SPACE STUDIES
Stitching new light into old stars: Bridging the gap between analogue history and digital discovery. By marrying tactile embroidery with archival photography, I’m bringing the hidden textures of the universe back down to earth.
Over the years I’ve become a bit of a hunter-gatherer for the stars. I’ve built up a collection of vintage astrophotography found in all the usual (and unusual) places—charity shops, friends' bookshelves, and the corners of old bookshops or vintage fairs.
My obsession really took hold after visiting various observatories and archives. Seeing those spaces firsthand made me fall in love with the history of science and learning about the methods that early astronomers used to capture the cosmos using purely analogue techniques.
To bring these old images into the present, I’ve started thinking of ways to add colour to the images. I take the vintage, black-and-white prints and try to find their modern-day twins captured by the James Webb or Hubble telescopes.
It’s often harder than it sounds. Many of my found images aren't labelled, so I spend a fair amount of time playing detective, tracking down exactly which cluster or nebula I’m looking at. Once I’ve made a match, I use the vibrant, digital colours from the contemporary space images to choose my embroidery threads.
