Elizabeth Few uses fresh flowers to dye silk for bedding, home accessories and lingerie. (Photo by Sarah Walor)
Named for the Chinese empress who is said to have discovered silk, Elizabeth Few’s new Leizu collection of bedding, home accessories and lingerie is as artistic as it is practical.
Few uses fresh flowers such as carnations, roses and silver-dollar eucalyptus to impart subtle patterns and colors onto luxurious, one-of-a-kind silk charmeuse pillowcases, throws, quilts, slips and camisoles.
Few creates each piece individually, sprinkling fresh flowers across the fabric and then rolling and wrapping it into a tight bundle. She steams the fabric in a crab pot on her stove, using vinegar as a mordant to fix the dye. “It’s like a science experiment,” she says. She compares each piece to an abstract painting, an original work of functional art. “It’s like buying a painting you sleep with.”
Sleeping on silk, Few says, is known to improve the appearance of both skin and hair — no more waking up with sheet marks across your cheeks and a tangled bed head. It also is hypoallergenic and helps to control body temperature, she adds.
Few is a South Carolina native who attended St. Catherine’s School as a boarding student in the 1990s. She studied art history and studio art at the College of Charleston, then moved to New York to study fashion design at Parsons School of Design. She remained in New York for more than a decade, working as a costume designer and in the fashion industry as a stylist and fashion show producer. She and her husband, actor Montgomery Maguire, lived in Los Angeles for six years before returning to his hometown of Richmond in 2015.
After seeing an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art featuring the colorful, geometric quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Few began to make intricate, quilt-like paper collages from magazines. She exhibited this work at Page Bond Gallery in 2015. “I love the idea of a quilt and the tradition of craftsmanship,” she says.
Photo courtesy Elizabeth Few Studio
Today, Few is piecing fabric in much the same way in her line of duvet covers featuring geometric patterns and hand stitching on linen and silk. Some designs are subtle, combining varying shades and texture in modernist combinations. Others are more graphic. A white linen and fuchsia dupioni silk duvet is a stunner.
While Few designs all of the items, she does not sew them herself, leaving that work to a professional seamstress. Locally, her work is sold at Verdalina and will eventually be available through her website, elizabethfewstudio.com. Prices range from $130 for a standard pillowcase to $350 for throw pillows to about $600 for throws.
