TinkeringTimes

How to Weave c1908. My Grandfather's manual for the Lancashire cotton industry.

I happened to have a meeting at a very important weaving museum. Queen Street Mill, the last operational steam powered weaving shed in the world, right here on my Lancashire doorstep. 

It led to a conversation back home about our family history of working in the Lancashire weaving mills, which in turn led to me being given this book.
Manuscript Notes of Weaving by James Holmes. From around 1908.
We don't know the exact date, but an interesting passage in it talks about the beginnings of the introductions of automatic looms. This was an era that drastically changed the Lancashire cotton industry by increasing the potential for productivity four-fold and then eight-fold, as weavers began to operate several looms at once. Ultimately the automatic loom caused the downfall of the industry as it meant productivity could be increased in other countries, where labour was cheaper, so England eventually became priced out of the market and almost all the mills closed down, leading to mass unemployment and poverty.

The book was my Grandfather's introduction to weaving. Part manual, part text book. The illustrations are so delicate and technical and beautiful. It covers many ways to create texture and pattern using the Jacquard loom (and later looms which benefited from the same techniques); and how to assemble and maintain the different looms and their parts. Only looking through these now do I understand what a true craft it was. Such a skill to understand the intricacies of how to place the warp and weft to make the fabric rise and chase itself around the cloth, one fibre at a time. I'm so honoured to have been given this book. It's been a delight to look at.

Coal on Cotton

You may know I'm from a gritty part of Northern England where the textile industry dominated the landscape and families of every town around. I grew up in a three storey house built in the 1700s, where the top floor, my bedroom, was formerly the place where looms were kept for the family to work on.

Like everywhere else in Lancashire, the industrial revolution swept through and took home workers into hundreds of thousands of factories across black smoke soaked hills and valleys. Where once mills stood on every corner, now precious few remain. Fewer still in working order, as global textile industries have moved trade elsewhere. 

However, the Queen Street Mill, just a few miles from my home town, still runs. Still churns and chugs and judders and jolts. You may have seen it on the film The King's Speech. It's an unglamorous place tucked away behind an unglamorous run down old town. But it's a gem. An insight into what runs through many Northern families like mine and shapes the way we feel about the past, our families and our landscape.

I didn't know how much this background ran through me and shaped me when I was little. Hints of it started to show in my degree, when I wrote my dissertation about the Indian influence on British homes in the form of decorative textiles, and I learned more about the strange relationships between the two countries.

As part of Manchester International Festival, Indian artist Nikhil Chopra is creating a performance which explores these same relationships. Coal on Cotton will take place in The Whitworth Art Gallery - itself home to a rich collection of historical textiles including many that illustrate the relationships between Britain and India.

Above, is the video of Nikhil visiting the tucked away Queen Street Mill. It's a little thing but I'd like you to know the mill is not in Manchester (an error in the video) but in that small tucked away, seldom visited corner of East Lancashire. And I'd encourage you to go there for yourself. 

You can visit Chopra's performance for yourself in July: http://www.mif.co.uk/event/nikhil-chopra 

 

Secrets & Codes. The Finale

The hard work from the Secrets & Codes project has all paid off. 30 ten year olds were able to show off their hard work in front of their friends, family and local community at the launch of the Hadfield & Padfield Heritage Trail. After a busy few weeks pressing, framing and labelling back at Tinkering Textiles headquarters, all the textile pieces were displayed alongside work from other schools in the village for the official grand opening of the Trail. 

The embroidered lines represent an architectural feature of a nearby Victorian school (forerunner to the children's own school.) The buttons, stars and yo-yos show points on the map of the village where something significant took place historically, or to the children and their families. Though the work looks abstract, for the children, their teacher, myself, and the families of those involved, they are rich with life, memories and history.

Click here or on the photo above to see all the individual pieces one by one.

Secrets & Codes, an ending and a beginning

So Secrets & Codes is nearly complete. After 8 or 9 workshops the pupils' works are almost finished. Soon I'll be framing all their textile pieces, and putting together some sort of interpretation booklet.

In the meantime a consultation event will take place, sharing the work of all the local schools involved in the project with their local community. Here's ours. I'm so proud of them all, they've found parts of it challenging in different ways and have all wanted, so wholeheartedly, to persevere and get it done.

But this isn't an ending, as my work comes to a close, the village will open a brand new heritage trail which all the children and teachers involved now own a piece of through their efforts and endeavours. The future and the past of the village are all theirs to look after, and a new heritage trail will soon be launched to commemorate the area.

Mapping stories: a school textiles & heritage project

Session 1 of Secrets & Codes.
After looking at a variety of visual codes and coming up with as many different types of codes as they could, we moved on to the preparatory stages of mapping and pattern making. The children (year 6 / Age 10) got into the gist of the idea well and start mapping some stories by thinking of a special place in their village, writing a story about it, then hanging a corresponding tag on the map where there story took place. Their knowledge of the village geographically, their ability to read maps and generate ideas, and their pride in the things that are important to them were all hugely impressive. The children will continue adding their tags until I go back for session 2. It was really interesting that of those we got through, all but two were in a big long line down the middle of the village.

