Friends of Haptic & Hue

Mending our own clothes, or having it done professionally, is not a token act. It can have a powerful environmental and economic impact. Textile waste is one of the most pressing environmental problems the world faces. Every year we create 150 billion new garments, and every year we discard 92 million tonnes of textiles. The US alone throws away 17 million tonnes of textiles, most of which goes into landfill. The fashion and textile industry is one of the largest single contributors to climate change – accounting for 8-10% of global emissions.   Many of us feel despair in the face of these figures – what can we do about it? But new research about the rise of alteration and mending shops in the UK, points to the beginnings of a culture change. The research tells us that nearly 40% of purchased clothing doesn't fit, but taking it to a local repair shop can make it wearable and much less likely to be discarded. If we mend our garments and extend their life by just nine months it can cut the cost to the environment, by 20-30%, and if we buy vintage or second hand, rather than new, it can be anything up to 70 times better for the environment.   In this month's episode Lisa Macintyre, Associate Professor at Heriot Watt University, in Scotland, and one of the authors of the research, talks to us about the power of repair and alteration, and the impact it can have on reducing textile waste.

Knitting is one of the most popular textile crafts today and it's estimated that there are well over a hundred million active knitters globally. But where does it come from? When did knitting first appear and what do we know about how it spread around the world?   This episode of Travels with Textiles is devoted to knitting and its history. We explore the origins of knitting and what we know about some of the earliest surviving pieces we have from North Africa. We travel to a small island in the North Atlantic that is home to some of the world's most iconic knitting and we hear about knitting traditions that grew up in America's Appalachia region as waves of different migrants arrived. 

How do clothes change what we know about someone? This episode of Travels with Textiles takes a look at this in different ways. First, we talk to Eleanor Houghton about her extraordinary new book: Charlotte Bronte's Life Through Clothes which took her nine long years to complete. We may think we know the story of this famous Victorian author, but this book reveals a very different person.   We then move forward in time to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, between the First and Second World Wars, and try to unravel the meaning of the clothes worn by both the detectives and some of the characters in these well-loved stories. What is going on in this world of immense social upheaval where people are seeking re-assurance and comfort?   And finally we are off to New Zealand to unpick some of the secrets of a high chief's war cloak – or pauku – which has just made the journey home from Britain.

In the high regions of the world a race against time is going on to save some of the most important historic textiles yet found. Climate change means that ice and snow is being uncovered for the first time in thousands of years, and clothes and shoes abandoned or lost in the past are turning up at the edge of snowfields perfectly preserved. But unless the archaeologists reach them quickly, they rot away in the water and light. One of the most abundant areas for finds is Norway, where an archaeological programme goes out collecting every summer and has found an extraordinary array of objects. They have rescued a perfectly preserved tunic that is around 2,000 years old, the only pair of pre-historic skis in the world, a single Viking-age mitten as well as Bronze-age arrows and spears, secured with string and cord. Come with us in this episode to hear the Secrets of the Ice from Norway. 

Happy New Year and welcome back to Travels with Textiles, just for Friends of Haptic & Hue. Do you know anything about the person who designed the pattern on your clothing or your furnishings? Most textile designers remain anonymous and yet their work can be recognised globally. Women in Print is a new show that looks at the female designers behind one of the most famous names in pattern and print, Liberty of London.   We are also off to explore the ancient looping technique of Nälbinding, which long predates crochet and knitting, and in some parts of the world is still in use today. And we travel to Bavaria in Southern Germany to unlock the secrets of how surgeons in the 1700s learnt to stitch cleanly and quickly in the days before anaesthetic and antiseptic.  

What's in a carpet? A great deal according to the historian and carpet scholar Dorothy Armstrong, who has just published a book called Threads of Empire: A History of the World in 12 Carpets.   For centuries carpets have been the most coveted and expensive of textiles, they have even attracted carpet forgers, and almost no other textile has done that. Every empire builder, king and prince has wanted the finest carpets to signify his power and status. But so often the carpets themselves have been made in humblest of circumstances by people whose names are lost to us.   This episode of Travels with Textiles journeys around the world from Japan to Romania, from the frozen steppes of Siberia to the fringes of the Sahara Desert to find out how history looks through the lens of a carpet.

