Vicki Aimers is a book artist, and PhD researcher with Falmouth University. Her practice-based research explores the lives of young Cornish sampler makers and the teachers who taught them needlework, through archival research, narrative stitch, artist books, creative writing, and community workshops. Through making and participation, her work considers how textiles can hold traces of education, memory, care, labour, and lived experience, offering insight into the often-overlooked histories of girls and women in Cornwall.

During her residency at the Museum of Cornish Life, Vicki will be creating new work in response to the museum’s sampler collection, which spans from the mid eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Alongside this, she will be researching the lives and stories connected to these historic textiles, sharing the experiences of the pupils and teachers whose work survives within the county’s collections.

A particular focus of her current project is a darning sampler sewn in 1879 by Margaret Lanyon (1861-1939), held in the collection of Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery. Through archival research, Vicki has been tracing Margaret’s life from her early years in Gweek, where her family worked within the maritime industry, to her later life in the farming community of Wendron, where she married the celebrated Cornish wrestler John “Jack” Pearce. These fragments of everyday life and labour, form an important starting point for the residency and wider study.