Secret Garden
The
A Design Project by Claire Fleck
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.�
CONTENTS
2.
Cast list
5
Concept introduction
6
Paxton House- contextualising the design concept
8-11
Colour concept
12-13
History and shape within the early 1900s
14-15
Influential textiles
16-19
Character development and final designs
26-78
Character line-up
84-85
“High on a hill sits a big old house With something wrong inside it.
Spirits haunt the halls And make no effort now to hide it.�
CAST LIST
“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, ponies and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.�
Mary Lennox
26
Dickon
30
Ben Weatherstaff
36
Pony
44
Squirral
46
Robin
48
Ayah
54
Fakir
60
Colin Craven
68
Mrs Medlock
74
Mr Craven
78
5.
CONCEPT INTRODUCTION F
leeing from the cholera epidemic in India in 1906, ten year old Mary Lennox arrives at Misselthwaite Manor with little time to realize that she is now an orphan and her past life is gone forever. Misselthwaite Manor is a quiet and sad country manor house owned by her deteriorating, lovesick uncle Mr. Craven and run by the strict housekeeper Mrs. Medlock. Mary lives frustrated and bored at Misselthwaite until she meets Dickon, her housemaid’s brother who teaches her about the joys of nature. After discovering a locked walled garden formerly owned to by the late Mrs. Craven, Mary and Dickon tend to it, spending many private hours in the garden. They soon discover Misselthwaite’s deepest secret- Colin Craven, Mr. Craven’s 10 year old, apparent cripple, of a son. Together they use ‘the secret garden’ to bring the family back together and restore Misselthwaite Manor to a loving family home. I have designed for Marsha Norman’s musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel “The secret garden”. The musical contains a lively storyline as well as many musical scores that depict both the present time in England but also Mary’s past in India. I chose this adaptation particularly for its links to India, but also for its potential for creating groups of dancers and chorus through the musical side of it. After a trip to India 5 years ago I was keen to incorporate Indian design and print into a project but I was also interested to mix it with English style . I have created costume designs that show the effects that an environment has on a person largely through the use of textile print and surface texture. To do this, I have split the cast into three main groups: the interior characters, the exterior characters and the dreamers. Set as a promonade production at Paxton house, the groups of characters link to the use of florals within their particular environment. This was done by visiting the house and documenting the two main environments of the interior and exterior. Photographs from this visit are shown throughout this book. Within the house, florals are kept very structured and reproduced into largely symmetrical patterns where as in the gardens, the exterior of the house, flowers grow wild and are varied in their scale, texture and colour. This book will look in more detail at these concepts as well as how i have used colour and historical and cultural references to create my costume designs for the cast of The Secret Garden. 6.
Paxton House The Tale of the Inside and the Outside
“There’s naught as things when th’ rai
s nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ in falls on ‘em.”
A
s a prominade piece of theatre, the performance of The Secret Garden would be set in and around the grounds of Paxton house in the Scottish borders. I chose this location as it is already a destination for many families due to the assortment of events available at the house as well as its beautiful surroundings, which unti recently was a family home. The house has many acres of land surrounding it, ranging from a crochet lawn to over grown woodland next to a river. This would allow for extensive use of the grounds for different scenes of the play, the diversity of the area leaving room for creativity in staging and creating different moods. The building itself is based heavily on the use of symmetry. Designed by John Adam, the Georgian decoration is based heavily on the use of graphic and symmetrical floral motifs. After visiting the house I was struck by this portrayal of flowers: the uniformity of the wallpapers and carpets compared to the wild, organic nature of the gardens. This was something that I was keen to show through my designs because in the story of The Secret Garden there three distinct groups within the characters. The exterior characters convey the love of the outside and nature, the interior characters, who work inside and conform to the rigid structure of day to day life; and the dreamers who are spirits from Mary’s past who are linked to both Mary’s past, in India, and future, in the garden. I have therefore chosen to base my costumes on these three character groups, particularly linking the interior and exterior characters to Paxton house itself. I have taken photographs from the grounds and the inside details of the house and used them to create textile prints, embellishments and textures that convey their placement within the story. This is in the hope that when the characters are placed within these environments they will blend and contrast accordingly to their own comfort in tese places. There is also an element of transformation for some characters, specifically Mary and Colin. Using this way of creating textiles will allow me a clear way to convey the change in their characters through their costumes as the go from being strict and structred characters, to being carefree children within the garden setting.
