Softening the Blow
“We can not rewrite history however regrettable, but art can challenge the way that we engage and interpret Museum collections. In London, the Bridewell Palace was built as a royal residence around 1520 but due to social change relating to the dissolution of monastries (1553), the palace became a home for destitute children and vagrants.
This became a model for Bridewell's to be opened across the country and in Norwich 1585 this building which had once been a wealthy merchants house became a house of correction. With a fifth of Norwich's population dependant on charity the building soon became a repository or 'thriftless, sinful and destitute people, many of whom were abandoned women. Mental illness, illegitimacy and homelessness were all 'crimes' deemed worthy of imprisonment.
Corporal punishment was seen as a method of 'correction'. and flogging with birch bundles and whips was a regular occurance. Prisoners lived under the 'shadow of the birch', as they struggled to cope with harsh conditions, long working hours and little food.
This work entitled 'Softening the Blow', was the first of two book works exhibited as part of the Bookscapes 'Light From the Dark' exhibition at the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell and was letterpress printed by hand at Norwich Printing Museum.
Rather than as a tool for punishment, birch wood was used to make paint brushes and ink was extracted by the artist from logwood bark to create the painted endpapers.
The poem 'In a Dark Time' by Theodore Roethke, echo's through the pages. Words repeatedly contained and then revealed through aperture's and windows cut into the paper, casting dark shadows.
The ghostly presence of the silver birch ever present through the book's image and text until the very last page and the last word to be revealed; 'Free'
The wood came from two main sources, Black River in Jamaica and the logwood forests of Yucatan in Mexico.
The trade involved slavery at both ends of it's production, from the felling of trees to the rasping of the wood. It was the heartwood of the Logwood tree (Haematoxylum Campechianum) that was used to make a dye for the textiles industry, hence it's use within the book. Due to it's instability through oxidisation, it was eventually banned from use in England and declared a 'False and deceitful colour' by Elizabeth I in 1565.
The wood produced a range of rich colours from purple through to greys and black and its use was later reinstated by Charles I in 1662. In the 18th century George Christian Reichel discovered that the dye had suitable properties for microscopic staining and is still used today in laboratories around the world.
