Interview with the Tribal Temptress

January 24, 2013 by Feral Strumpet

Tania Hudson, aka The Tribal Temptress

I love supporting other handmade businesses, especially if their products are guaranteed to make me feel totally glamorous– and The Tribal Temptress is one such small business. I’d like you to meet my friend Tania Hudson, the mastermind behind the beautiful bindis and headresses. While Tania makes adornments for dancers, many of her pieces, like her flower hair sticks and “hair bindis” can work with every day outfits. I wear mine every chance I get, and if I’m feeling blue, wearing one of Tania’s pieces always puts me in a good mood, even if I’m not performing. I asked her a few questions about how she started her business and what inspires her.

What inspired you to begin making adornments for tribal dancers?

I’m a total costuming geek! When I got into tribal belly dance, I wanted to make sure I looked the part but it was so difficult to find great costuming accessories at an affordable price, so I started to make my own. I started to make bindis, hair flowers, headdresses and larger costume items such as bellydance bras and belts. People started taking notice, liked what I’d made and it wasn’t such a big leap then to start making some accessories to sell at a local hafla. It just kinda grew from there.

What are your favourite materials?

Flowers are a big part of my designs, but I’m a total magpie too. I get ensnared by the sparkly stuff! I love vintage costume jewellery, especially old diamante which has an elegant lustre all of its own. I love Kuchi jewellery and costume adornments, strings of beads, African and Tibetan jewellery and crystals – oh how I love crystals! If I ever get chance, I’d love to visit the Swarovski factory and be surrounded by all that sparkliness!

You’ve said in the past that everything you make has an owner– and at your stall you always give dancers a lot of personal attention and styling advice. Do your customers and the dance community influence your work?

Very much so. I’ve made several pieces with certain dancers’ face shapes and hairstyles in mind, unbeknown to them of course, and then they’ve actually come along and bought them! It’s a bit uncanny really, but every piece really does have an owner. Sometimes several different people come along and try on the same headdress and it might look good on them all but somehow it just isn’t quite right, then all of a sudden the right person comes along and I know that that headdress is absolutely right for that person. It looks part of that person somehow, sounds bizarre I know, but it’s true! I won’t let anyone buy a headdress if it doesn’t suit them and always try to steer them to the most suitable headdress for their face shape. I want each dancer to wear my creations and feel like a star. When I’m doing a custom order for someone, I spend some time looking at their photos to get a feel for their dance personality and their face shape so that I can make them just the right headdress. It can be tricky when you’ve never met the person, but as far as I know, I’ve not got it wrong yet.

As a dancer yourself, what music and dance disciplines inform what you make?

I’m a Goth girl at heart, old skool Goth and gothic rock floats my boat but I have other quite eclectic tastes in music – I love world music, classical, folk, bollywood… everything except jazz!. As far as dancing is concerned, my first love is tribal fusion but I also love the ATS costume styling. The first bellydance performance I saw was a tribal fusion dancer dancing with Daughters of Gaia at the Goddess Conference in Glastonbury a few years ago. I have no idea who she was, but I was totally blown away by the style of dancing and the costuming. I came home, went on Youtube and discovered Rachel Brice, Zoe Jakes, Sharon Kihara, Mardi Love and a whole host of other fabulous dancers. That’s it, I was hooked. They’ve been my inspiration for dance and costuming ever since. And by the way, if you’re reading this blog and you’re that dancer in Glastonbury, it would be lovely to know who you are!

Are there any new materials or techniques you will be rolling out in the near future? What temptations can we look forward to?

I’m never too sure about revealing what’s likely to be coming up as I tend to change my mind like the weather! I might start to make a design I have in mind and then get sidetracked into a whole new design. I can say that I’m working on a couple of headdresses that will be very special indeed, using Victorian fabrics, Art Deco pieces and, ooo, anything else that takes my fancy. And there’ll be more decorated bras and belts coming along this year too. Hopefully I’ll also get time to make some costuming for myself – a rare treat!

Where can people find your work online?

