Elise Cakebread

Elise Cakebread is a Melbourne based textile artist and designer. She finds the pandemic lockdown period a “lively and chaotic” continuation of her domestic life. The journal represents her visual-oriented experimentation on pattern, texture, and the daily repetition of life. Elise details her domestic life through the language of textile design. 

We asked Elise three questions about her experience of isolation, completing this journal and her hope for the future. These are her responses: 

Describe the experience of the period of isolation for you.

I have been at home with my family including a just turned one year old and a two-year-old. So, the isolation period has been lively and chaotic to say the least. In a sense it is just a continuation of the very domestic life we were living before lockdown, albeit a heightened version of that.

What does your book represent and how did you approach the challenge?

My book is an exploration of pattern, texture and repetition in my daily life. It is a focus on the small details of domestic life from the perspective of textile design.

What do you hope will change in Australia as a result of the pandemic?

I hope we come out of this with a renewed sense of the importance of health, happiness, dignity and equality for all members of our society and the motivation to act on that.

Elise Cakebread is a textile-based artist and designer. She founded her textile design studio Cakebread in 2013.
Driven by experimentation within traditional textile processes and techniques, Elise’s work focuses on the tensions created by the unusual or unexpected contrasts that emerge between materials, forms, colours, textures and scale.
Through these methods Elise explores ideas of materiality, tactility, craft, disposability and the ornamental.
Elise’s cross-disciplinary approach gives life to sculptural work, decorative objects, accessories and soft furnishings. 

elisecakebread.com

View Elise Cakebread's journal here:

Image: Elise Cakebread, Design/Isolate Journal (detail), 2020.