La Bricoleuse

I'm so pleased to have a new installment of the Interviews series, this time with milliner Jan Wutkowski. Jan is not only a working milliner but also maintains a busy teaching schedule of millinery classes all over the country and internationally, and owns and operates her own boutique, aMuse: artisanal finery. Here's what she had to say about the art and the craft of millinery.


Q. How long have you been designing hats, and how did you get started?

I was very fortunate to live in Australia in 1995. For the first 6 months I lived in Brisbane, Queensland, and was actively looking for something to study and immerse myself in--some artistic skill to bring back to the US and try to make a living at. Living there seemed like such a fairy tale anyway, I mean, who gets to go live in Australia for a year and have nothing to do but have a great time and learn as much as you can? I looked into taking classes in the old craft of applying gold leaf to frames, statues, chairs, and other objets d'art, but it just didn't seem right for me.

I then moved to Melbourne, Victoria, for the remaining 6 months, and was lucky enough to live just a couple of blocks from an amazing working craft gallery. Lots of artists showing how they created their work--spinners, printmakers, blacksmiths, glass blowers, and milliners, all under one roof. Every week I'd go to the gallery and watch the milliners blocking straws and felts, covering buckram, and many other millinery skills. The next week I'd go back and see the finished product waiting for someone to purchase it. I was amazed! But I contacted the millinery school because I found out they could teach me to make handmade felt, not to learn to make hats. I'd never even heard of handmade felt until I moved Australia, but quickly fell in love with the whole process.

After I took the feltmaking class I enrolled in the millinery classes. I had been a collector of vintage hats for years and loved to wear them, but it had never occurred to me at all as to how they were made; I just knew I loved these little works of art, little sculptures you put on your head. I'm also one of those souls who have tried every art and craft around but I'd always lose interest after the first year or so. Millinery? It stuck and I've never looked back.

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Now that the theatre season and the academic year have ended, i've picked up a couple weeks of overhire work at the Carolina Ballet on their last production of their season, a double bill of Beauty and the Beast and Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I hadn't worked on ballet costumes since my stint at the Boston Ballet back in 1998, and it's been interesting to get back into that whole mindset and realm of costume concerns.

One of the primary crafts needs of a ballet company is coloration of footwear. Shoes are a concern in all types of dance performance, but the aesthetic tradition of ballet has a very specific set of variables to deal with. All the shoes must exactly match the dancers' tights, to help maintain the seamless visual line of the leg/foot in performance. Each dancer has a specific preference in footwear--style, material, brand--which must be tracked and adhered to across the spectrum of costume needs. Standard ballet slippers may be leather or various weaves and fiber contents of cloth, and then there are pointe shoes to consider. For a large professional dance company, shoe stock and their tracking and coloring alone can be a staff position in and of itself.

The Carolina Ballet is a sizable professional company, but their budgets and programming are not such that they can employ a full-time shoe specialist--they typically handle shoe needs in-house except on large new-build works like this Beethoven piece. So this is where i come in as an overhire craftsperson and dyer!

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Here are the rest of my Masks and Armor class final presentations. Some amazing stuff in here, such a great group.

( deep sea divers, Klingons, and warrior women )

In the third year, the students in our program produce a collection of projects which constitute the equivalent of a thesis. The creative draping project is one of these, in which students choose a design with some type of structural support inside it, typically something elaborate and bizarre. This year, our two graduates chose projects by contemporary couture designers Roberto Capucci and Alexander McQueen. ( Read more... )

My students present their final armor projects tomorrow, but two of them were floating around the shop today, ready to go, so i photographed them early. There will be more coming tomorrow, but for now, check these out:

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We're heading into finals in the academic end of things, and i have a couple of teaser photos to share before things really get cranking.

Judy Adamson's beginning draping class has a couple of super sweet half drapes out in the hallway that i just had to take a photo of. And, my masks and armor folks have had their final presentations pushed back to May 1st, but one student is completely done and her work is SO FAB (hi samurai helmet) that i can't keep it under wraps.

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For our recent production of Noises Off!, we had the unusual project of creating a set of protective padding for an actor who had to take a pratfall down a flight of stairs!

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My Masks and Armor class presented simple armor projects today, and i have a few images to share.

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My students presented their complex mask projects today, and i just LOVE them all! Check these out!

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First up, congratulations to puppetmaker40, the winner of my first-ever book giveaway contest for a copy of Margaret Peot's Successful Artist's Career Guide. And, I hope a few of the rest of you check the book out as well. I'm very excited to incorporate it into my classes in the fall.

Next, a signal-booting announcement. Remember back when Talenthouse hosted the Stephen Jones millinery contest? They've partnered with another famous milliner, Dillon Wallwork, and UK's excellent HATalk E-Magazine [1] to host another millinery contest in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's upcoming Diamond Jubilee! Very excited to see the visibility of millinery and hat-wearing on the rise.

You can enter the contest here through May 3rd, with voting set to run from the 4th through the 11th. First prize winner receives free enrollment at one of Mr. Wallwork's famous millinery courses at Chateau Dumas. Swoon. Really looking forward to this contest, as i'm hoping it will be a similar sort of fantastic cross-section of milliners around the world!



[1] I suppose in the interest of full disclosure, i was a featured Milliner of the Month some years back in HATalk, but i am otherwise unaffiliated with them or anyone else hosting these contests. Just a chapeauphile and interested milliner is all.