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Vivien Exon - The Black Dragon of Peking
Category: Wall-hanging.
Peyote stitch, even-count, odd-count and free-form brickstitch, spiral rope chain.
Dragons are known in legends throughout most of the world. They were enormous reptiles. often with magical powers and the ability to talk. Dragons have been an integral part of the Chinese culture since the beginnings of recorded history. The Chinese dragon, known as lung, is a benevolent creature; wise, wild and wonderful. They were highly civilised and were generally kind and helpful to humans.
According to Chinese legend there were four colours of dragon - black, red, blue and yellow. They were wingless and scaly with a snake-like body and four short legs and the male of the species had horns and whiskers. They were supposed to have originated in the Chinese middle kingdom and always had five toes. The dragon by nature is a gregarious creature and some of them wandered the earth. However when the dragon travels East or North it loses toes. Hence when it reached Korea it had only four toes and by the time it got to Japan it had only three. Unable to walk with less than three toes the dragon never made it to Europe or the Americas but headed South or East back to China growing toes as it went! Unable to walk with more than five toes it failed to travel any further in that direction either!
Many Eastern dragons lived in water. That was the secret and the source of their power. They could afford to be nice because no-one would risk upsetting a monster in control of all the water! Dragons had a sense of humour and liked to tease lesser beings of whom they were slightly contemptuous as the following cautionary tale warns.
THE PEKING BLACK DRAGON
Once a Chinese emperor went to visit the black dragon near Peking. At the Black Dragon Pool he called the mighty monster. After a while, the emperor saw a black dragon about six inches long swim up to him. The emperor laughed. “Is this the great Black Dragon? You would be invisible in my goldfish pond!”
The dragon did not answer. He lifted one claw from the water. The claw began to grow. First it overshadowed the pool. Thcn the temple disappeared. Finally the dragon’s claw covered the mountain tops.
“Come down. Come down.” begged the emperor. “You are the greatest of all creatures. All that I have is yours. Only come down!” The dragon laughed and did as the emperor asked.
Dragons are not always what they seem.
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Let me tell you a bit about myself. My name is Vivien Exon; I have been married for a long time to David and have two redheaded sons, Henry (18) and George (16).
I often get asked why I started beading and that's a long story but I will try to be brief. As a small child (about 3) my grandmother, Minnie Sells, used to take me to have tea with a little old lady, Mrs Lynn. She used sterilised milk in her tea and I remember being warned not to say anything and just to smile and drink the tea no matter what I thought it tasted like! I was a good girl and did as I was told! One day Mrs Lynn gave me a string of graduated coral to ward off ill health. I loved my coral beads and wore them all the time and slept with them under my pillow. Eventually I got too big to wear the necklace and it broke. I carefully put it away and vowed to myself that one day I would "do something with it" to make it wearable again - it was to be nearly 35 years before I fulfilled that promise.
Life moved on, I went to school, then college, worked, married, had the children, set up my own dressmaking business and then went back to work. Then my grandfather, Edward Sells, died leaving me a small legacy. Having had a taste of working for myself I was looking for a business opportunity. I then simultaneously came across a book called 'Beadwork' by Ann E. Gill (now sadly out of print) and a course on beadwork at The Elstow Craft Centre in Bedford. I enrolled on the course and read the book. During the course and several that followed many of the students started to complain that they were fed up with having to buy their supplies from so many different places. If only there was a supplier with everything in so it was quicker and easier to obtain supplies and they could save on the postage charges etc. Now was my chance. "Give me six months". I realized I had spoken out loud and a silence had fallen in the room!! Exactly six months later at the beginning of October 1993 with the help of a grant from and training by The Bedfordshire Training and Enterprise Council ‘Charisma (Beadwork Supplies)’ went into business as a mail order company operating from my home.
In July 1995 I took a table for one day a week at The Corn Exchange Craft and Antique Centre in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. This is a beautiful little town full of architecture and speciality shops - quite unlike any other town you will ever visit. Hitchin has been an established market town for over 400 years and has plenty of parking. Lots to interest the non-beaders if you call in on your way to visit other people or places.
