Textile designer draws on Perthshire linen roots
“Lorna Brown is originally from Perthshire. Lorna is a textile designer and fine art screen printer living and working in Edinburgh. She creates colourful, expressive designs that are transformed through screen and digital print into home accessories and artworks. Lorna graduated from Edinburgh College of Art where she was awarded a 1st class honours degree and post graduate diploma in print in the early 90’s.
With a desire to continue her love of screen printing she set up and ran her own print studio for 14 years working with events and interior companies, costume and fashion departments, independent retailers providing bespoke hand printed textiles, wallpapers and installations.
Lorna values the sharing of knowledge and skills with others and has delivered and facilitated art and design projects for many years in community, FE and HE locations.
Lorna’s work evolves as a direct response to the screen printing process and her love of working intuitively and skilfully; layering, covering up and revealing is the core element of her practice. Opaque and transparent ink allows her to control which areas to reveal, cover up overprint and mask. Layered, expressive and colourful prints are transformed into beautifully crafted products. These prints are an antidote to mass production and aimed at people looking for something distinctive and exclusive.”
– Taken from Lorna’s own website, Blessed Unrest www.blessedunrest.co.uk
The Curator Designer relationship in this case is more involved than most. Interested in Design for many years, your curator has regularly attended the Scottish Art School Degree Shows to see the work of friends and meet new creatives. His first ever textile purchase was made in 1991 from the final degree show of Lorna Brown at Edinburgh College of Art.
John met Lorna again in August 2018, attracted by work created for her own label, Blessed Unrest, captivating designs hand screen printed onto linen from Peter Greig’s in Kirkcaldy. It was fitting then for our 2018 tour to Kirkcaldy that Lorna was commissioned to provide a workshop. Inspired by Our Linen Stories and her further research, Lorna used the workshop as an opportunity to design a new screen print onto Kirkcaldy Linen, called Flax Fields.
Aware of Lorna’s past Interior Design work and her capacity for engaging with textile design, John sought Lorna’s support in the Design of Our Linen Stories Exhibition at Dovecot.
In addition, a new design was commissioned to be emblematic of this stage of Our Linen Stories. Flax Fields 2 develops Lorna’s earlier work for Our Linen Stories and reflects the blue flower of the flax plant from which fibres are extracted and spun into linen thread; the design includes the roof serrations of Linen Mill buildings so characteristic of those still seen in Scotland.
Congratulations Lorna and many thanks for your generosity of spirit and design skills.
