Facets of Avalon

A pioneering and colourful Glastonbury mother-and-daughter artist partnership 

I recently spent a lovely afternoon chatting with mother and daughter artists Jan Billings and Rachel Reilly in their beautiful studio and shop ’Facets of Avalon’ in Glastonbury’s Archer’s Way.

The Facets of Avalon shop opened in 1999. Jan trained in textiles at the Royal College, the shop was an outlet for her textile work and the Aura Soma colour therapy system which she used to give readings and for massage. Later, daughter Rachel brought in her jewellery making, most of which is composed of coloured fine copper wires, knitted then moulded into beautiful organic forms.

I start by asking Rachel when she started on her journey as a maker: “I’ve always been a maker, I grew up with artistic parents who met at art college, they ran a pottery in the garage and we didn’t have a TV. I started wire work when I was an undergraduate jewellery and silversmithing student. I was in the final year of my course when I took apart an old TV and realised I could use the wiring inside to make art. The course was very traditional, and I loved it, but they didn’t really know what to think when I started knitting wire, after a while they let me carry on with that in my final year. My dissertation was about how the jewellery and textile worlds overlapped. That was in 1991”. 

Making and Playing

Rachel starts by knitting the copper wire on a Brother knitting machine, to produce a strip of metal fabric, this can then be cut into sections which she then moulds and shapes with her hands. She tells me “As I shape it, it and it will just talk to me, forms will come about without any premeditation. It’s very fluid and organic, it’s a textile, even though it’s metal”. Rachel passes me a strip of the knitted copper wire, it’s surprisingly soft and malleable.

Rachel only works in copper, rather than precious metals, Rachel tells me  “Copper is the most recyclable metal on the planet, the copper wire I use is made for electronics. We never throw away anything away. I prefer the freedom to make and play without the huge material cost, which would take the fun out of it”. I ask Rachel if she invented the process and she tell me that although Arline Fisch used a knitting machine to knit copper wire, there’s no one promoting anything remotely similar to her work. 

“The copper reels are pre-coloured because it’s so fine I can knit 3 or 4-ply and mix colours as I’m knitting. All the jewellery starts as a flat square or rectangle straight off the machine, it’s the folding and moulding that takes the time”. 

Besides the knitted wire jewellery Rachel also makes figures from thicker gauge brass wire, it’s a  different process to the knitting and each figure is moulded from one piece of wire, starting with the toes, working up to the buttocks and then the rest of the form. The results are dynamic and graceful.

Life in Colour

Facets of Avalon is full of glorious colour, from the reels of wire above the knitting machine to the more organic colour palette used in Jan’s multi-media artworks. 

Rachel tells me “Colour is important to me, it brings a lot of joy and excitement to the making, being able to colour match to virtually anything for commissioned work. Jan does the same if someone gives her an interior pallet for a mural or silk painting commission”. 

It’s clear that Rachel’s love of colour comes from her mother, Jan reveals they were always changing room colours as the family was growing up. Rachel adds “I lost count of how many times the bathroom was painted, I’d come home and my bedroom would have changed colour. Even the car, a Beetle, got painted as soon as it arrived, later going from orange to turquoise, and then it fell apart. We even had a flight of stairs where every step was a different colour”. 

Berachah, a long-established Glastonbury B&B

Rachel was born in Eastbourne, but the family moved to Wells when she was two. Wells was really stuffy then, apart from the Good Earth wholefood shop. Jan had always had an attraction to Glastonbury and came over to town regularly, in those days Gothic Image was the only alternative shop. They moved to Street in the eighties, by the time Jan moved to Berachah in Glastonbury’s Well House Lane in the late eighties Rachel had left for college, but she did her first experiments with the knitting machine in Berachah.

I ask Jan what appealed to her about Glastonbury, she tells me it attracts people that appreciate the spiritual. “When we started doing B&B at Berachah, we painted each room a different Chakra colour. People liked the position on the Tor overlooking the Chalice Well Gardens. The White Spring was a reservoir then. I gave Aura Soma Readings and Massage, started silk painting and was making enamelled copper jewellery.  I supplied Heartfelt Trading in the Market Square with a selection of different items based on the chakras – each of the 7 shelves had a different coloured collection of jewellery, silk scarves, candles, and gemstones. No one else was doing that sort of thing at the time”. 

