Tarraway Hoofpress

About Shop

Artifacts of Misrule – Artwork inspired by folkloric characters, tales of devilry, Cornish legendary characters and stories from Steampunk/GeorgianPunk musician GurdyBird.

Traditional characters and the reversal of roles has always been an interest of Tamsyn who goes under the name of Tarraway Hoofpress, Tarraway being a variant name of a Rumplestiltskin-esque Cornish Devil or Bucca from an old Cornish Christmas Guise play named “Duffy and the Bucca”. 

The “Hoofpress” derives from imagining a printing devil stamping prints out with his cloven foot, (she actually uses a spoon to press the original prints. She has a keen interest in folk tales, customs, devilry, the eccentric clergy and history of anywhere but particularly in those of Cornwall.

Musically, she is known as GurdyBird, who layers numbers of synthesiser melodies, counter melodies, percussion and drum machines, alongside her hurdy gurdy and sometimes a recorder, zither and violin. She composes much of her music herself, with tales of seafaring (she performs mainly in the form of a pirate, if time travel were available in the Georgian era), the Other Side, plague doctors, the world turned upside down, and various characters and places as their themes and reimagines traditional tunes with her own style and dark humour, which can be seen in videos on youtube and often projected or screened at performances. This side of her can be seen at www.gurdybird.co.uk

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