​

The Sunbury Gallery is thrilled to present this exhibition of work by a much admired local resident and colleague Pamela Judd, who lived in Sunbury-on- Thames for over 60 years.

Pam was the Chief Embroider on the Sunbury Millennium Embroidery and coordinated the 150 or so embroiderers who worked together to create this extraordinary work.

Pam came to Sunbury with her mother and twin sister in 1940 to escape the bombing in North London, initially staying with her grandfather, Richard Winter, who ran the White Horse pub on the corner of The Avenue from 1923 to 1953.

Pam was a prolific and skilled embroiderer who trained and obtained her City & Guilds at the ‘Hampton School of Needlework’, a widely regarded school which sadly no longer exists. She began depicting lost houses and scenes from Sunbury before the Millennium Embroidery came into being. She developed many of the skills that she was later able to use and impart to others in the making of the larger work.

Her involvement in the Millennium Embroidery began in 1996 when she was approached by David Brown and John Stamp to oversee the making and construction of the embroidery, which was then just an idea. She began contacting a number of embroidery friends who agreed to help with the work and in February 1997 an inaugural exhibition was held in the Mary’s Parish Hall in Sunbury showing the design for the embroidery and eliciting help from other embroiderers. Thirty- five more signed up on the day and over the next few years this number grew to almost 150 - people of all ages and skills from across the community whose exquisite work now forms a permanent record of the village.

Throughout the years Pam’s intense passion and observation has left us with a time-capsule and a legacy of exquisitely embroidered images. Her work, with its detail and freeness and inventive use of materials, has a unique and almost painterly quality that leaves a moving and lasting impression on the viewer.

A number of items from this collection were on show at the Embroider y Gallery in 2009.

Pam was a long-time volunteer and Trustee of the project and her work is in public and private collections in the UK and overseas.

 

 

​