Jackie Morris & Tamsin Abbott

Jackie Morris & Tamsin Abbott on Wild Folk

Wild Folk brings together the words of Jackie Morris and the stained-glass paintings of Tamsin Abbott, but the stories come from both, a true collaboration born out of friendship and hope. Robert Macfarlane calls the result a 'wondrous weaving of story and image, glass and ink, dream and song, created together by two makers at the height of their huge powers...the art here holds light that spills and fills, and spaces in which to breathe and swim.'

Wild Folk comprises seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.

These tales from the stones are neither new nor old. They are full of 'wild folk', shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things. You will meet selkies and silver trout and the black fox, as big as a wolf and so fast and cunning she drives the lord of the manor to madness and oblivion; the woman of flowers who is happier living as an owl; the boy who learns to feel the songs and stories of trees through his skin; Wayland, the smith who can hammer metal to such airy thinness he makes his own wings; and the great white raven, a bird so rare it awakens the king who sleeps beneath the stones of the wild west cliffs of Wales.

Jackie Morris is an artist and writer. She is a Fellow of Hereford College of Art and has been awarded the Hay Festival Medal for Illustration. She has illustrated many books, and written some, including The Unwinding, Feather, Leaf, Bark & Stone and the first two in a series of fold-out Accordion Books, Fox and Otter. The Lost Words, co-authored with Robert Macfarlane, won the Kate Greenaway Medal 2019. Jackie lives by the sea in Pembrokeshire.

Tamsin Abbott is a member of the British Society of Master Glass Painters and has exhibited with them as well the Museum of British Folklore, the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, and many other UK galleries. Wild Folk is her first book as a stained glass illustrator. Tamsin's work is inspired by the British landscape, folklore and fairytale, she has been creating painted stained glass panels from her Herefordshire home for over twenty