frottage 2​020-22

burnished surface series. 1 | 2 | 3

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With this frottage technique I am referring to a tradition among the miners in the Fife region of Scotland. After each shift, the men were pulled out of the "pit" covered in coal dust. When they got home, their wives or children washed them in a tin bath, but didn’t wash their spine. Instead, they used the Venus mount of their hands to buff and polish the carbon powder into their skin. Eventually it became permanent. They believed that this strengthened their backs. White Shirts, Black Jackets, Roman Catholic Sunday Best Clothes covering black paintings.