9.
10.
INTERIOR 10.
The interior is full of inspiration taken from florals. they are made decorative by creating uniform and ornate patterns, the wallpapers using distinctive oriental china for inspiration and the more period guilt picture frames show the affluent history of the house.
The exterior of the house is full of unexpected turns in the path, leading to secret garden areas. There is a wide range of shapes, textures and sizes within the shrubbery’s and wild woodland. The organic nature of the plants mean that there is no exact repeat of anything, even within the petal of a flower.
EXTERIOR 11.
M
COLOUR CONCEPT
y colour pallete is based on neutrals with injections of bright colours that have been made from natural sources such as indigo and madder root. When I visited Paxton House it was winter and I was struck by the garden and how through the dead leaves and plants there were little touches of colour shining through from the few live flowers and berries left. Whilst looking around the interior of the house this was also a theme that seem to come through from the furnature and wallpaper decoration. Much of it was inspired by the increase in travel popular in the early 20th century. This meant that there was a lot of oriental influences as well as momentos from when the family owned plantations in Grenada. colour themes included blue and white china, which was mimiced in floral wallpapers and on a lot of the upholstery on the chippendale furniture. Most of the unwallpapered walls and other textiles are kept clean and neutral to create more light in the rooms. I was keen to use natural dies that they use when doing techniques like block printing in India as there are strong references to India in The Secret Garden. This also allowed me to use bright colours to show the playful feel of the childrens story, in small areas of the garments, without them seeming garish. Using nature as a theme for my colour scheme I also wanted to carry this on throughout the shapes I used for the garments, simplifying them to allow space to show off the textiles and allow fluid movement.
13.
T
14.
he Secret Garden was set in 1906 and has many historical references included in the plot. This meant that it made sense for me to use historical refereneces in my work, although I have not kept strictly to using historical garment shapes. The use of historical refereneces means that the costumes fit in with the preservation of Paton house, as well as giving me a base to work on so that all my costuemes compliment each other. I looked mainly at childrens fashion from the 1900s as Mary, Dickon and Colin are the protagonist’s in the story. I also wanted my costumes to have a playful feel, so have tried to keep the childlike silhoette through out all my costume designs. As well as looking at British fashion I also looked at the British Raj at this time as this was the environment that Mary was coming from and also helped me to design for the dreamers. The only costume that differs from this research is Mr Craven, whose outfit I have based more on the fashion of 1896, showing his decline since his wife died 10 years previous to the time the play is set in.
15.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
INFLUENTIAL TEXTILES 16.
I
was heavily influenced in the early stages of my research by textiles and how they can be used to create a wide range of textures and prints that mimic natural objects within the garden. I was interested in how costumes can convey a character’s comfortable and natural environment so I looked about camoflage, and creating a sort of camoflage for each character that helps them to fit in with their place in the play. This section displays some of the textile research that I was influenced by, looking at techniques and styles that suited my view of the play in relation to my concept.
17.
PRINTING WITH OBJECTS
I
wanted to use objects transfered onto, and incorperated into my fabrics rather than creating my own drawings of them as I wanted them to truely blend with their surroundings. I used found objects from the gardens like deathers, leaves and flowers and used different techniques to trap or transfer the object onto paper or fabric. This allowed me to use the texture and the shape of the object within my designs for both the interior and exterior characters. Pictured, are some of the techniques I used, including cyanotyping, monoprinting, block printing and physically trapping a feather with piff binder. Using block printing allowed me to try out a technique that linking with the indian themes running through my project, as well as using a print that I took directly from a floral wall paper in Paxton House.
TEXTURE T
exture was an important part of my textile research as I wanted to create the same organic forms and textures from the garden in my costumes. Using neutral colours as a base colour schene meant that the textures would stand out more than if there was lots of colour to complicate them. The neutral colours are also stereotypically giving the feeling of nature and chilhood innocense, ideas that I wanted to convey through the costumes.
19.
