BOTANICAL MOMENTS ON A GLASS PORCH

Vatla manor, Läänemaa
August 19 - September 29, 2020.

​

Artist Ülle Saatmäe has a special relationship with one of Läänemaa County's most beautiful early-classist manors, the Vatla manor - after the expropriation of the manors in 1919, Vatla School started to operate in said building. This is where Ülle completed her elementary and primary education. Even though the school was closed in 2017 the manor is being kept tidy and lively by the Vatla village association. 

​

Presumably at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, a glass veranda, modern for that time, was added to the manor complex, symbolising a comfortable and good life.

 

During the Soviet era, when Ülle went to school in Vatla manor, and a comfortable and good life was not fashionable, the veranda was used as a depository of gymnastics mats -  locked of course, to keep the children from wandering in. Therefore it was all the more exciting and tempting for the artist to organise her exhibition in this picturesque and somewhat mysterious place, the glass veranda of Vatla Manor. A luminous and beautiful space, like the aforementioned glass veranda, seems as if it had been created to display botanical printed textiles. The fabrics chosen for this exhibition were silk, wool and linen, and it's well worth mentioning that all the plants used in the botanical printing process were grown and picked within a 5 kilometre radius of the manor house, and some had even grown in the Vatla manor park.