This ambitious new sculpture will give representation to the under-represented, give voice and recognition to the contributions of thousands of unnamed women who were the driving forces behind the East Midlands cotton textile industry during Industrialisation.

The statue’s inclusion in a public park places Nottingham at the forefront of historic female recognition; and makes Nottingham a regional, national and global leader in acknowledging the significant contribution women have made to the British economy and society in their roles as enslaved workers in the Americas and Caribbean and as factory workers in industrial Britain.

The statue is located in the new Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, a striking building in the centre of Doncaster due to open Spring 2021.  It has the space and facilities to display exciting exhibits linked to Doncaster’s fascinating history; including insights into its rail, mining and industrial legacy. This modern new build itself retains and sympathetically displays the core central frontage of the former Hall Cross Girls School building. This is encased in a glass façade to showcase an iconic part of Doncaster’s architectural heritage.

Given the borough’s strong connections to the Mayflower, it is fitting that the Pilgrim Woman has been given a prominent place in the new build where she is able to share her experiences of the Mayflower voyage with visitors from all over the world.

Take a look at the Pilgrim Woman Project pages discover more. Watch short films, listen to the podcast, read the articles in Radical Roots and much more.

Pilgrim Woman is the creation of a new sculpture using the story of families arrested and held in Boston jail in the early 17th century.

The project engaged women living in Lincolnshire from both immigrant and non immigrant background, working with an ancient method of weaving on a Lucet in a series of workshops both physical and virtual to engage women in semi rural areas.

The bronze sculpture of two female figures bound together was exhibited in a new exhibition at Lincoln Museum, to shine a light on the historical bondage of women to a male counterpart and open a dialogue for the role of women today.

Installed in Summer 2023 the Pilgrim Woman will provide a thought provoking new sculpture inspired by the past but prompting reflection on contemporary Boston.

Take a look at the Pilgrim Woman Project pages discover more. Watch short films, listen to the podcast, read the articles in Radical Roots and much more.

The Pilgrim Woman stands by the waters edge, contemplative of the journey she’s about to make and the home she’s leaving. She holds in her hand an apple, a symbol of growth, of new beginnings. The plinth reads ‘Steering our future, informed by the past’ and is carved into a piece of local stone, Ancaster Weatherbed by Graeme Mitcheson.

About the Sculpture

In May 1608, a group of religious separatists boarded a barge called the Francis at Gainsborough. They sailed up the River Trent to Stallingborough near Immingham, to escape to the Netherlands in search of religious tolerance.

Over 80 people boarded the barge as it sailed north, making their way to join a growing separatist community in Amsterdam. Some of these separatists later sailed to America to establish one of the earliest English colonies at Plymouth in Massachusetts. The first group sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, and became known as the Pilgrims.

Take a look at the Pilgrim Woman Project pages discover more. Watch short films, listen to the podcast, read the articles in Radical Roots and much more.

Rachel’s sculpture represents the women who began their life’s journeys from this riverside all those centuries ago. Commissioned by West Lindsey District Council with funding from the Gainsborough Development Trust

During 2022 Rachel was commissioned by Redrow Homes to create a new land lark sculpture for their new development in Mickleover, Derbyshire.

The sculpture utilises a combination of hand woven cast bronze work wrapped and nestled within a fluid shape of stainless steel made from a variety of round bars woven together. The bronze sphere is mounted upon a tall plinth created of strong steel, powder coated in a matte black tone and topped with a beautiful piece of speckled black granite that has been mirror polished to reflect natural light back through the woven areas of the bronze. 

The sculpture seeks to reference to the nurturing history of the areas past connection of the County Asylum Pastures, and more recently during the national lockdown as people turned to green spaces to help with their well being. 

Pastures was ahead of its time in terms of the integration of patients into the wider community, and as the asylum was a significant boon to the village of Mickleover, providing much work and social activity for the following century and a half, patients too became unusually involved in village life from a very early stage. While integration into the wider surrounding community became much more common at most asylums during the later 20th Century, Pastures’ patient were encouraged from the outset to take bible study and worship in the local churches and become involved in local sport and recreational activities.

During 2021 Rachel was commissioned to created a series of way markers for Redrow Homes new housing development on the outskirts of Derby city. Durose Country Park’s circular nature walk will include four bronze seeds depicting common seed from the trees in the country side. The Maple, Elm, Horse Chestnut and Sycamore seeds are and woven first in wax and then cast in bronze using the traditional direct lost wax method.

Photography credit Richard Richards

Following the successful casting of the very first Bronze casting of a hand woven spherical sculpture in 2013, Rachel was keen to develop the method further and refine some of the processes.

The biggest obstacle was the wax which was brittle and temperature sensitive. After a number of experiments a wax was refined that had a higher bees wax content which gave the her a malleable material that moved well and did not have an overriding memory, so did not try to return to its original shape.