It is hard to think of a greater contrast than the opulent style of the ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and the misery of decades of clothes rationing under Cuba's Communist regime. But this month Haptic and Hue's Travels with Textiles considers both, and also takes a look at the forgotten French couturier who helped to rescue women from corsets in the early 20th century   Was Marie Antoinette a fashion victim who came to a nasty end or was she one of most important style icons the world has ever seen? A new exhibition in London, called Marie Antoinette Style, makes a strong case for her being one of fashion's most enduring figures. It includes not just clothes she commissioned and wore, but some of the extraordinary creations that have taken inspiration from her style in the long years after her death   We also hear from a woman who lived and suffered under 30 years of Cuban clothes rationing, putting US and UK wartime rationing in the shade, and we are off to Paris to see an exhibition about the man who is credited with inventing the brassiere.

Danish Design is globally famous and has been exported around the world. But what about Danish textiles? For the first time the renowned Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen has an exhibition devoted to the textile designers of the past 100 years who contributed so much so the Danish design movement. We talk to the curator as she tells us why these largely female designers produced work that was so different from their British and American counterparts.   We also investigate Bog Fashion, a new book that tells you not just how to craft your own Bronze and Iron Age clothes but also how to make the bone needles and the thorn pins that our ancestors would have used thousands of years ago. This was the age when woven and dyed fabrics took over from skin and fur and when our clothes became routinely made from cut and sewn fabrics.   The Edinburgh Street Stitchers have become a familiar sight in the Scottish capital but now to spread the mending word Mary Morton and Jeanna Wigger have written a handbook of repair which takes you right from threading a needle to the successful conclusion of a mend. It's for anyone who has been afraid of a hole in their favourite garment. Find out more in this month's episode of Friends of Haptic & Hue, along with a chance to win some very special textile gifts from Venice.  

Five thousand years ago, weavers in southern Egypt were given one of the oddest commissions they must ever have received. Please make a linen shroud for an elephant. Why were they asked to do this, and how long did it take them? This is just one of the themes that we are exploring in this month's episode of Travels with Textiles, which comes from the wonderful Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen.    There are just a handful of textile research centres around the world, and most of them are geared to industry, but CTR in Denmark is one of the very few to focus on historic textiles and textile archaeology. Jo and Bill went to Copenhagen to see their work.   In this episode, we hear stories from the academics and students who come to study at the Centre for Textile Research. Their work casts a new light on the lives of different people who have worked with textiles in the past. As well as what we know about burying an elephant in ancient Egypt, there is research about how Zoroastrian mothers use silk weaving to mourn their children, how Danish society in the 1600s saw women who made their living as weavers, and unexpected details about what the sex workers of ancient Greece did in their spare time.

A new project is just getting underway in Western Norway to document the craft skills of the Arctic peoples that enabled them, down the centuries, to create beautiful handstitched clothing perfectly fitted to the environment. The University of Bergen is working in collaboration with people from the European Arctic, Greenland, and Western Canada to analyse and understand some of the incredible skills that go into making clothing that can withstand some of the harshest environments on earth.   For this episode, Jo and Bill travelled to Bergen to see the University's extraordinary arctic clothing collection which is housed in a special low-oxygen store deep below the mountains. It includes handmade sealskin and polar bear trousers, waterproof bird feather pouches, coveralls made from bear guts, handstitched leather anoraks with walrus toggles, fur boots, red woollen hats, and woven bands.   In an episode that encompasses clothing that stretches back to the time of Eric the Red, who settled in Greenland over a thousand years ago, we talk to Hana Lukesova, one of Europe's leading textile scientists, and Knut Rio, who is an anthropologist at the University of Bergen. Come with us to a completely different northern world where every stitch could help you survive.  

UNESCO has just announced that it is adding an old quilting practice to the list of crafts that have intangible cultural heritage status. Quilting in a flat frame with a rocking stitch has a history that stretches back certainly to the 16th century and maybe much further. This is one of the original forms of quilting on cloth, creating beautiful and complex patterns as it is done. This technique often produces a style of quilting known as whole cloth quilts.   Hand quilting in a frame is being placed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts by the Heritage Crafts Council as the number of elderly practitioners of this skill, mainly in Wales, Northern England and the Scottish Borders continues to dwindle and quilting frames disappear.    But this month we talk to two quilters who are seeking to reverse that by recognising, protecting and reviving whole cloth quilting, and the tools needed to carry it out, not just in Britain, but much more widely as well.    

Mary Schoeser is one of the world's great authorities on textiles. She has devoted her life to understanding textiles and the extraordinary stories behind them. Now the Fashion and Textile Museum in London has just opened a new exhibition curated by her. In this month's Friends of Haptic & Hue we have a special interview with Mary where she talks to us about the exhibition and how she put it together.   Last week the Dublin-based textile archaeologist, Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, died after a long illness. She was a remarkable thinker about textiles, writing about the clothes worn by the famous Lewis chessmen and defining the little caps that were worn by Viking women and girls in Dublin and York. Her death came shortly after a beautiful new book was published of her work called Textiles of Ireland, edited by Mary Ann Williams. We hear from May Ann and we have a special discount enabling you to get 20% off the book in the notes for this episode.

