Making Fey Folk

Fairies have taken my fancy of late and I have been creating little female folk.  I have used sticks, feathers and leaves collected from my walks or garden and scraps of cloth and thread and clay in my studio.

It is addictive.  And helped me find my mojo :-).

Having made a couple of these little creatures I visited Google scholar and tried to find out a little more on the history of fairies.   It seems that fairies have been recorded as far back as the early Medieval Age. They looked like normal sized people and did not have wings. People were very wary of fairies (fey)and avoided any engagement with them.  The fairy as we know them – all sweetness and light with butterfly wings – is an invention of the Victorian era.

There appears to have been a cross fertilization between the Irish and Scottish and Scottish and Norse in terms of shared beliefs due to migration and physical proximity.  A lot of research has been done by scholars including Dr Lizanne Henderson of the University of Glasgow.   Some of Dr Henderson’s work is available online and makes for interesting reading and is a font of ideas for more making.    By way of example a paper by Dr Henderson entitled Witch, fairy and folktale narratives in the trial of Bessie Dunlop gives descriptions of fairies as recorded by Bessie’s prosecutors.   Reading it made me feel glad to be living now and not then.   

My fey folk journey started after seeing Wilma Simmons' message stick dolls.  Wilma kindly donated one of her messgae stick dolls for a cancer fund raiser and gave me permission to use her tutorial for a fund raising arty party.   Her dolls inspired me to keep playing and make little creatures in my own voice. 

I will post more photos as the fey folk family grows.