Wanting to push the method further, this sphere is much larger than the original and measures 120cm in diameter which increases the surface area greatly. This added surface area took a lot more wax to weave to the desired thickness and thus became very heavy. Gravity is not kind to soft mailable materials so a number of methods had to be explored to first keep the sphere shape, and secondly to allow access for the artist to weave areas.

The successful wax sphere took approximately 18 months of work and was commissioned to be realised in bronze in 2017.

It now sits within a private garden in Bath, UK and features delicate weaving that fools the viewer, what appears as an open and delicate hand woven sculpture is, in actual fact, over 250 kilos in weight and nestles gently into the landscape.

In 2018 Rachel was commissioned by People Express & Nestle to create a new public art sculpture. ‘Gob’, is made from cast bronze and stainless steel, sitting on a plinth of pink Derbyshire sandstone.

Designed to be part of the Salt Brook Heritage Trail, Hatton, Derbyshire, the sculpture takes inspiration from the glass blowing industry that once thrived in the area.

A rod and moyle is dipped into molten glass and collects just enough to create the glass item, this is blown expanding the form. A little more heat and the molten glass called a gob is lowered into a mould which is closed around it, hence the saying “Shut ya gob”. The Gob is blown once more which expands into the mould, it picks up the designs or inscriptions in the mould. From here the finished blown glass is placed into a kiln to anneal (cool down slowly).

The bronze sculpture takes the shape of a Gob suspended in an open mould shape created from stainless steel blow rods.

During the course of this commission Rachel interviewed retired glass makers and visited a working glass museum.

Throughout all of Rachel’s work, she has utilised a range of hand weaving techniques to create sculptures, often taking inspiration from the natural world and the geometric patterns that can be found there.

In 2012 Rachel began her research looking if she could work other materials in the same manner as willow with an emphasis on resistant materials.

The answer was found in wax, a material that can be blended to have specific qualities and is used within Lost Wax Casting. Using the skills of a British wax refinery they created a wax which can withstand hand weaving techniques and that burns away cleanly to be used in the direct lost wax method of bronze casting. 

In 2013 she successfully produced the first large scale cast spherical bronze with the help of Arts Council. It was showcased at the 100th Chelsea Flower show then at the University of Leicester’s Botanical Gardens and now proudly sits within the World Heritage Site, the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire, the birth place of the Industrial Revolution.

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Change of Heart, University of Leicester 2014

Curated by Almuth Tebbenhoff FRBS

Rachel Carter has won widespread acclaim for her woven works in willow, using the tree’s flexible withies to build up geometric shapes layer by layer. She is a regular exhibitor at the annual Chelsea Flower Show where the natural, hand-made quality of her work is warmly embraced. Although  her woven creations have somewhat limited life span compared with works in more durable materials such as bronze or stone, this ephemeral quality has not deterred collectors. Most see it as an important part of the work - an echo of the universal rhythm of life and death to which ultimately everything must conform. However, driven by a technical curiosity towards materials, Carter recently began working with the renowned Pangolin bronze foundry in Chalford, Gloucestershire with a view to exploring the viability of translating her willow technique into bronze. The Pangolin team has yet to encounter a challenge it cannot meet, as Carter’s shimmering Bronze Grand Sphere (2013) is bountiful proof. This woven bronze sphere marks a significant moment in the development of Carter’s working method, although she will continue to weave in willow.

Text taken from Change of Heart exhibition brochure

Introducing the new Woven Pear Sculpture by Rachel Carter.

The hand woven pear features a delicate four stranded weave with stem detail.

Nestled amoungst the fallen leaves, the sculpture has a strong square base to allow it to be positioned anywhere in the garden.

The Fallen Egg was first designed for a commission in Crow Wood, a playscape by RHS Gold medal winning team Davis & White Landscape Architects for Lyme Park in Cheshire. A total of four woven eggs were created using Rachel's swirl weave and nestled into the landscape around the play area.

Speckled Egg was formed whilst experimenting with a new finer eco-fibre, the 3mm diameter fibre is very flexible and can be applied to many hand processes. Through various tests, a crochet stitch worked so well that Rachel applied it to an entire egg shaped frame. The overlapping stitches create a wonderful deep honeycomb texture inspired by the intricate nests of insects.  

The Serenity Garden located in Highfields Park in Nottingham, features two beautiful sculptures commissioned by the baby loss charity Forever Stars and designed by artist Rachel Carter.

The two sculptures; the Fallen Acorn and the Forever Star are a focal point for families as they add their baby's names and date of birth to the sculptures in the form of an engraved petal.

Each petal is hand woven into place during three yearly special service’s at the garden where families are invited to work with Rachel to place their petal on the sculpture.

As more petals are added to the sculpture, it creates a secondary layer that gently moves with the breeze and twinkles in the sun light.

For more information visit www.foreverstars.org

The Derby Sands baby memorial garden was officially opened on 29th June 2014. The central feature of the garden is a beautiful cocoon shaped sculpture bearing name petals of local babies who died before, during or after birth, designed and fabricated by Rachel Carter. 

