Butterick Factory in Havant inspires graphic designer's Patterns of Life, Memory and Place exhibition at The Spring Arts Centre

Six decades later the landmark factory in New Lane was closed down and subsequently demolished in 2019.

For graphic designer and artist Suzie Johanson the building represented not only a link to the town she grew up in, but also to her mother – an avid dress-maker.

And so the idea for the exhibition Patterns of Life, Memory and Place was born. The exhibition is on now at The Spring Arts Centre’s Mezzanine Gallery in Havant and runs through until March 25.

Suzie was able to visit the building after it closed, but shortly before it was torn down, taking numerous photographs.

Using the medium of repeat patterns, Suzie has interpreted elements from her photographs to form repeating motifs in a series of 12 textile prints, displayed on yardage of 100 per cent organic poplin dressmaking fabric.

The exhibition acknowledges and celebrates how place and heritage can inform individual and community creative practices. It connects Suzie to her roots in the Havant area and memories of learning with, and from, other creative makers and teachers in the wider community.

Suzie grew up in Havant, Bedhampton and Portsmouth, before heading off to Brighton for university. She now lives near Lewes in East Sussex, working as a freelance graphic designer, but has retained close ties to the area through family and friends.

Her mother’s influence

As a child Suzie recalls her mother, Tricia Hooper was always making something.

‘Dressmaking was absolutely her hobby. When I was a child she made lots of my clothes, she made curtains, cushions, everything in our homes. We moved house quite a few times, so she was always making something for the home, and that went on right up until just before her death.

‘She was a practice nurse in the area for her job, but sewing was her hobby.

‘It wasn't just sewing either, it was knitting as well or making something, same with my grandma.

‘My mother taught me to sew, and I remember it must have been about 1975-76, making a pair of shorts, a matching bikini and a matching hooded sweat-top with her guidance. I remember making a big bean bag, all sorts of things. She was there to unpick things when it went wrong and put me back on the right path!’

And there was Butterick factory.

‘I remember going there with my mum. They had various pattern sales there now and then, I remember being quite small and I was always just aware of that building. It was quite notable, visually.

‘She also had a Kenwood, so we’d go to their factory,’ also on New Lane, ‘when she wanted a new part or to fix it or something. That whole edge of town, industrial place was something I knew of from a young age. I also had a holiday job at the nearby Tampax factory, and I had a good friend of mine who's mother worked at the Butterick Factory. And a friend of mine who was a good dressmaker too, when she was a teenager she made samples for Butterick for marketing and testing purposes. It was always on my radar.’

Back to school

The roots of the exhibition lay in Suzie’s decision to go back to university and study for an MA.

‘In 2019 my brother comes over for a chat with me and tells me that the Butterick Factory is going to be redeveloped and I had this feeling... some sort of similar grief to when my mum died. I wondered if anyone was going to record it.

‘At the same time I was researching my own history into why I wanted to choose patterns and paper and fabric as part of this MA project. I'd written a proposal to get onto the course and something was coming out of it… It was all just coalescing. I thought this could be a project for me to take forward for my MA, and to display.’

A little while later Suzie spotted a job advertised online for a workshop practitioner for three-day summer workshops, not initially realising it was for The Spring back in her old hometown.

‘I just saw the advert, but thought I'd love to do a pattern design workshop –that would be fantastic. Then when I looked into it I realised it was in Havant and I thought, how funny, I know that place!’

When doing the workshops Suzie got talking to The Spring’s then director Sophie Fullerlove who asked Suzie if she had any other projects the arts centre might be interested in.

‘I very nervously said I've been thinking about the Butterick factory because I was able to get some photographs when it closed – by this time it was already demolished.

‘I had this stack of photographs, and also, from when my mum died in 2011 I inherited loads of her bits and bobs of sewing gear – some are here in the exhibition, that's her pin tin on the table. Little things like that.

‘I made a promise to myself that I'd inherited so much stuff from her, and then subsequently, so much stuff from my granny, that I would make something worthwhile with them or use them to do something significant.

‘I had all this stuff, and I wasn't doing anything with it, and I'd made this promise and hadn't done anything, so this was all sort of gluing together in my head.’

Sophie suggested Suzie pitch it as an exhibition under their Creative Intervention Programme.

‘They've been really supportive to help me get this together and I'm so massively grateful that they had the vision to understand it.

‘It was a process by which I could use my skills to connect me back to my mum, connect me back to my project, connected me back to my family memories and it connected me very much to this area - which I have missed.

When I talk to my friends and family members who still live here, they'll say, "Oh I remember that”, and all these stories start coming out.

‘That's what I found at the opening evening. My friend who did the samples at Butterick way back, she put me in touch with some people who used to work there, so I was able to get some quotes and understand a bit more about it.

‘My mum's been my muse and the factory has been a gift – the building is such an iconic place, to take the fabric of it and put it into this fabric...’

The patterns

Suzie describes the process of turning her photographs into patterns.

‘The little hexagon one, which I called Structured Fit, that was the first design I did, and that was from a picture of the girders and the roof. That was a tester I did for the MA.

‘Then I knew I could do it with one photograph, so I thought, actually I want to make a complete range of 12 designs so there's a bit of a mix and match element. It was about looking at the photographs, looking at what sort of material textures they had, really keeping in mind that ’50s architecture that's quite hard-edged. We're not looking at pretty pink florals here, we're looking at stuff that's very graphic, and colours that are drawn out of those photographs.

‘I looked at the photographs and picked which ones had a nice graphic hook and a motif that tells a story.

‘I was particularly happy when one of the women who used to work there told me she used to work in the picking department, and she would get all these numbered patterns off the shelves, and I knew I had done the pattern, Pick a Number, with all the numbers on. I also knew I had done one about the shelving, which is called A Relaxed Look, because when I went in the shelves were falling down and a bit wonky.

‘It made me feel that the story now begins to talk to the designs.’

‘Then there’s obviously the building – I wanted to do something a bit quirky and evocative.’

Patterns of Life, Memory and Place is on now at The Spring Arts Centre’s Mezzanine Gallery in Havant and runs through until March 25.

To find out more about Suzie’s work, and to buy the collection’s fabrics to order, visit studiojohanson.com.

Visit the exhibition Monday-Saturday, 10am - 4pm. Go to thespring.co.uk.