Nathaniel Mackie is a tailor dressmaker and designer, graduate of Kingston School of Art and recipient of the Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award for Textiles and Fashion.
Nathaniel is also custodian and dealer of artist, sculptor and flamenco dancer Ron Hitchins‘ art. In 2023, Nathaniel exhibited his designs at Dorich House:
Seguiriya; seguir
1. to follow · 2. (continuar) to continue , carry on
Nathaniel Mackie’s current work is an homage to an extraordinary man, Ron Hitchins, born in 1926 in London’s East End of Chinese-Lithuanian heritage. He was a prolific artist, sculptor, tailor and pioneer in Spanish dance with a huge zest for life. Mackie weaves Hitchins’ motifs into fabric designs and accessories to create a collection that holds narratives of his community in Hackney.
This installation is a celebration of joy, sorrow, and commemoration; a desire to carry on the memory of Ron Hitchins and the wealth of creativity and craft he left behind. Mackie says, ‘His works echo the frantic, intense creative energy he chose to live by, they sound and buzz with rhythm, music, and eccentricity, and have begged me to carry on, honour, and follow through on a path he unintentionally carved.’
Hitchins was a highly prolific artist who worked with a vast array of media; from ceramic, plaster, metals, Perspex, fibreglass, wood, paint, ink and Biro, to felt-tip pen across his active period of some sixty years. But it is for his idiosyncratic and instantly recognisable small clay (terracotta) tiles that he is celebrated today. Carved and impressed by hand with low relief geometric designs from a shallow block of terracotta clay and baked in a kiln in his basement, he produced tens of thousands from the mid-1960s until the 2000s. He is also known for his hundreds of intricate and colourful drawings, all visibly similar yet incredibly unique when examined closely. He carried on drawing these abstract and complex patterns up until a few weeks before his death.
Mackie enjoys having a relationship with the person he is making clothes for; where garments can be lived in and go beyond being a garment. In an attempt in making artisan bespoke pieces that can hopefully last a lifetime, extending Ron’s drawings to the body becomes another way of prolonging and preserving the longevity and heritage of such special work, rather than have it sit idly posthumously in an archive box.
The Flamenco suit on display is cut in the style of a traditional matador costume but modernised for contemporary modern wear and dance. The jacket is structured and canvassed in a classic English tailored style, screen printed with Ron’s drawings and embellished with golden ribbon as a way to preserve the decadence of a matador whilst retaining its modernity. Ron loved life, dance, and people and the works on display hope to carry on and embody his generous and exuberant spirit.
I would like to give a big thank you to the Chelsea arts club Trust who have harboured my (Nathaniel’s) learning by bringing me into a fantastic community of artists, expanding my artistic endeavours and facilitating the possibility to create. It was through them that I was introduced to Dorich House, through all of our shared love of Flamenco. Dora Gordine often had her friend and muse Trader Faulkner model for her drawings – she was excited by the shapes and lines of the Flamenco figure. Ron and Trader were also dear friends and he often attended Ron’s famous parties at his house in Hackney. A further interesting connection through all this is Tito Heredia, a man I first met at Ron’s Funeral, playing a Siguiriya whilst we brought the coffin down the church. He was Trader’s guitarist for their show ‘Lorca’ and now I dance to his music in Flamenco classes and shows of my own.
Therefore; this installation, with the drawings of Trader facing it on the opposite wall, is a testament to these people and how they still bring people together through their shared love of Flamenco and art, as they were so famous for doing in their own lives.
Instagram: @nathanielmackie
