Introduction

by Annabelle Campbell, Director, David Parr House

Launching our 2026 programme theme exploring maps, travel and journeys, London-based, French-born artist Laetitzia Campbell’s embroidered works trace personal and collective journeys, transforming the traditional craft of needlework into contemporary artistic expression.

Her pieces speak to the quiet labour of hands, yet combine with free-machine embroidery, moving thread through and with fabric, each stitch marking time and distance travelled – both physical and intangible.

Working with layers of meaning, Campbell builds narratives through material, texture and form, creating works that are simultaneously intimate and expansive. Her embroideries capture the liminal spaces of transition – the moments between departure and arrival, the threshold of home, the pathways we traverse daily without conscious thought.

Textile has always been a medium of memory and movement. Artists working with textile materials engage with one of humanity’s oldest technologies – one intimately connected to shelter, protection, and the marking of significant moments. The repetitive processes of weaving, stitching and knotting create a rhythm that mirrors the passage of journeys: each action building upon the last, creating pattern and meaning through accumulated gesture.

Textile’s fundamental relationship to the body makes it particularly potent for exploring personal narrative. We are wrapped in cloth from birth to death; fabric touches our skin, warms us, identifies us. Its flexibility allows for layering – both literal and metaphorical – enabling artists to build complex narratives through transparency, concealment and the interplay of surface and depth.

The inherent labour of textile practice also speaks to journey and endurance. These are slow processes requiring sustained attention, patience and physical presence. Yet contemporary artists often combine traditional hand-stitching with machine embroidery, bringing together slow contemplative practice with swifter, freer creation – a dialogue between control and spontaneity, meditation and momentum that mirrors the varied rhythms of travel itself.

Laetitzia Campbell’s practice carries an added layer of poignancy in this context. Trained for and employed within the fashion industry, her decision to reclaim her technical skills for her own artistic work represents its own form of journey – a departure from commercial production towards personal expression. This trajectory mirrors the historical arc of many craft traditions: skills developed in service of industry or patronage becoming vehicles for individual voice and vision.

In reclaiming embroidery skills learned through formal training for her own creative practice, Campbell mirrors David Parr’s radical act of bringing his skilled labour home to Gwydir Street, transforming his modest terraced house into a personal canvas. Both artists understood that the skills learned and honed in service of others’ visions could become vehicles for personal expression.

Displayed publicly for the first time, Richard Hopkins Leach’s 1814 travel journal provides a link to an earlier personal journey whose history is entwined with that of David Parr House. This handwritten and illustrated text documents a young man’s walk from Cambridge to Cornwall.

Leach’s observations of early nineteenth-century England – French prisoners, cardsharps, communities on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution – offer a vivid snapshot of a world about to be transformed by the railway age. This young man was the father of Frederick Richard Leach, founder of FR Leach & Sons, the decorating firm that would collaborate with William Morris and other prominent Arts and Crafts designers, later employing David Parr as an apprentice.

Gwydir Street itself exists because of journeys. The railway arrived in Cambridge in 1845, enabling Leach’s firm to operate nationally, working with clients from Dundee to the Isle of Wight. These transport links took Parr to Macclesfield, Cheshire, where he met his wife Mary-Jane Wood. Every element of David Parr House can be traced back to movement and connection.

Campbell’s contemplative works remind us that every journey – whether Leach’s walking tour, Parr’s work travels or the daily passage home – shapes who we are and become and what we create.

DAVID PARR HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE PRESENTS: LAETITZIA CAMPBELL On Your Way Home, What did you Find?