Textiles at Chelsea

Artist Clare Qualmann has also contributed to the Burberry Project. Clare's practice includes walking, and she has developed a walk called Darned Memory - a walk exploring Millbank in relation to making & mending, collecting narratives and telling stories, which takes in the whole Millbank neighbourhood.

Participants are given a map, and are taken on a tour of several local landmarks of interest that Clare has researched. One location is a laundry ditch which runs along the edge of the Arts and Crafts Millbank Estate. The ditch is said to be all that remains of the moat surrounded the Prison. On the walk, Clare invites you to go down into the ditch and hang something you own on the line and tell a story about it. The top image is Clare's red jumper, given to her by her mother on the day she went off to art school, that she has repaired and mended over the years.

Another stop on the tour is the corner of the Millbank Gardens, which is where the old prison laundry used to be. Arthur Griffiths, who was a Deputy Govenor of the Prison, tells the story of several letters that were found amongst the laundry, written mostly on torn pages from a prayer book using laundry blue as ink, along with love-tokens such as a heart embroidered in grey worsted wool on a flannel badge.