Liss Cooke
Instagram: lisscookeembroidery
Liss hails from Staffordshire and studied Textile Design at Birmingham City University before going on to complete an MA in Textile Design Innovation at Nottingham Trent. Liss previously worked as the Head of Embroidery at Mary Katrantzou, and joined Hand & Lock in 2020. She now works as our Senior Digital Embroidery Designer & Production Coordinator.
With a passion for pushing the limits of contemporary embroidery, Liss joined the Hand & Lock digital embroidery department with the aim of expanding the scope, capacity and range of digital embroidery available to our clients. Liss has also been instrumental in the development & expansion of our digital embroidery class offerings within our school.
Previous experience as a hand embroidery designer at Mary Katrantzou, a swatch designer developing both machine & hand embroidered textiles at Acorn Conceptual Textiles, and as a lecturer has given Liss a wide understanding of textile theory and practice. Skilled at crafting embroideries with exciting textures and materiality, she also excels at explaining the possibilities and process to her clients. Liss is passionate about embroidery digitising too & finds working with our state of the art digital embroidery software 'Wilcom' one of the most creative parts of her role.
Liss oversees the design, sampling & production of all in-house bespoke digital embroidery projects, while also managing large scale off-site productions. Liss is also busy designing & developing many of the machine embroidered products you find in the H&L shop!
Project case study: Brian May Jacket
In the summer of 2022, Liss worked on an incredibly exciting project. Liss was tasked with designing the embroidery for a bespoke jacket for Brian May of 'QUEEN' for his performance at the late Queen's platinum jubilee concert.
Liss & her team, worked closely with Brian himself & his stylist Sarah Murray to design & develop the stunning, fully embroidered design. The design idea was conceptualised by Brian himself and contributed to by Sarah Rugg, an artist friend of Brian's who painted many of the motifs that were later translated into digital embroidery. The design featured over 20 different british wildlife animals, including a stag, eagle owl, otter & squirrel to name a few. The design was connected with foliage and british wildflowers.
The whole design was embroidered with metallic silvers & gunmetal grey threads for a tonal finish that was rich in materiality and textural variation. See an example of one of Liss' favourite animal motifs below.
