Book wide text
Author: Helen Chadwick (1953-1996)
Title: Notebook on early work
Date: May 1972- 1975
Text for this spread
Author: Helen Chadwick (1953-1996)
Title: Notebook on early work
Date: May 1972- 1975
Size: 10.5 x 14cm. 1 volume, 141 pages.
Description: Contains detailed ideas and sketches on the development of early works made when Chadwick was a student. In order of appearance they include: notes on 'juicy jokes'; ideas for self portraits; lists of types of angels, devils, kinds of divination, metamorphosis and Ovid; ideas for an 'alice box'; sketch of a 'Magick man' and 'Magick mind puzzle' with a self-portrait; sketch ideas for 'The Pilgrim's Progress'; sketches and notes for 'Battered babel tower'; sketch and notes for 'Cadbury's Candied Cannibals'; notes and sketch for 'Fancy Jelly Tart'; notes and drawings for 'willy heart-strawberry' pieces; notes on photography for 'female fetishisms'; further sketches and notes on chocolates entitled 'erotic exotica'; notes on make up, reference to the 'sofa body cushions'; sketch for 'brighton belles' sculpture; notes on the 'willy heart' and 'shield'; notes on 'my death cult' relating to a 'face death mask' and 'burial objects'; notes on 'Pyramid - eternal triangle: the sacred and the profane' (later known as the 'Curse sculpture') including a list of objects made for the work and diagrams working out its dimensions; notes on 'quilting' and 'hair'; notes relating to a death mask; list of different bras; notes on bookbinding and the books Chadwick made; notes on 'fetish objects'; notes and sketches on menstrual pieces; technical notes on book-binding; lecture notes on children's books; notes on Huysmans' 'A Rebours'; research notes on 'mirror: reflection worlds', 'Aphrodite', 'Evil eye', 'sympathetic magic', 'sweets', children, 'medieval studies', Alan W Watts' 'Nature Man and Woman' and the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead'; list of 'embroideries for book'; expenses; notes and sketches for 'material fabric collage book'; a love poem; notes on 'postal surprises'; a black and white photo of unidentified woman [loose]; notes on flower dyes, sewing machine instructions, instructions for tinting photographs and various materials; a label is pasted in the back of the notebook indicates it was used as a testimony for Chadwick's submission to the Royal College of Art.
Chadwick writes the notebook from both the front and back.
Physical description: Black hard covered notebook, pencil and ink on paper.
Accession: 2003.19/2/1 Leeds Museums & Galleries (Henry Moore Institute Archive)
Gift of the Helen Chadwick Estate, 2002-2003