Makers Mixtapes - Lu Mason
From her studio in York, self-taught artist Lu Mason works across many different mediums, from cut paper and recycled fabrics to Perspex and spray paint. She creates vibrant, storied rag rugs, mobiles, murals, installations, and bold jewellery. An avid fan of jumble sales and an early adopter of fashion upcycling, Lu uses her rag rug art to draw attention to the immense untapped resource of discarded fast-fashion textiles.
We are honoured that Lu Mason, a much-loved reggae DJ in her spare time (!!!), has taken the time to create and share this phenomenal Makers Mixtapes music playlist with FAIRE.
Excerpt from Issue 8:
Words by Lu Mason. Photography by Aloha Bonser-Shaw
I discovered my first jumble sale when I was 15 and I’ve never looked back. Growing up, my mum had a sewing machine so I’d buy things and chop them up. I remember finding a gorgeous 1920’s evening dress that I spray painted and then took apart. It was like a treasure chest that I could dip into and pull stuff out and play with. It was all about reinvention.
London was such a melting pot and all those different cultures were a massive influence on me. My father was from New Zealand and my mother was American, so we didn’t have a particularly English background. As a child, we jumped from country to country because of my father’s job and we spent a few years in Africa. The vividness of the colours and the prints of the clothes there have never left me. It’s all still in the mix.
Another influence has been my mother’s family and the American tradition of making rag rugs. My mother’s Uncle Tubby (Theodore Sizer) took up rag rug making after his role in the 2nd World War left him unwell physically and mentally. As the years passed he went on to make many, many rag rugs.
After I’d moved from London to Yorkshire, I was looking for something creative to do while also looking after my two young boys. I was also acutely aware that there were still people in Yorkshire who had rag rugs on their floors, and realised also that my great uncle had left a great legacy of rugs.
In the 1980s, many people in Yorkshire still remembered making rag rugs with their parents and grandparents, yet the tradition had somewhat disappeared. So I set my mind to making one, and as if by magic, somebody gifted me a really nice hook and someone else gave me a great frame. Suddenly people were arriving to give me materials to use. In fact, people still leave bags of old clothes on my doorstep.
In the beginning, when I was learning about rag rug making, I used to go to care homes and to community centres and I would ask people to tell me their stories. I started to collect all these incredible stories about how families would come together and make rag rugs in the evenings. One woman recalled that when she was a young woman and suitors would come to visit her in her family home, she was permitted to sit in the front room but her dad left a rag rug frame out for her and her gentleman caller to work on together. That way, they had to work on the rug and couldn’t get up to any shenanigans.
But a lot of it was about the family sitting around just getting the rug done because for many of the people I talked to, they grew up in houses that didn’t have fitted carpets or the spare cash to buy expensive rugs, particularly in the kitchen, which often had a stone-flag floor. Families made these rugs out of necessity.
I learned that rag rugs would typically start off on top of a bed as a coverlet, then as they became worn they would be moved to the front room, then to the kitchen. Eventually, a rag rug would end up in the dog’s bed. That’s why we haven’t got a great museum collection of our rag rugs, as they would be used until they were in tatters. In America, great pride was taken in the artfulness of the rag rug. It was more about a legacy, something that you would leave behind and be proud of. British rag rugs were more focused on practicality. Also, in the North East particularly, the main type of rag rug was the ‘clippie’ or ‘proddy’ rug where all the ends were sticking up. These rugs were incredibly warm, although there was less potential for intricate designs.
Read Lu Mason’s full story inside Issue 8 of FAIRE
Out 3 March 2023
And in case you missed out on our other FAIRE playlists - we created ‘The end and the beginning’, slowdown sounds to mark both an end and a new beginning.
“I had spent many years pursuing excellence...now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.”
And in October we created and shared the Faire Fall playlist…..
“To be true to myself, to be the person that was on the inside of me, and not play games. That’s what I’m trying to do mostly in the whole world, is to not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else.”
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