Next week, weather permitting, we'll be going for a walk to the local, abandoned church hall, which used to be the school, before the newer one was built. I'll be asking them to look at details of the landscape and architecture with the aid of viewfinders, and to use their imagination to think about what it would be like inside, and what the walk to school might have been like in the 'olden days'. I wanted to find a local guest, a member of the community who went to the school, to bring the place to life for them and talk about their experience of it. A quick chat with the headteacher soon revealed that he would be the very person. Serendipity...We might walk a bit further to look at the 1960s estate nearby and talk about why those houses were built; or the big old house on the corner which used to house the family who owned the village's mills. They'll have disposable cameras to photograph the things that are visually attractive to them, for when we start developing our abstract patterns via image transfer and textiles later on.

Secrets and Codes: a textiles and heritage school project

 

Secrets and Codes is the name of a project I mentioned a few weeks back. I wanted to find ways to entice the children into becoming keen detectives of their local area, both geographically and historically. I'm employed as the resident textile artist for the project and will be working with them over nine sessions and curating an exhibition of the work involved (mine and theirs).

We'll be using session one to start thinking about the hidden messages carried in visual codes, and how pictures and symbols can tell us more than we first see.

I have a huge map of the children's village which I'll be asking them to plot events and stories onto, and we'll be exploring some specially made bunting, in which each flag shows a different code. We'll be talking about the use of codes and how they work, and what codes the children can think of themselves, which hopefully we'll have time to add to the bunting. I'm hoping that we will also be able to draw in the wider community by collecting stories from parents and grandparents so we'll be starting that process too.

I want the children not only to learn about thinking visually, but also to understand that heritage is a human thing, something to be connected to, proud of and inspired by. And so one of the flags of the bunting will use the piece above. At first glance its just a swirl of coloured lines, and this is what will be shown on the bunting. As we talk about what this might mean, I'll explain it's actually a map. A map of solar eclipses over forty years. It was charted by my grandfather in 1954. The coloured lines I've recreated are the movements of the sun in each of its eclipses. And I'll be taking the original map in for them to look at too.

I want them to feel the vibrancy of the project, but also to feel something precious all around them. I hope this simple felt tip line drawing and a shabby old special map will help them begin this journey. 

A Brief History of Bobbins

Tour of a Victorian Bobbin Mill, Stott Park, Cumbria from Richard Elen.

Whilst looking for a film about the cotton producing process for a school project, I came across this film from a museum in my region about the history of the beautiful wooden bobbins made for the textile industries of the Industrial Revolution and into more recent times. Despite having heard many many times about the intensity of life and work in those times, it's still an eye opener. Wonderful work from Stott Park Victorian Bobbin Mill in Cumbria. 

Stott Park Bobbin Mill was opened in 1835 to supply the cotton mills of Lancashire (of which the Lake District was a part at the time) with bobbins to carry the thread which was spun into cloth. It was originally powered by a water wheel, later by a water turbine and then by a steam engine. Ultimately, electricity arrived. The mill finally closed in 1971 and then reopened in 1983 as a museum.

Today, Stott Park Bobbin Mill is in the care of English Heritage. The video gives a 20-minute guided tour of the mill by one of the English Heritage staff members to see the different stages of the bobbin-making process, including some of the machines being used by a veteran mill worker.

You'll see the steam engine and get a feeling for what life was like for the mill workers – who, in this case, came mainly from the workhouses of Liverpool and Manchester.

 

What favourite item would you hang on a hook?

I recently asked people on twitter what favourite item they'd hang on a hook and why, and maybe where or any other details they wanted to add. (There was a reason for this strange question, which will become clearer in time!) But the replies were so colourfully wonderful and strange I wanted to find a way to list and share them so here they are...

One of my favourite responses was from Lu Summers (or @Lusummers) who said she'd "display a collage of all the mirrors I've been collecting in my hallway." I found a few other examples of people who'd had that same idea like Ula's bedroom collection and Haskell Harris' Hallways set:


And this set which Naomi found on Anthropologie:

 
I happen to know Lu lives in a farmhouse and is a dab hand at design so am looking forward to seeing her own take on this idea eventually.

So what were the other replies? OK here goes - get ready for some really random ideas! 

@RachelCockett, a museum strategy / development type person has many favourite things on hooks already including a Naga necklace, a World War 1 bayonet, a bronze fish shaped bell and a hand forged copper and silver spoon. (Her house sounds like a fabulously fascinating place. Any photos please Rachel?!)

Artist educator @K8ieSmith sent me a photo of her rather sweet and dainty toy poodle dangling from her hook rail.

Figure from history Sir James Pennyman (Leader of an English Civil War Regiment) - yes you read that right - told me his mum's boss at a nursery in the 1950s really did hang naughty boys on hooks for such crimes as hanging your coat on the giraffe peg when you know you're an elephant (phew thank god times have changed!)

Textile designer-maker and author @RuthSinger hangs 'just a few' vintage handbags on hers. I suspect that 'few' is way into double figures on the quiet right Ruth?

And more traditional home comforts like dressing gowns, aprons and pictures can be found on the hooks of designer-maker @laurafallulah and craft follower @jenimartian 

Rather boringly in our house we have nothing other the occasional mirror and a guitar hanging on hooks. Must do something about that! So what favourite item would you hang on a hook, and why and where?