Mabel Packenham-Walsh was a wood carver, draughtsman and campaigner for the rights of people with disabilities, who frequently worked with found objects, recycling them into stunning and distinctive pieces of work filled with stories. The Guardian noted in its 2013 obituary that Mabel made carvings from “ironing boards, breadboards, old ships' timbers and in one case an old wooden toilet”.
One of three pieces by Mabel in Crafts Council Collection, Gate is a good place to begin exploring her craft practice. We know that the gate itself was made by someone else, Percy Carter, in elm wood, then Mabel carved and painted it in enamel colours. The design features a central disk and three rays extended from it, with multicoloured depictions including a caterpillar, a crow, two dinosaurs, a Union Jack and an elephant. We don’t know what the design means, but it feels evocative of the artist as a vibrant person of many interests, whose everyday life – from what she wore every day to how she lived at home - was steeped in art and craft. As one writer who lived nearby Mabel recalls: “I remember startling hats, and a complicated tweed skirt and jacket, fashioned of many fragments of material cleverly joined, but with the raw edges protruding at the seams. She was a prolific woodcarver, gardener, and proper eccentric.”
Dafyyd: “Mabel Packenham-Walsh seemed like someone whose art was very much part of her day- to- day life. In her later years, even with ill health and arthritis, she would still manage to draw a picture every day. I like this piece, Gate, because there’s a naivety to it. It makes me wonder what her house would’ve looked like: I imagine every surface as an extension of her, leaving her artistic mark on everything she came into contact with.
“Mabel had a long career and mastered many different materials. While practising as a woodcarver in the early 1960s, she worked in set design at Pinewood Studios, where she made the chaise longue graced Elizabeth Taylor draped herself on in the 1963 film Cleopatra - and later worked as a sculptor at Shepperton studios. I’d have loved to hear her stories.”
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