Mari Lwyd. Finger puppet commission. Wassail!

 The Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, is part of an ancient Welsh tradition, taking place over Christmas and New Year. It's a ritual to bring luck and celebrate the turning of the year. A noisy group of people go from door to door, singing and bantering, hoping to gain admittance and a reward of food and drink. They accompany one of their number  disguised as a grey horse, holding a real horse's skull aloft and draped in white sheets. The jaw was often made to snap, and the Mari would dance and weave, chasing children and causing chaos.

My friend the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins has a long and deeply emotional relationship with the Mari Lwyd, and last year saw him creating a remarkable work for chamber orchestra narrator and puppets,
The Mare's Tale. He describes it and the piece beautifully, and much better than I could, on his blog.

http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/the-mare-steps-out-in-2014/

Clive commissioned me to make an edition of eight Mare's Tale finger puppet collage gift cards, celebrating The Mare's Tale, to give as gifts to his creative collaborators.  He sent me artwork to use as the collage for the cards. It was interesting working in black, white and grey, as my natural inclination is towards extreme colour!

I used white tissue paper stuck over the skulls to give an impression of material. And strips of a textured black paper to give a little shine.

I printed the word mari on each card using grey ink, a wooden titling font and my Adana letterpress machine. I didn't want it too obvious, the word emerging as you look at the card.

Then to create the finger puppets! The man with the Mari was straightforward. I used black yarn with a tiny sparkle in it, and Clive told me brown eyes. The Mari was more tricky. I needed to get the idea of a skull, which I made by looking very carefully at Clive's design and then interpreting it in wool!

The body needed to look fluid and above all not solid. I knitted it in an eyelet stitch which gives a loose holey effect. I did try fabric draped round the head, but it looked like a headscarf, not suitable at all. So I stitched random and varied lengths of wool to the top of the head, and fastened them loosely to the body, which I hope gave the impression of movement and fluidity.  Here's the entire herd;

The finished cards looked  detailed and dense, with the word mari letterpressed on the back.

The Mari placed above her companion, and really quite menacing.

 Each card was different.  Then printing on the back of the presentation box for each,

which was backed inside with crumpled purple tissue paper, and tied with gold thread. I didn't photograph any finished cards in their boxes, but they looked very good!
My thanks to Clive for this great commission.

Happy New Year!