I’m on Facebook, that’s where I sell most of my work. I’ve got an Etsy shop and a new website – it’s a bit of a work in progress at the moment but once I figure it out properly, it will be a place to showcase my work, especially my commissioned pieces.

www.facebook.com/thetribaltemptress

www.thetribaltemptress.co.uk

www.etsy.com/shop/thetribaltemptress

I also make eclectic tribal inspired jewellery using vintage and upcycled costume jewellery under the name Magpie Moon:

www.facebook.com/magpiemoontribal

www.etsy.com/shop/magpiemoontribal

I’ve Got a Hammer

November 28, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

Mackintosh Rose Ring.

Rings have always fascinated me. They are the kind of jewellery I wear every day. I collect them obsessively and if I visit somewhere I love, they are the souvenir I look for. But until now, I never made rings. For the past few months I’ve been perfecting techniques which basically involved hammering things beyond reason, doing something called “work hardening” and bathing it all in the sulphurs of hell.

The Fossil Hunter Ring by Feral Strumpet

Tiny enough to be carried across an ocean, rings are some of the only heirlooms I possess. The most sentimental of jewellery, the ring is also the most intimate. I have a large, antique emerald ring that once belonged to my Grandmother. She wore it constantly– washing the dishes in it along with everything else, and the long, vertical angles of the cut have been worn down, the stone frosted over with her daily labours. I have taken it to jewellers to get it sized to fit me and all have wanted to polish it. No way!

Perhaps because it was the first jewellery I loved– straight from the gum ball machine– nothing seems as perfect as these little circles for the fingers.

I have always made things with my hands– my whole life if I wasn’t making something, I didn’t really feel alive. It’s only now that I make my living at it. Here they are, my rings, from my hands to yours.

The Druid’s Well

November 21, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

Beltane fires were burned upon the crags here in bygone centuries.

-The Northern Antiquarian.

Last weekend M hiked to the Druid’s Well in Bingley and took many wonderful photos of this holy well. The photos reveal a lush Seelie Court. It is a place of historic fairy sightings and where the destroying angel mushroom grows.

The Druid’s Spring, Bingley, West Yorkshire

The companion well, The Altar Well, seems now buried but the Druid’s Well still swells from the earth in a sandy bed, fern-draped and lush with lichen. Also called the Druid’s Spring or Hollin (Holy) Well. M washed his face there.

Perhaps I can visit one day– though the way is quite steep and my dodgy foot often will not allow me such daring.

Beltane Bride Set, inspired by the lichen of the Druid’s Temple in Ilton, West Yorkshire. For more jewellery inspired by fairy landscapes, please visit my Etsy shop.

The Alchemical Casting Process Revealed

September 21, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

My pieces are made with the materials of my dreams– beautiful semi-precious stones, well made TieraCast findings, glass from my glass-blower friend Luke in Wiltshire and beautiful hand cast pewter based on tiny sculptures by artist Cynthia Thornton. In this video, Greg explains how he creates the elements which I use in many of my designs.

Selling at Whitby Gothic Weekend

April 30, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

This past weekend I had a stall at the Whitby Gothic Weekend. Whitby is one of my favourite places on earth, and for the past seven years I have attended the Gothic Festival there. So it was with a great deal of excitement I prepared to sell at the event. I am grateful to all the friends and shop supporters who came by and said hello– you kept me sane!

Sadly, selling at Whitby was a disappointment. I found myself displaying all my lovingly hand made, beautiful things in a fluorescent-lit gymnasium which stank of stale sweat and childhood trauma, trading next to people who were flogging 5 pound lingerie and Vivienne Westwood knock-offs. Whatever I was doing was drowned out by cheap tat displayed as if we were at a car boot or swap meet.

One thing I learned this weekend– the context of a market defines you. I had a difficult time explaining that I was a local Yorkshire artist, and that everything was handmade and carefully sourced. My prices didn’t make sense to people, who were seeing bins of things for a pound, all imported sweat-shop type goods.

There was no security and though traders were encouraged to leave their stalls up overnight, the doors were not locked at 5 and people came and went, rummaging through the stalls of traders who were no longer there. I ended up taking all my stock home every night because of this.

