A Liverpool Museum project entitled ‘800 Lives’ has been initiated to celebrate Liverpool’s 800th birthday. Maeve Morris, co-founder, head costumier, and surdo player with the Liverpool Samba school band has been interviewed, here’s a transcript below:
The ongoing project is being archived here:
Eight Hundred Lives website
Maeve Morris
Maeve was born in Sheffield and came to study History and Politics at Liverpool University in 1972. She recalls:
” Like so many students, after graduation I stayed and made Liverpool my home. Apart from 5 years living in London I have lived in Liverpool all this time, at first in Aigburth and now Toxteth, my two favourite areas of the city”.
My first business venture
“I opened a bead shop in Mathew Street with my partner, in 1982. We sold beads from all over the world and made jewellery to order. We also sold jewellery wholesale in partnership with a friend Viv Dixon. We sourced exquisite art deco pieces in Paris and stones from Swarovski. In the late 1980s we diversified into selling clothes. I did a pattern-cutting course at the local art college and learned to design and make patterns.
We also taught ourselves to screen print. So like the jewellery, most of our stock was individual and different from other shops. We sold the shop in 1994.”
Liverpool samba and costumes
“My husband started the first samba school in Liverpool in 1995. A whole new and interesting world opened up, an introduction to carnival in Brazil, its music and amazingly constructed costumes. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Brazil 3 times and have met and worked with some of the great Carnavalescos in Rio. I now design and make carnival costumes. I do workshops with other samba schools and also with young people in schools and youth clubs. I also make costumes and head-dresses to order.”
The object of my affection
“My donated object to the eight hundred lives project is one of the first head-dresses I made that really emulated the beautiful ones I saw in Rio. It has some of the little pearls and an earring left over from the bead shop incorporated in the decoration. It’s a little worse for wear now, but has been worn at hundreds of events and festivals and hired out on numerous occasions. I still love it, but I can always make another one.”
Leave a Reply