Consider the provenance of a single square foot of ground in London: what is now concrete slabs, new apartments and shops was once ancient land filled with crops, orchards and mystical beliefs. 

This striking goldwork sculpture transforms and elevates the humble corn dolly - a traditional harvest figure - into an ethereal embodiment of memory, ritual, and craft. She invites the rediscovery of local heritage through a contemporary lens - not as something static, but as something that shimmers and shifts, like light on thread. Ghost acts as a quiet but potent reminder that not all archives are written or stored. Some are woven into the land itself, turning a forgotten form into a guiding presence.

Her ghostly gown is worked as a self-supporting hollow structure, and hand embroidered with Coronation goldwork, stump work apple blossom, and over 200 needlelace covered beads.

Her face is created by 30 wire ‘profiles’, held with beadwork and adorned with jingle bells and stumpwork roses stitched in organza. All the transparent, see-through and empty features create a tension between solidity and absence; between what once was - and what remains.

Ghost of the Last Sheaf captures both the contrast and harmony between the physicality of goldwork and the ethereal otherness of the piece. It speaks to the tension between heaviness and delicacy, offering a sense of gravity in the lightness of memory and tradition.

The embroidered QR code transports the viewer to the corn dolly’s world, as a spirit enduring the centuries from ancient Celts and Romans to traffic and nail bars. Her hollow core is its own museum: it invites the imagination inward, beckoning viewers to peer into the liminal space where nothing is lost, and history hovers effortlessly amidst linen and gold.
 

Techniques:

Goldwork: cutwork, chipwork, couching.
Stumpwork: Needlelace-covered beads and wire-edged flora

Fabrics: Irish linen, Fosshape, organza

Gilts: Japanese, bright and wire check, smooth and rough purl, pearl purl, passing, kid leather, gold threads

Beads: wooden and seed,

Wire: paper-covered wires, copper wires, brass tubes

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