A New Take On An Ancient Art: Quiller Heather Allard

“Abundance of Love” quilling art by Heather Allard.

The lost art of quilling enjoys a renaissance in Door County with Plum Bottom Pottery’s newest artist, Heather Allard, whose nature-inspired paper filigrees add a heavy dose of vibrant color, dimension and texture to the Egg Harbor gallery.

Quilling is the craft of arranging, curling and bending small strips of paper to create detailed artworks. While the beginnings of this ancient art – also known as paper filigree, paper rolling, mosaic and paper folding – are largely unknown, it is said to have been inspired centuries ago by metal filigree, a delicate form of jewelry metalwork that incorporated silver and gold wires in intricate patterns. With the scarcity and expense of these materials, artists began working with paper to create designs that imitated the ironwork of the day.

“Sunflower Salute” by Heather Allard.

Quilling’s introduction as a high quality art can be traced back to the Renaissance, when French and Italian nuns and monks used the gilded edges of old manuscripts to decorate religious artifacts. Oftentimes, the paper was curled around the base of a quill, which led to the name “quilling.” It was also a popular craft among genteel women of 17th and 18th century Europe, as, according to The New Lady’s Magazine in 1786, “it affords an amusement to the female mind capable of the most pleasing and extensive variety; and at the same time, it conduces to fill up a leisure hour with an innocent recreation.” As evidenced by this statement, quilling was not practiced by working-class women of those times but by ladies of leisure, who could afford the supplies (and time) and used the craft to decorate tea caddies, workboxes, screens, cabinets, frames and more, according to The Quilling Guild. From there, quilling declined in popularity until another paper art – scrapbooking – aided in bringing it back to the forefront of art and craft.

Allard became acquainted with the craft as a child during Christmastime and after many years away from it, picked it up again, using colorful varieties of paper to create intricate canvas and greeting card designs. Last year, she created and sold more than 345 greeting cards through her crafting business SeaLife Creations and has slowly moved toward framed artwork, largely inspired by her flower garden.

“I have a love of gardening so a lot of times I like to do different flowers whether it be daisies or sunflowers, cornflowers, roses. It can go on and on and on,” Allard said.

“I do things that make me happy and things that are bright and colorful, cheery, just because the quilling makes me happy to do it and that’s what I portray in a lot of my artwork.”

Part of the craft’s popularity is in the accessibility of materials. At its basic level, quilling involves strips of paper, glue and a tool with which to roll the paper. When it comes to designing a piece, Allard starts with color.

“Happy Heart” by Heather Allard.

“You kind of work with the color scheme first of all and then there are different options, different quilling pieces or parts that you can make,” she explained. “You can make different flowers, you can make squares or circles or triangles and you just kind of put them together to make the artwork piece that you’re doing. It’s unique to each one that you do and you can do a regular picture or you could end up doing more of a scene. Each one is unique.”

Designs and specialty supplies may reflect the 21st century, but the process of quilling remains much the same as it has always been. It is in that history that Allard finds the most joy in sharing this special craft.

“It’s an older artwork and I’m glad to be reliving it for some people,” Allard said. “A lot of people haven’t even seen it and I’m glad to bring it back and to familiarize people with it and modernize it because it is such a neat, unique thing to see. Each time you might look at a piece, you might find something different or see the uniqueness in the different shapes and to get to notice something different every time you look at a different piece of art.”

For more of Allard’s quilling work, find SeaLife Creations on Facebook.