Behind the scenes: Creating my ‘A herring is the fish for me’ collection

Did you know that that infamous breakfast dish - the kipper - is a smoked herring?

I’ve recently had a lot of fun working on a new collection inspired by a North East version of a traditional folk song about the herring, called A Herring’s Head / A Herrin’s Heid. I thought it might be interesting to share the process for how I created the original artwork and the subsequent art print and pattern designs, as well as a bit more about why I chose the herring as my inspiration for this piece.

A herring screen print

I thought I’d step outside of my comfort zone and put away my trusty fineliner pens and watercolours for this project. Instead, I created a stencil of the outline of three herrings in order to create a screen print. I wanted my prints to have slightly more detail, whilst still remaining fairly stylised, so I applied masking fluid to the screen behind the stencil to give a sense of the fishes eyes, their fins and the scale pattern. I used a bright blue acrylic ink to create my final print. This is how it looked:

Once the prints were dry, I scanned them and then used Adobe Photoshop to create an art print of the chorus from the Herrin’s Heid folksong, surrounded by shoals of herring making the outline of a fish. For one of the versions, I added some silver glitter highlights to two of the fish.

I then created a repeating pattern design of herring shoaling and re-coloured the artwork to create a number of different versions.

And to finish off, I created another screen print of a stylized fish scale and put this into a coordinating pattern as well as digitally creating a unique herringbone pattern in matching colours.

If you’d like to get your hands on these designs as fabric, wallpaper or home decor, they’re available to purchase from my shop on Spoonflower. The art print will be available from my shop later this spring - sign-up to my newsletter to be the first to know it is available!

But why did I choose a herring as my focus for this artwork?

A little bit of fishy history

The fishing of herring - the 'silver darlings' - along the East Coast of Scotland and England has a long history. At its peak in the 1800s thousands of boats followed the shoals of herring as they migrated southward over the summer months, leaving from Scotland in May down as far as East Anglia by October.

In fact, the history of the herring industry is all around us in North Northumberland. Whilst Berwick-upon-Tweed is mostly famous for salmon fishing, it was also a busy herring port in the 19th century with hundreds of local men employed as extra fishermen on the herring drifters, whilst the womenfolk worked as herring lasses, who gutted and packed the fish for export. In the late Victorian period, 700,000 barrels of herring were packed here each year. The remnants of this trade can be seen in Berwick in place names like 'Kipper Hill', whilst the old herring smokehouse at the foot of this street has been renovated into modern apartments. The hulls of old herring drifters (boats) can be seen on Holy Island, where they have been turned upside down and are used as storage sheds for fishermen's gear. L Robson's of Craster is a 4th generation traditional smokehouse where herring are still smoked in the original smokehouses, which are more than 130 years old.

A herring’s head / A herrin’s heid

I wanted to create some artwork that referenced the importance of the herring, not just as an industry but also in terms of the impact it had on the everyday lives of people living in fishing communities. I came across a traditional folk song - the Herring's Head - or in it's North East version, the Herrin's Heid:

What'll we de with the herrin's heid?

We'll mak it into loaves o' breid!

Herring's head, loaves o'breid

And all manner o' things.

Of all the fish that swim in the sea

The herrin' is the one for me!

How are ye the day? How are ye the day?

How are ye the day, my hinny-o?

What'll we de with the herrin's fins?

We'll mak' em into needles and pins,

Herrin's fins, needles and pins,

Herrin's heid, loaves o'breid

And all manner of things

Herrin's eyes / puddens and pies

Herrin's belly / a lass called Nelly

Herrin's back / a lad called Jack

Herrin's tail / a boat that sails

The verses of the song go on to outline how the herring met the community's needs by providing the basics (bread and clothing), a little bit of the good life (puddings and pies), the next generation (Nelly and Jack) and long-term economic stability (a new boat).

Sources and notes

If you’d like to know more about the history of herring fishing in North Northumberland, there’s some excellent information on the Mouth of the Tweed website as well as a downloadable ‘fishy trail’ walk around the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
There are also some interesting items from the herring fishing industry in the Berwick Museum and Art Gallery
And finally, I’m indebted to the Rigby’s Encyclopedia of the Herring for the information about the Herring’s Head folksong