What makes a Thackray silk scarf distinctive?

The Crooked Things began with two women talking on a train. One remembered an awkward, much-loved dog and wondered whether he had started her lifelong affection for scruffy things. That is a fairly good place to begin explaining Thackray.

The writing is part of the work

We are an English art house working in words, illustration and silk. A poem or a piece of prose gives a design its first direction. The words deserve attention in their own right; they are also a way into the drawing.

Some stories are observed. The fox in a Bethnal Green garden first seemed a nuisance, then became a creature whose absence was noticed. Others are imagined: the fox in a graphite suit who dances for his own pleasure began in a dream. We make those distinctions in the accounts of the scarves.

A particular sort of Englishness

The references often sit close to domestic life. A grandmother’s garden. The tiled floor of a house in Buxton. A queen bumblebee in the kitchen, detected by the dog. There are train journeys and seaside holidays as well as gardens and country walks.

The humour and feeling come from looking at those subjects closely. Sam, the childhood ginger cat, could become a tiger in a child’s account of him. The cat himself probably required no encouragement.

The object has to bear looking at too

The product details matter alongside the story. The collection includes 90cm square scarves and an 88cm × 6cm twilly. Each page states the material, dimensions and finish of that particular design.

Read the individual product page for the material, dimensions and finish of the scarf you are considering.

An edition of five

Each scarf design has an edition of five. The design belongs to the Thackray art house; the scarf arrives in the house’s lime-green box, one month from ordering.

An edition describes the total size of the work. Current availability belongs to the product’s buying options. We keep the two separate so that a reader can understand exactly what is being offered.

A scarf after it leaves us

The wearer supplies the next setting. A fold hides part of the image and lets another part show. A present acquires the memory of the person who gave it. The original story remains, with room around it for another life.

Explore the scarves, or read the original writing in the Compendium.