How to Display a Stole

The studio recently received this email:

I found your facebook and blog site through a search.  I am trying to find ideas for a friend who wants to display her stole in her home. 

I am not a fabric artist (I am a painter and poet), but a couple of years ago, my friend commissioned me to create a stole for her ordination.   Now she is interested in displaying it on a wall in her home as fabric art, but also wants it easily accessible to wear when she needs to.  Have you ever been involved in hanging a stole on a wall?  And do you have any ideas for her in terms of what to use?  


My answer was:
If I were displaying a stole in a home or an office I would use a similar method but dress it up a bit. I’d use a decorative curtain rod with finials that was suspended from the wall by decorative wall brackets. Kimonos are often displayed as art in this same manner. So the front long skinny pieces of the stole would drape over the rod. The back tip would hang over the rod and the inside of the back tip would face the viewer. You could use a rod the same color as the wall so it melted away visually or use one that stood out boldly and let it become part of the fiber art. This method of draping a stole over a rod would be especially lovely if the stole were reversible.


The artist replied with the good idea of adding a bit of felt to the top of the hanging rod would allow the stole not to slide off. And actually for the photo in this post the stole is rather light weight so it is being held in place by two straight pins holding the layers together from the back side.


Jane (that sent the email) is an artist who's work is bold and lively yet fresh and the addition of her poetry is lovely. See here work here. Don't miss the wonderful stole she writes about under the "other artwork" category and the commission tab has a lovely opportunity from this artist to have one of a kind works of art for special occasions and people created.