Field + Supply in Partnership with Chronogram
Block printing, a method of creating textile patterns that originated over 4,000 years ago, is a careful process that involves hand-carving a design into a block of wood, applying dye to the relief, then stamping it onto fabric over and over to create a repeating effect. Understandably, the process has long since been superseded by more expeditious methods like screen and digital printing, but in the Kingston studio of ceramicist and textile designer Helen Prior, a native of Warwickshire, England, who has called the Hudson Valley home for almost 15 years, the process lives on in refreshingly modern form.
It all starts with a simple slab of clay, the building block for all the creations in Prior’s “Clay to Cloth” line of ceramics, fabrics, and wallpapers, which she started in 2018.
