Different angle, same conclusions

Thoughts on Karen’s 105^th birthday

As I have often pointed out, Karen and I share the same birthday, 8 May. I have also remarked, without a hint of envy or jealousy, that my own modest birthday celebrations were often overshadowed by those held in honour of the illustrious Karen. Be that as it may, without claiming any astrological significance here, I have always felt that Karen and I had a lot in common apart from our birth date. At her funeral I spoke about our mutual fascination with myths and legends, in particular the gods, wizards and symbols of the ancient Norse. This is something that both my sons Joshua and Jacob picked up on from an early age, and which Jacob illustrated in his own funereal speech, when he said

“Whatever our beliefs about life and death, Mormor has now joined the ancestors and I would imagine that she would be an honoured guest of the Wyrd Sisters (known in Norse mythology as the Norns: 3 mythological women who work at the loom of fate) and knowing Mormor I don’t think it will be too long before she teaches them to weave properly in the future”.

But there’s another side to this interest, summed up in a couplet from the rap which Jacob performed at Karen’s 80^th birthday^[1] “Human labour, homo faber”. The rap also rhymes about the Norns, but this phrase was a reference to the idea that studying the various forms of human labour enables us to understand the distinctive nature of human kind and the changes in social organisation that mark the different historical epochs. For Karen, the symbolic importance of the weaver in mythology in Norse and other mythologies was intimately linked to the more material importance of humanity’s discovery that you could use plant fibres and animal furs to make clothes that would help you survive the coldest of ages. And that was just the start, because clothes and textiles in general took on so many other roles and functions in different societies and epochs. Although I approached this from a more theoretical starting point (I struggled with needles and threads from a very early age, although I believe there was an age of innocence in Kindergarten where I could use them without the obstacle of self-consciousness), Karen and I came to similar conclusions in the end.

The same applies to a point I made in an obituary for Karen in the magazine of the Friends of the William Morris Gallery^[2]. Although Karen didn’t share Morris’s revolutionary politics, she shared with him not only his deep appreciation of the process of material production, a recognition that all handicrafts have an artistic as well as a purely practical dimension; she even had exactly the same approach to the key issue of conservation.

Thus, Morris opposed the Victorian craze for the ‘restoration’ of ancient buildings, insisting that we should “treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying”^[3]. I then compared this passage to a paper delivered by Karen at the 12th 1COM Conference, Mexico, 1980, where she argues in favour of the conservation of “ancient textiles as historic documents without destroying any evidence of their past and the information which they may provide for further research.”

A visit to the mediaeval church of St Mary’s in Walthamstow Village will provide a graphic example of what both Morris and Karen meant by conservation as opposed to restoration: the building has been covered by a very uniform render which may hide the many cracks and fissures that have appeared over the centuries, but which has the unfortunate effect of “destroying any evidence” of its past.

Different angle of approach, very similar result. For me this demonstrates that, in her historical and scientific work, Karen was never afraid to pursue evidence and logic to its ultimate conclusion.

Happy birthday Karen, from Alan, Katrina, Joshua, Jacob, Caroline and Carolina

Alan Cohen, 8 May 2026