Global Manx voices woven into quilt celebrating the Manx language
An eye-catching artwork celebrating Manx language, heritage, and global connection has been unveiled as part of a new exhibition at the Manx Museum. Sniemmey lesh Snaienyn – Threads of Connection is a large-scale cyanotype quilt created by fine artist and lecturer Colette Davies, bringing together memories and personal reflections from the worldwide Manx community.
The quilt forms part of the new Mind Your Language! exhibition, presented by Culture Vannin and Manx National Heritage. Measuring just over 1.5 metres square, the work is a Treisht26 project, a Culture Vannin initiative that supports creative projects celebrating, developing, and boosting the use of Manx throughout 2026 in Blein ny Gaelgey Year of the Manx Language.
Colette Daviesinvited participants from across the globe to contribute digital images expressing their connection to Kathleen Faragher’s poem ‘To My Own Countrymen’, which was translated into Manx for the project by Bob Carswell. Both poems can be found at www.learnmanx.com/exhibition Participants shared images that reflected personal connections to the Island, through landscape, family, and memories. Some notable artists, including Kevin Atherton and Martin Hearne, also contributed pieces. The resulting quilt is a collective artwork, one that reflects identity, belonging, and the draw of the Island to the Manx diaspora.
Manx Language Development Officer for Culture Vannin, Ruth Keggin Gell, said:
“The Manx language is something that we can all share and feel part of – wherever we are in the world. At Culture Vannin, we love that this project has brought together people from across the Manx diaspora through Colette’s brilliant initiative: the Year of the Manx Language is for everyone, everywhere.”
The quilt was created using cyanotype printing, a technique that creates stunning white and Prussian blue images. In this instance, light-sensitive solution was applied to fabric and submitted images were exposed using sunlight, creating pale impressions against deep-blue backgrounds. The method can produce almost dreamlike results, where forms appear as luminous traces. Each cyanotype panel was hand-printed and stitched together by Colette: digital contributions became tactile fragments of memory through an analogue process.
Colette’s artistic practice largely focuses on oil painting and printmaking, and her work evokes a strong sensory connection with the Island, both in abstract and overt ways. The Creative Network website describes her as being ‘preoccupied by the idea of sharing an evocation of our island and how it feels to be rooted in this landscape’, and this is summed up beautifully by a post that Davies made on Facebook, on completion of the project:
“A quilt made of distance and memory, of heathery hills recalled from far shores, of voices scattered across the world finding each other in deep blue.”
Sniemmey lesh Snaienyn – Threads of Connection forms part of Mind Your Language! at the Manx Museum: an introductory, welcoming, and interactive exhibition about the Manx language which will run until 4th October.