CYANOTYPE W
hen looking at textiles I looked at different ways that people use to transfer the print of an actual object onto fabric. This included block printing, monoprinting and cyanotype. At Paxton House many of the wallpapers and ornaments use blue and white colours- typical at that time for various reasons. One of these reasons is that travel was becoming easier so blue and white oriental china and pottery became popular in the home. Looking at the texhnique of cyanotype I realised that I could project images of real objects onto the blue paper giving the same blue and white appearance. I could then use real images of florals to create graphic shapes that represented the wall papers in the house. Below are images of the wallpapers used as inspiration for my ‘interior’ characters- Colin, Mr Craven and Mrs Medlock.
20.
21.
“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when it’s beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place.”
24.
Mary Lennox
Mary Lennox
M
ary Lennox comes to Misslethwaite Manor as a spoilt and sour 10 year-old. Made bitter by grief and her sudden move to England she struggles to get used to looking after and entertaining herself. She is slowly softened by a maid, Martha, who teaches her how to skip, and explores the gardens, eventually unlocking the secret garden where she ends up spending all her time with Martha’s brother, Dickon. She meets Colin after hearing him crying night after night in a forbidden area of the house. Through her experiences of being bitter and spoilt she is able to teach Colin that being spoilt is worse than being pleasant, and eventually they become friends and are able to venture out into the garden together. Mary’s costume is based on the simple shapes of the historical children’s wear of the 1900s. Her dress is made from block printed blue and white fabric, the block printing technique relating to her indian heritage and the blue and white colour scheme linking to the cyanoptype process used in the ‘interior’ characters’ costumes. As her character develops and becomes more free, her costume becomes more textural, colourful and embellished using embroidery and monoprint techniques to show her developing freedom.
“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.”
Mary Lennox
30.
Dickon
Dickon
D
ickon is Martha’s Younger Brother. He is a bit of a free spirit, learning to communicate with animals, many of which follow him around. He spends most of his time roaming the moors and enjoying nature. He becomes close friends with Mary and helps her tend to the secret garden, teaching her about animals and growing plans and flowers. Dickon’s costume is based on the organic textures I found when exploring the gardens at Paxton house. Using different Knit techniques I have created moss like textures contrasting with the traditionally English arran knit stitch pattern, showing his rural and local heritage. I have used natural colours with bright colour accents with a number of embroidery techniques which mimic the way that berries seem vibrant comapred to their natural backdrop as well as his energetic character.
“there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them.�
Dickon
36.
Ben Weatherstaff
Ben Weatherstaff
B
en Weatherstaff is a gardener at Misslethwaite Manor. he has been there for many years and spends all his time tending to the gardens.When he meets Mary he warns her strongly against trying to find the secret garden and when she does he is extremely angry, as it was his orders to keep people out. It later transpires though that he himself has been secretly tending to the locked, walled garde, as he promised Lily Craven that he always would. I have used traditionally English clothing like the barbour jacket, tweed and the fairisle knit pattern and mixed them with the inspirational imagery and textures taken from plants that grow in a wild garden like moss and mushrooms. With accents of bright colours I have exaggerated shapes to create a costume that represents Ben’s old age and comfort within the garden.
“Never thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it - and call it what tha' likes. Tha' wert singin' to it when I come into t' garden.�
Ben Weatherstaff
42.
The Gardeners
Pony
T
his group does not apprear in the original musical but I decided to create them as I feel that they are important to creating the mood within the garden setting and could create an interesting, interactive group. They represent that group of animals that Dickon has with him most of the time and are selected from animals featured in the original novel of The Secret Garden. The Pony’s costume takes inspiration from the animal form of a horse as well as similar textures, fabrics and colours from Ben Weatherstaff and Dickon’s costumes. It is bridle is embellished in reference to Indian show horses which would be adorned with heavy beading and embroidery.
44.
Robin
B
ased on the idea that Robins are only usually seen at christmas time, the robin’s costume is made mainly using fairlise red and white knit. Looking at the shape of the bird I wanted to emphasise it’s large body and thin legs, achieved through padded leggings and a large, shapped knit jumper.
48.