Over 300 name petals dating from present day back to 1942 have been placed on the cocoon memorial over the past few years and the memorial is almost full.

As more families have learnt about the memorial a second sculpture was commissioned for the garden, a butterfly sculpture with a 4 metre wing span. Able to accommodate hundreds of petals the sculpture was unveiled in Spring 2016.

Derby Sands commissioned Rachel to design and fabricate a second butterfly to sit alongside the original cocoon and butterfly sculptures, unveiled in April 2018 the three sculptures now house over 500 name petals.

The latest edition to the garden was the design and fabrication of the Derby SANDS notice board that sits alongside the winding path. It features two stainless steel fluttering butterflies that float above the cabinet and the charity name laser cut in the powder coated metal. Alongside the notice board are two Seed Pod Sculptures that snuggle up to each side.

To find out more about the work of Derby SANDS please visit www.derbysands.org.uk

In 2010 Rachel was commissioned by Amber Valley Borough Council to create a gateway sculpture in the town of her birth. 

Heanor in South Derbyshire has a rich industrial history, from textiles and hosiery to coal. The sculpture sits on the corner of the old site of I R Morley's, a textile manufacturer established in 1795 whose premises in Heanor employed over 1000 people until it closed towards the end of the 20th century.

I R Morley's logo featured a wheel set in a pair of wings titled the Flying Wheel and was the first company logo added onto a piece of clothing.

The sculpture takes inspiration from this story and presents a wing either side of the sculpture which is punctured by a large wheel representing industry and regeneration.

In 2013 Rachel was commissioned by Derby City Council and Persimmon Homes to create a series of public art works for their new housing development in Mickleover, Derby.

Wanted to refer to the growth of new communities within new housing estates, the sculpture trail begins with a large pod at the top of the boulevard with a single seed siting alongside. As you amble down the path towards the open country side, more seeds can be found in various stages of germination.

Made from laser cut, rolled and welded sheets of Core-Ten steel, this is the first time the artist has used this wonderful material that creates it’s own protective surface by rusting to develop a rich patina. 

The University of Derby approached two of it's alumni in 2010 to work collaboratively on a new gateway sculpture for the main Derby campus.

Rachel Carter and Laura Ellen Bacon designed three imposing structures of curved steel powder coated in a bright red colour, representing the three campus’s situated across Derbyshire. The woven willow flows through the structures weaving in and out of the punctured red forms representing the students whom flow through the university.

Twisted Form was developed during an artist residency at the King George V gallery with the Ilkeston Ormiston Academy school. 

Inspiration came from the Kepler Conjecture, a mathematical theorem about sphere packing in a three dimensional space, by the 16th century mathematician, astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler. 

During the residency Rachel experimented with this theory using small polystyrene shapes alongside sketches, which led to the Twisted Form. Made from 50 individually woven units stacked and fixed together to create the two connecting structures.

After the residency the sculpture was exhibited at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and Doddington Hall before being re-assembled at the Melbourne Art Trail that altered as each piece was removed and sold over the course of a single weekend.  

The Allium has been a popular sculpture since first launched in 2009 when Rachel exhibited her first collection of Willow Alliums that subsequently sold to collectors across the UK, France and Italy.

The Alliums have been shown on mass in a large collection which can adapt to many different landscapes from the Orangery Lawn at Charlecote Park, Warwickshire to the intimate Red Garden at Coughton Court, even an installation in a Carp pond.  

Rachel made her first Grand Sphere sculptures in 2010 for an installation in English Heritage's Bolsover Castle and they continue to be her most popular sculpture. 

The weaving spreads across the surface of the sphere creating fluid patterns and movements, with every strand hand woven no two spheres are alike. Spheres have made their way across the UK, France and USA in private gardens.

The sculptures have been exhibited at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, sculpture gardens and in 2012 two grand Spheres were selected by Yorkshire Sculpture Park to be exhibited alongside Jaume Plensa in the Kyiv Botanical Gardens, Ukraine, an achievement Rachel is very proud of. 

Grand spheres are available to commission in Eco fibre via the Shop or for that luxury edition in cast bronze please get in touch by using the Contact page to discuss your project.

Rachel was approached by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust to create a natural sculpture to sit in the landscape near Shipley Country Park. 

The Poppy Head was created with a large base and an intricate woven top slightly off centre to give the appearance that the poppy head had fallen to the ground.

Further poppy heads have been made and exhibited at Leeds Castle, Kent and sculpture shows across the UK.

The Copper Alliums where a firm favourite collection for some years now and have been installed in gardens across the UK.

Made from solid copper woven wire and a 6mm thick copper stem, the Allium's change as the react to their environment, altering from shiny copper tones to a lovely verdigris finish that deepens with age. 

Although Rachel no longer works in copper, you can view similar sculptures in the online shop.