I gradually built up to the full 3 days a week the Centre was open and then took one of the permanent kiosks, sharing with another trader for a while before moving into a kiosk on my own. When The Corn Exchange closed at Easter 1997 one of the other crafters, Julie Skinner, and myself set up The Phoenix Craft Society (a co-operative style venture). We took a shop at 25 Churchyard, called it The Phoenix Craft Centre, and opened one week later with the goods of some 16 crafters from The Corn Exchange. I now have nearly 30 members all working different crafts. Churchyard runs round three sides of the church which is right in the centre of the town with a car park on it's fourth side so we are very easy to find.
I have 3 rooms open to the public in this beautiful eighteenth century building. Two are stuffed full of locally-made high quality hand-crafted gifts and the third is stuffed full of beads, books etc. Until the end of 1999 Julie and I shared the manning (Henry says that should be 'womanning' - he likes to be politically correct but I don't like to encourage too much male equality!!) of the shop between us but Julie wanted more time to "be a Granny" so from January 2000 I took over the shop completely.
Our website
E-mail: charismabeads.anti.spam@lineone.net
Snail Mail:
Charisma (Beadwork Supplies)
c/o Phoenix Craft Centre
Dept DC, 25 Churchyard
Hitchin, Herts.
SG5 1HP, UK.
Please remember that a catalogue will only be sent to you if you include your home address and a cheque or postal order for £2.50 (within the UK, £3.50 outside the UK), we do not accept any form of plastic.
The Black Dragon of Peking
I heard about the Delica Challenge quite by accident. My supplier of books in the USA sent me a copy of ‘The Sea’ by mistake! A delightful error. I had always wanted to bead a dragon and when I saw the Delica challenge subject for 1999 it seemed an ideal opportunity to do one. I have always done cross-stitch, tapestry, embroidery etc as hobbies and have therefore made a lot of pictures over the years so it seemed obvious to me to do a wall hanging. My main problems were that I had never entered a competition before (or since) and therefore had no idea what sort of standard was required, I have done very little designing and I can’t draw. However, I decided to do my best and see what happened – at least I would have made a dragon!
The design was based on a screen shot taken from a computer game, using Stitchpainter and a lot of time and patience. Having printed out the design I then worked the body of the dragon in peyote stitch, experimenting with colours until I achieved the effect I wanted. I then added the background bit by bit until the dragon hung well. I had originally planned only a small area of background but the dragon wouldn’t hang flat and kept curling up! I added more background until he hung flat but then he didn’t hang straight so I had to add more until the whole piece balanced. I had to then find a longer brass bar than I had originally bought but I managed to find one. At last he was finished.
I re-read the first chapter in ‘The Sea’ and the Carol Wilcox-Wells quote jumped out at me. …..It is so important that every bead be right…… Was every bead right? No, one had broken when I was finishing off a thread. My father always said, "Do the best you can. No-one can every ask you to do more than that." Had I done my best? No, the whole thing was a technical mess! I now had 10 days before I needed to post the entry. I started again. The final piece took 80 hours intensive work – yes, that’s 8 hours a day plus running the business – blow the house and the family can all cook, can’t they?
I had originally planned to use spiral rope chain for the hanging cord in a mixture of the colours used for the body of the dragon. The spiral rope worked but the colours didn’t. I made a new chain using the same transparent beads as the background, which was much better. (The original chain made a nice spectacle chain by the way!) His feelers had a tendency to flop rather than curl so I used a fine wire to slightly stiffen them.
Just to make sure that all was now OK I re-read the entry rules. Oh no, disaster! I should have found an actual myth or folk tale on which to base my work! Could I find an actual legend that fitted the piece? I was VERY lucky to find the legend of ‘The Black Dragon of Peking’ because it was very important to me that the dragon in the legend should have the same number of toes as my dragon!
What was the hardest part of the whole project? Sue Maguire and I posted our entries together and as she walked away from me to hand the parcel in at the Post Office she turned round to me and said, "Say goodbye!" I cried. Whilst working the dragon he had become "him" not "it". It felt like the first time both my boys went to school – I was bereft of a companion!