The owner of my local antiques shop assures me that there is a resurgence of interest in all things Victorian. “I can’t get these in quickly enough,” he says when my attention is drawn to a particularly striking framed display of butterflies. Emblematic of the butterfly-net wielding amateur botanist, there is something compellingly morbid about the neatly labelled corpses, pinned in rows beneath the glass like some kind of decorative obituary.
Likewise the creatures which inhabit the world of textile artist Mister Finch seem drawn from the pages of Victorian natural history, albeit suffused with the fin de siècle decadence of Art Nouveau. In her preface to Living in a Fairytale World, a terrific new coffee table book about the Leeds based artist, design writer Justine Hand says, “To step into the realm of Mister Finch’s work is to delve into fantasy … to be pulled into the imagination.” She is absolutely right. His objects and figures, sometimes rooted in the macabre, have the whiff of an intoxicating otherness about them, a characteristic which owes much to the English folklore on which Mister Finch the craftsman draws. “(It is) so beautifully rich in fabulous stories and warnings and never ceases to be at the heart of what I make: shape-shifting witches, moon-gazing hares and a smartly dressed devil ready to invite you to stray from the path.”
Mainly self-taught, Mister Finch arrived at sewing via jewellery design and the world of fashion photo-shoots. (“I soon realized that I didn’t belong on the fashion scene and was ready to try something else.”) In Living in a Fairytale World, there is a photograph of the artist shot against a time-ravaged backdrop of brick and stone. He holds the camera’s gaze, his expression intent and serious. On his arm is an early piece, a beautifully realised, giant-sized tapestry moth, fashioned from white fur and carpet, known as Oonah. Given the proximity of Leeds to the former coal mining districts of South Yorkshire, the temptation is to view this portrait as some kind of Gothic recasting of Barry Hines’s tragic lost boy Billy Casper and his kestrel, Kes.
Sumptuously illustrated, Living in a Fairytale World offers the reader a gander inside the mythic world of Mister Finch. His creations are mostly ‘upcycled,’ a curiously esoteric term meaning repurposed from oddments and junk shop finds. “I’m fascinated by wanting to create things that look like they come from somewhere else; something that has been unearthed in an attic or found in a secret hidden drawer. I want to inject a bit of old-fashioned magic back into the world,” he is quoted as saying about his approach. The book rather neatly divides into motifs and fixtures. Here be uncanny hares and foxes, meticulously brocaded songbirds and insects, troops of dysmorphic mushrooms – all the shadowy imaginings of childhood dreams. The effect is mesmerising and faintly unsettling. The world of Mister Finch, as Justine Hand forewarns us, can be “occasionally a little dark.”
Taking inspiration from the West Yorkshire countryside around him, Mister Finch also credits old movies (there is something of the lyrical silhouette animation of Lotte Reiniger about his work, although tellingly his website lists Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie as one of his favourites!) and books as sources for ideas. Storytelling lies at the heart of his creativity, the process being likened to the romantic isolation of the writer at his desk. Justine Hand describes Mister Finch as “Sitting alone in a studio … he sews bits of faded fabric and flea market finds, stitching their history into a new tale.” Mister Finch offers us a time travel of sorts, his creations tapping into some half-remembered folk history and urging us into a fresh dialogue: “Storytelling creatures for people who are also a little lost, found and forgotten…” he says.
In the absence of any new pieces being made available for sale through his Etsy shop, purchasing a copy of Living in a Fairytale World is a delightful alternative – especially if my antiquarian insider dealer is right about that Victoriana revival.
Mister Finch – Living in a Fairytale World is published by Glitterati Incorporated Publishing. For more information, visit Mister Finch’s website.