Caroline Harris / 2021 
 
I can make a small number of replica sets of these ribbons. Please email smallbirdspress@gmail.com for details, or for commissions and workshops. 
 
A set of twenty-five linen and cotton ‘wishing ribbons’ bearing as their text a version of ‘A Summoning Spell for Lost Deer’, a collage poem woven from the voices of many poets.   
 
Typed in colours inspired by embroidery on traditional Rhodes poukamiso chemises, the ribbons shown here are an archive series. They were created for the group exhibition Text-Isles, curated by Astra Papachristodoulou and shown at the Art Park Gallery, Rhodes, Greece, 17–24 September 2021. Forming a fabric ‘book’ when stacked together and secured with a scrap of plant-dyed silk, they are designed to be tied into a tree. Rhodes is known for its Dama dama (fallow) deer.  
 
‘Clootie trees’ (from the Scottish term for cloth) form part of traditional Gaelic practices, where the clothing of a sick person, or a rag used to cleanse a part of the body in pain, was tied to a tree by a spring as a healing cure. 
 
25 ribbons each measuring 600 x 25mm