About

Jessica Light, the last working passementerie weaver and maker left in London’s East End, aka ‘The Tassel Queen of Bethnal Green’, brings her couture-crafted cult passementerie to East London Cloth’s beautiful Vyner Street showroom for a celebration of the historic East London trade of passementerie, hand-made production and urban craft.

Jessica will be showcasing a new episode of her Wares project entitled ‘The Phoenix and the Carpet’, a selection of finely fashioned, limited edition and one-off passementerie infused home and body wares, inspired by magical, mythical and imaginary cities. Expect richly coloured, ornamental artefacts that evoke urban materials of brass, steel and wet tarmac.

She will also be launching Black Mountain, a new hand-woven and hand-made passementerie collection of trims, tassels, tiebacks and rosettes. An ode to the weaverati, Collingwood, Marriett, Moorman et al, who shaped modern textiles with their innovative designs, material use and technical prowess. This range mixes the textural, jute and linen, with the smooth, rayon, in a combined palette of brights and neutrals to create a fresh forward-moving colour and visual story.

During the week you will be able to watch Jessica, a maker of the metropolis, as she partakes in the hand-made production of an actual passementerie order and, in conjunction, she will be opening her Bethnal Green workshop, for the first time ever to the public, to teach a one-off tassel making workshop. There will only be eight places on this workshop so early booking is essential.

Jessica is part of the East End’s weavers’ line of textile practitioners that go back to the 17th century and her eponymous workshop has been at the forefront of the hand-made passementerie trade since 2008. She is known for idiosyncratic, design-led, original trims and tassels that bring these 16th century techniques alive for a contemporary market,