2026
Materials: Cotton, Wire, Wool and Glass beads
Size: 17 cm wide x 20 cm
This artwork was commissioned by Zed Gregory (a member of the Hastings Queer History Collective and Co-founder of Hastings Trans Pride) for the collective’s exhibition Lemons, Laws and Secret Doors.
Their installation is entitled ‘Spill The Tea’. When they were 18 and came out as a lesbian. Their mother didn’t say much. The next day she knitted them a Navy tea cosy with a pom pom and red lesbian symbol around the base. Craft was their mother’s love language and tea was a big deal in their house. It was their mother’s way of saying I love you, accept you and you’ll need hot tea in the next stage of your life. Zed felt that tea cosies felt like the right way to honour queer pioneers that they had discovered in their research.
When choosing the artists to be involved they were aware of how white the subjects of their research were, a reflection of whose stories survive. They invited global majority women into the conversation ensuring other voices, perspectives and creativity were woven into this history as well.
“The tea cosies are not just portraits of women from the past, but an invitation to think about whose stories get told and who gets to tell them.” Zed Gregory
The historical figure I was given was botanical painter Marianne North. For my tea cosy, I drew inspiration from Marianne’s visit to Jamaica, where my parents were born, as documented in Recollections of a Happy Life: Being the Autobiography of Marianne North, Vol. 1.
Reframing this journey through a Black gaze allowed me to consider the often overlooked individuals whose labour and presence made such colonial-era travel possible. Two of Marianne’s main helpers are named inside the tea pot’s handle. As it is the element that does the heavy lifting.
Although as shown on the teapot lid Marianne says she was made very welcome in Jamaica, she still displayed very colonial attitudes: “They are too indolent to make anything in Jamaica. The Seville oranges rotted on the ground, and sugar was growing close by, but they made no marmalade.” p 84
I embroidered this wording on the front of the cosy. It’s a nod to the popularity of embroidery in Victorian times. I stained the canvas with tea to symbolise this attitude is a stain on Marianne’s character but also the conversations references how phrases like this would be spoken as polite conversation over tea.
The cosy design references North’s painting Night-Flowering Lily (Crinum) and Ferns, Jamaica, 1872.” I’ve used beads to denote the stars and included a silver moon. In her autobiography Marianne says ‘In those nights I had a good sight of the beautiful night-flowering lily, with a pink edge.,” So I included tiny pink beads at the edge of the lilies. The night flowering Lily painting does not include a doctor bird. I have added it as it is the national bird of Jamaica and because it appears in many of her paintings.
The other Global Majority makers are:
Karen Arthur Sophia Jex Blake cosy
Joan Glasgow Gwen Lally cosy
Maxine Brangwyn Elsie Bowerman cosy
