onto a sample of my fabric and its very effective. no only will this be more time effective, it will feel more authentic as the fabric is having direct contact with the stone, as the words are transferred directly onto it.

My next task is making the apron from the patterns in the previous post, and seeing how it  looks.