For many centuries thrifty housewives have saved odd scraps of cloth and sewn them together to be re-used as patchwork. Their humble recycling ultimately produced the spectacular geometrically patterned quilts that now are valuable collectibles, and today many people around the world pursue patchwork as a serious art form. Japan is a particular center of the craft.
Modern patchwork, though creative, has still tended to stick to abstract designs. One who chose a different path, preferring representation to mere geometry, was Edrica Huws (1907-1999), a retrospective of whose work will be at Osaka Matsuzakaya department store April 12-17. Huws' complex, layered works are mosaics of cloth. The original patterns of the individual pieces are lost, or rather subsumed, in the overall design: a landscape, still life, figure or portrait.
Born Edrica Tyrwhitt, the daughter of a prominent architect and a painter, she studied painting herself at the Chelsea Art School and the Royal College of Art. In the late 1920s her oils and lithographs were exhibited in London.