“People arrive at Berachah from all over the world with all sorts of expectations. Many people think the Michael and Mary lines cross under the Victorian brass bed in the Lilac Room, and hope that they are going to be recharged!”.  Berachah doesn’t have a view of the Tor as it’s literally on it. Jan does think it’s significant that Berachah is on the site of what was supposedly Dion Fortune’s temple.  The site next door, home to occultist  Dion Fortune and later historian Geoffrey Ashe, is now being recognized and preserved. 

Berachah still has four rooms for guests, but they don’t advertise any more because they tend to have groups and repeat visitors. As you’d expect, it’s still a very colourful house, with lots of Jan’s artwork in the rooms. Rachel describes it as being in the treetops, with its views out over the Levels. Find out more about the Berachah Bed and Breakfast.

After 25 years of painting on silk, Jan has moved into mixed media work now, incorporating gemstones and Rachel’s knitting into her work.  She was brought up by the sea in Gower and still finds it very inspiring.  She produces Panels of Torscapes and Seascapes. 

I suggest that Jan was something of a pioneer, which she brushes off gracefully, before mentioning that she also did astrology with a computer programme that linked the signs with gemstones and colours and published a book: ‘The Healing Power of Colour and Astrological Signs’.

Glastonbury Festival

The Glastonbury Festival has been an important influence on their lives, Jan and Rachel’s Dad used to go over to visit Michael and Jean on their classic motorbike, an Ariel Square 4, every Monday, they’d buy a pint of cream that lasted all week. They took Rachel to the first Glastonbury Festival in 1971, but all Rachel can remember is having cold feet. Jan recalls “There were no toilets, you had to take your turn by the hedge. One year the tent blew away!”

In the 80s Jan and her partner Tom Graves ran a typesetting business in Street, they used to produce the festival posters and in about 1979, they did the programme as well. Although Jan hasn’t been to the festival for decades, Rachel goes every year. Nowadays she takes the shop, originally as a stall in Green Crafts, then 5 years ago moving to the Field of Avalon. This year she’ll be on the market run between Greenpeace and the Field of Avalon, surrounded by other makers.

Facets of Avalon 

*With so many shops opening up in Glastonbury, we didn’t want to be just another crystal shop, we had our first shop on the corner by the Fisher’s Hill roundabout, we closed that shop on the Friday, opened the shop in Archer’s Way on the Monday”. The shop used to buy in clothes and had Jan’s silks made up into dresses. The customers were mostly alternative brides wanting a unique dress, they chose the colours and Jan would do the design, sometimes incorporating Rachel’s work too, they held a fashion show in the Town Hall about 15 years ago, with Rachel’s daughter and a friend modelling.

Rachel tells me it’s great to have been in business for such a long time, she’s not restricted to the shop either as now she’s got a camper, big enough for her and her partner and both their stock. Her partner Al is an engineer, he makes lights from windfall timber from the local area and repurposes cider bottles and reject plumbing pipe, sometimes they collaborate on a piece. They do an event once a month or so and are gradually becoming better known. People are starting to collect her work, they come back every year to the shop or the stall. Disney commissioned Rachel to make a collar to be worn for Ursula the Sea Queen in the Once Upon a Time TV series. 

The shop is currently closed on Mondays and Thursdays, but will soon be open six days a week. They open at 11 am and close at 4 pm. Rachel is often there working, she’s happy for people to come in and see the process and chat about commissions. Jan pops in when she can.

I loved these fun horns, even I would be tempted to wear them for Beltane. They are really light too, you could almost forget you had them on!

You can find out more on the Facets of Avalon website
Rachel is on Instagram as @facetsofavalon, Jan as @facets.of.avalon
You’ll find the shop just off the High Street at 1 The Archers Parade, Glastonbury BA6 9JA
Or give them a call at 01458 830003.

Not on Amazon

You’ll also find Rachel’s work on the ‘Not on Amazon’ Facebook page. Rachel describes it as “A huge ray of light in lockdown when all the events and shops and galleries closed and my income stream stopped”. Jamie Rackham started the Facebook group so friends could sell their work in November 2020, When Rachel joined there were 5000 members, 3 years later there are over 200,000 and it’s free. “It’s very simple and works very well, it’s for people who like supporting handmade goods. Rachel is the admin for not on Amazon Dorset and Somerset.  

All photos copyright Vicki Steward of Normal For Glastonbury