For a Flower Album - Colette Exhibition

There's a new exhibition in the Hazy Daze shop by the Clock Tower, featuring embroideries inspired by the life of Colette, by French publisher and embroiderer Agnes Guillemot.
It runs until 15th December.

The latest issue of The Cabbage Leaf from Botany and other Stories tells more:

Colette was, of course, one of the great French writers - she was granted the honour of a State funeral when she died in 1954, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. TS Eliot won the prize that year.

In her old age, Colette became crippled with arthritis. Once or twice a week, Mermod, a publisher in Lausanne, proposed to send her a bouquet of flowers, and when she wanted to, she could write about them. The 22 essays were collected into a book called Pour un herbier, which was published as a limited edition in 1947. One of these rare books is part of the exhibition. It was found in a second hand bookshop in Lausanne called OH 7e CIEL (Seventh Heaven is one translation).

Also in the Cabbage Leaf, on the theme of embroidery and other fibre arts, is an article about the local Stitch and Bitch group; an appreciation of the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, by Gareth Howell-Jones, local garden designer and Hay Festival bookseller; some facts about roses; and a flower design which can be pasted onto card as a template for an embroidery. Botany and other Stories are planning to bring out embroidery cards next year.