As the weekend wore on and sales in general seemed low, other traders became territorial. The woman selling cheap imported jewelry behind me blocked the aisle leading to my stall from the entrance insuring everyone would have to walk the entire perimeter of stalls just to reach mine. Yet, there was no one to deal with this besides a single volunteer who was a stall holder herself. One evening she broke down in tears because she had so much work to do and so many demands put on her.

Yet, traders pay a premium to sell at this event–where is the money going? I split the cost with my stall neighbor, the wonderful Paula from Deadly Desires. We are both new businesswomen and booking Whitby was a big experiment and risk for both of us.

What surprised me was the complete lack of any feeling of community amongst the traders or shoppers, many of whom were not goths at all but people who had come to photograph “freaks” or people in fancy dress– WGW has a lot of people who have no relation to the gothic sub-culture but like to dress up in Victorian costumes and promenade.

I learned that as a trader I need to find markets where the other sellers are also artists and makers, and where we are supported as such. Unless there are major changes to the way things are run at Whitby Gothic Weekend, I will not be selling there again.

What did you dream last night?

April 25, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

The Ghost of Eastry Church, Kent.

Last night was Saint Mark’s Eve. There is an old tradition in the North of England which required parishioners of certain churches to hold a vigil through the night, watching for apparitions of themselves. Those who saw themselves enter– as rotting corpses or marching coffins– were sure to die in the coming year. Fair warning; time to prepare.

Though I now live in a city that makes a good deal of its living off the undead, and the myriad ghosts of this little walled town outnumber us, I am not jaded. It is easy to see how death walks with us, here, despite the garish morbidity of all the ghost tours on offer, with their own inoculation to this mystery. With that said, I have never seen on heard a ghost in York. (What will usually send a shiver are recordings I find, actively look for trolling about on the internet– either supposedly photographic or EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Perhaps what is more disturbing is the medium, and the necessity of contact rather than the contact itself. But that is a topic for another post.)

Perhaps the vigil of Saint Mark’s Eve is a version of an older custom on Walpurgisnacht, or the Eve of the Feast of the English Saint Walpurgis, who is a Christian manifestation of an older harvest Goddess. Walpurgisnacht was held on the night of the witch’s sabbath, May 30th, when the doors between worlds were open for spirits to pass between. Probably the best time to hold such a vigil!

Older still at this time, were rituals involving cakes and dreams of love in the night. Bake a bannock in silence. Put it under your pillow. In the night you will see his face. Come morning, eat the bannock; sweep the crumbs from the bed.

Blessed Terminalia, Dear Reader

February 23, 2012 by Feral Strumpet

The drystone walls of the Yorkshire Dales

When I think of Yorkshire, the first image in my mind is of wide open space marked by the patchwork of drystone walls. And there are invisible boundaries, tracks: public foot paths often are the very same Death Roads, or ancient rights-of-way through private land, which allowed people their funerary rites. And there are fragments of Roman roads, as well as dream-paths or ley lines.

This island is a sacred palimpsest, scored and re-scored, and yet all the marks remain as either archeological evidence or fairy paths.

Today is the Roman Festival of Terminus, the god of borders and endings. Ovid, in his usual warm, vivid and simple verse, describes the ritual:

Terminus, whether a stone or a stump buried in the earth,

You have been a god since ancient times.

You are crowned from either side by two landowners,

Who bring two garlands and two cakes in offering.

An altar’s made: here the farmer’s wife herself

Brings coals from the warm hearth on a broken pot.

The old man cuts wood and piles the logs with skill,

And works at setting branches in the solid earth.

Then he nurses the first flames with dry bark,

While a boy stands by and holds the wide basket.

When he’s thrown grain three times into the fire

The little daughter offers the sliced honeycombs.

Others carry wine: part of each is offered to the flames:

The crowd, dressed in white, watch silently.

Terminus, at the boundary, is sprinkled with lamb’s blood,

And doesn’t grumble when a sucking pig is granted him.

I love the affectionate irony in the last line, which speaks to an intimacy Ovid (and it might be said Romans in general) had with the gods. What a hard blessing are boundaries and wise endings, and how necessary.