Squirrel
T
he squirrel is based on the natural shape of the squirrel, emphasising its short limbs with loose knitted garments with a combination of textiles representing bith the grey and the red squirrel
46.
The Gardeners
“To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman”
54.
Ayah
Ayah
A
yah is a native maid or nursemaid in India. She brought up Mary so they are close, although Mary always got what she wanted from her. As one of ‘the dreamers’ she is a ghost from Mary’s past in India. They group haunts her until she finds her new life through the garden. They appear and disappear throughout the musical interludes. Ayah’s costume is made from traditionally Indian fabric techniques and the sari shaping. Looking at patterns within Henna designs her skirt is made from a tradtionally block printed ‘wave’ pattern with a sashiko edging. Although sashiko is a japanese stitching technique, India has a similar style called ‘snake charmer embroidery’.
“Can't you dress yourself?” “ Of course not. My ayah dressed me.”
Ayah
60.
Fakir
Fakir
F
akir is a magical Indian man associated with snake charming and pain endurance excercises like walking on coal. Although we do not hear of his relevance in the story he represents Mary’s past and what sort of environment she would have lived in in India. As one of ‘the dreamers’ he is a ghost from Mary’s past in India. They group haunts her until she finds her new life through the garden. They appear and disappear throughout the musical interludes. After looking at snake charming and extreme endurance, Fakir’s costume is based on the coils created by the snake dancing and the patterns of the snake baskets.
“Ah, A'o jadu ke mausam, A'o garmiyo ke din. A'o mantra tantra yantra, Us ki bimari hata'o.�
Fakir
66.
Colin Craven
Colin Craven
C
olin is the cousin of Mary Lennox. He spends all his time in his darkened bedroom in a secret area of the house. Believing her too will be a hunchback like his father, he doesnt get out of bed and has incredible fits of rage when Dr Craven tries to perform medical procedures on him. When he meets Mary he is sour and angry, but as she tells him stories of India he is intrigued by the outside world and when Mary and Dickon take him out into the garden he learns how to walk and like Mary, enjoy nature and they’re childhood. Colin’s costume is based on the popular sailor boy’s outfit of the 1900s, using print made from cyanotype’s inspired by the stripey and grid-like patterns of wallpaper at Paxton House. As his character transforms throughout the play from being spoilt and sour to free and joyful, the flowers on his jacket collar become 3D and embellished, showing how the garden has affected his mood.
“I shall live forever and ever and ever ' he cried grandly. 'I shall find out thousands and thousands of things.�
Colin Craven
72.
Mrs Medlock
Mrs Medlock
M
rs Medlock is the house keeper at Misslethwaite Manor. She is strict and opposed to change so finds having Mary staying very difficult. When Mary challenges Colin’s illness she is so angry that she tries to keep the two apart- following Dr Craven’s orders that Colin is not to leave his room. She remains angry throughout the story and is embarrassed at the end when Mr Craven realizes that Colin is well and that they can all be a family again. Mrs Medlock’s costume is rigid and structured, showing her conformity to the house and strict rules. It is based on the traditinal servant dress of the 1900s and, like Colin’s costume, uses the patterns of the wallpaper in Paxton house to create cyanoptype, flat digital prints.
“Well, you're right not to care, your uncle certainly isn't going, to trouble himself about you.”
Mrs Medlock
78.
Mr Craven
Mr Craven
M
r Craven is Mary’s Uncle and the owner of Misslethwaite Manor. He is a hunchback and crippled with the grief of his wife Lily’s death, after she fell off a swing in her garden just after she gave birth to Colin. He believes that Colin will too be a hunchback, and is also haunted by the physical similarities between Lily and his son so spends little time actaully at Misslethwaite Manor. Unlike the other character’s, Mr Craven’s costume is not up to date with fashion, and is based 10 years previous to 1906, to the time when Lily Craven died. This show’s his grief and that he has not kept up his appearence since he lost her. I chose the grid like pattern, taken from wallpaper in Paxton house, to convey how he is trapped by the past in the garden. His costume would be aged and distressed, showing that he no longer cares for himself well.
“How can I hope to go on without you? How can I know where you'd have me go? How can I bear not to dream about you? Oh, how can I let you go?”
Mr Caven
84.
85.