Product Details

THE HOUSE MUSEUM

In Mrs Gaskell At Home (84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester)  this delightful piece of symmetry and order is depicted almost as a Victorian doll's house in glowing sunshine which contrasts with an ominous distant background of ‘dark satanic mills’.

Elizabeth Gaskell was an English writer who offered detailed studies of Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor. Amanda has placed her waiting for the arrival of her guests outside her rather grand Italianate home in the leafy suburbs of industrial Manchester, exotic parrots flying. 

There is such clever use of imagery within this collage. Manchester at the time of Gaskell, in the 19th century, was booming as the global centre for industrialised cotton production. Amanda has referenced this by creating a blue and white patchwork sky, referencing the patterns on the cotton being made in the mills beyond and the smoke billowing out of the chimney is made from paper printed with similar patterns. 

THE STORY 

This new collection includes eight large-scale paper cut collages which, like a doll's house, invite you to peer into and explore - with a temptation to move the figures and play!

Paper-cut artist Amanda White is celebrated for her intricate collages of historical houses that once belonged to writers and artists. Originally trained as a theatre designer, Amanda carries this love of stage sets into her collaged worlds, each one appearing as though the curtains have just opened and a scene is unfolding.

A chance encounter with a pile of vintage Vogue magazines, found on the street, led Amanda to start working with the paper-cut technique. What else is an artist and theatre designer to do when confronted with such bounty? The rest is history and Amanda has now been working with paper-cut collages for many years. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, Spain and New York with pieces held in many private collections around the world and in institutions such as the Rutherston Collection, Manchester City Art Gallery and the Hogg Robinson Group. 

Amanda begins each new work with a deep dive into the subject, sketching compositions, researching the history and stories about the house and the people who visited. This research informs all of the details and materials that Amanda will gather before she starts her incredibly detailed paper cuts. 

Now using a multitude of different papers, collected over the years from old magazines (the National Geographic being a favourite), Amanda also uses old prints, posters, drawings - anything and everything is collected, cut up and carefully filed into categories and subjects including ‘masonry’ and ‘sky’ so they are easily ready for use when inspiration strikes. 

As a member of the Association of British Naive Artists it is no surprise that Amanda White’s influences are deeply folk art orientated. Asked for a list of inspiration, Amanda sent a list that reads as a love letter to that very specific English aesthetic: “I have a love of Staffordshire pottery, old textiles and plates, gardens, broadsheet woodcuts, William Blake, Alfred Wallis, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, the Romantic movement, browsing in books, mooching in museums, Sussex, old buildings, cats, the sea”.