Tea & Toast
Tea & Toast is a reflection on the journey into parenthood, the space and time
leading up to the birth of our first child. From the perspective of a soon to be
father, its meditative and poetic approach explores the experience and transition
from a place of understanding, familiarity, and structure into the chaotic,
beautiful, and unknown.
Bringing this body of work together has been part of the healing process, to deal
with the experience and trauma we both experienced during childbirth. It was
important for us to make the work, whilst our memories were vivid and raw and
before we would forget. The work was completed during my 3 weeks of paternity
leave in October 2022.
The process of designing and making became a focal point during the initial days
of parenthood. Finding familiarity and comfort within the craft of sequencing and
construction was my catharsis. Revisiting the birth through each image and pairing,
we could start the journey of understanding together. The repetition of cutting,
folding and stitching felt structured and purposeful, although this time soon
became shadowed by a sense of helplessness and guilt for the task at hand.
Tea & Toast is a reflection on the journey into parenthood, the space and time
leading up to the birth of our first child. From the perspective of a soon to be
father, its meditative and poetic approach explores the experience and transition
from a place of understanding, familiarity, and structure into the chaotic,
beautiful, and unknown.
Bringing this body of work together has been part of the healing process, to deal
with the experience and trauma we both experienced during childbirth. It was
important for us to make the work, whilst our memories were vivid and raw and
before we would forget. The work was completed during my 3 weeks of paternity
leave in October 2022.
The process of designing and making became a focal point during the initial days
of parenthood. Finding familiarity and comfort within the craft of sequencing and
construction was my catharsis. Revisiting the birth through each image and pairing,
we could start the journey of understanding together. The repetition of cutting,
folding and stitching felt structured and purposeful, although this time soon
became shadowed by a sense of helplessness and guilt for the task at hand.
The overall design was inspired by the maternity folder we had throughout pregnancy,
a bright orange cover with green string and silver ended ties, filled with notes and
paperwork. The folded nature of the book block with overhanging pages leant itself
similarly to the maternity folder structure, where messy pages overspilled and were
always visible.
For 9 months the folder travelled with us everywhere and contained medical graphs,
technical information and language that was completely unrelatable to our experience
of pregnancy and birth. Tea & Toast is our version, filled with the information we needed
to process the event.
205x287mm
124 pages
120gsm uncoated
270gsm cover
Hand stitched
©2022
(sold out)
