MADELINETOSH BEGAN IN 2006 with an idea of creating an artists palette of hand knitting yarns, fulfilling a desire for the perfect hue.
Enthused with a love of painting and influenced by the rich history of art in textiles, madelinetosh seeks to create a colour palette guided by the subtle nuances and layered depth of colours found in the natural world.
Selecting natural fibres that were soft and supple to the touch and enjoyable to handle, they began their dye process by applying multiple colours to the fibre in thin glazes, adding true depth and dimension.
Who was Madeline Tosh?
Lillian Madeleine Atkins was born to a hopeful tenant farmer and a fair-skinned aesthete at a cross-roads town in Virginia named Moonlight in 1900.
At the age of twelve Lillian walked to the county seat, filled out a small form, and forever changed her name from Lillian to Madeleine Tosh. When asked why, she offered that her school teacher's surname was better suited for her than simple Lillian. |
...Madelinetosh seeks to create a colour palette guided by the the natural world...At nineteen, Madeleine Tosh met a tugboat captain working on the Pagan river. She married him to spite her father for an undelivered gift four months later, bearing nine children. Madeline raised six to adulhood.
Madeleine left her husband after the children were grown, moving to a brownstone in Washington D.C. off 14th Street. For money Madeleine worked packing and unpacking crystal lamps and shades at Woodard and Lothrop’s department store in D.C.
Madeleine later moved to a prefabricated quonset hut in Claremont, purchasing an oak loom on which she wove linen and and handspun cotton fabrics for pocket money.
Madeleine never traveled outside the Virginia, D.C. area. She died in 1984.
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