In this episode of Friends of Haptic & Hue Bill and Jo travel to the unique Westminster Menswear's Archive in London to talk to Professor Andrew Groves about how men dress and what their clothes tell us about who they are and what they want from their garments.   Professor Groves says men's clothing has been overlooked compared to women's wear and that it hasn't been thought or written about in the same way. He believes women's fashion tends to be about spectacle, but men's clothing is much more about functionality and uniform, and he thinks that most men still prefer their clothing to be highly gendered.    The Archive spans 250 years and has over 3,000 objects, which range from the humblest workwear to beautifully made formal suits. It includes sportswear, military uniforms, divers' suits, workers' jackets from the railways, police and army protective gear, silk brocade waistcoats, string vests, blazers, and even prison uniforms. It's an incredible collection that gives us a lot of information about how men see clothing. 

DNA testing is normally used to solve modern crimes, but textile archaeologists are beginning to use it to unravel the mysteries of the past. It can tell us about the origin of fur and leather used in clothing constructed five thousand years ago, or it can track down where the sheep's wool or silk used in garments came from.   In this episode of Friends of Haptic & Hue, we are at a special winter school of textile archaeologists, held in Italy, finding out about the latest techniques and research being used to analyse and understand ancient fabrics.    For the first time in 75 years all the Bronze Age textile finds from across Britain are being reviewed and we also talk to a researcher who is looking at an unknown collection of one thousand pieces that has been described at the Rosetta Stone of lace. 

Imagine committing yourself to a project that you knew would take almost a decade of your life: that's what Sandra Sawatsky did when she started on her embroidery project to tell the epic story of our relationship with oil in all its forms.    The Black Gold Tapestry, which runs to 220 feet and uses 23 miles of thread, starts in pre-history and traces the environmental and societal changes that man's quest for oil has brought about, right up to the current era of climate change.  It goes on show early next month in Atlanta Georgia.    Sandra made it entirely by herself, working at her home in the Canadian oil city of Calgary. The dimensions and the frame of the tapestry draw inspiration from the Bayeux Tapestry. In this episode, we talk to Sandra at length about why she decided to make the Black Gold Tapestry and what she was trying to achieve.    

As 2024 comes to a close, we wanted to send the year away with a look back at some of your favourite episodes of Haptic & Hue. We learn a great deal from researching and putting together each one, but we wondered: what do they add up to? Does paying close attention to textiles down the ages reframe history in a fresh way?   For this programme – called the Best of Friends - we have put together excerpts of some of the episodes you loved, all from different time periods - to tell us a new story about ourselves and who we are. We hope you enjoy it.  

Friends of Haptic & Hue are celebrating their second birthday this month and to mark the occasion we are adopting two stitches in your name at the Royal School of Needlework's Stitchbank. Bayeux Stitch and Knotting both have extraordinary stories behind them which you can hear more about in this month's episode of Travels with Textiles, as well as the work that goes into Stitchbank itself as an effort to document every stitch in the world as an invaluable part of human culture and heritage.   We find out what's so revolutionary about a tiny pair of pink hot-pants once worn by a politician on the steps of South Australia's Parliament. It's part of the long progressive tradition of that state which is commemorated this week with the opening of a new exhibition in Adelaide called Radical Textiles, which tracks profound social change and rupture through material. We also travel to New York to look at the, sometimes, surprising links down the centuries between printing and textiles.

200 years of the finest Scottish embroidered art goes on show in Edinburgh next week. Many of the pieces have never been seen in public before. This extraordinary collection comes out of the castles, grand houses, cottages, and tenements cared for by the National Trust for Scotland. The Trust's work is usually associated with landscapes, buildings, furniture, and art, but in a sign of the growing interest in textile heritage, the Trust has identified the best pieces it holds and had them properly conserved to prepare them for this exhibition.   The curator who has had the job of travelling around Scotland and opening trunks and cupboards to see what treasures she could find is Emma Inglis. We took our microphones to Dovecot Studios, to talk to Emma and to hear some of the wonderful stories the embroideries have to tell, from the joyful fire screen of exotic birds worked by the illegitimate daughter of the King to the nightmare embroidered wedding present from your mother in law, as well as a piece that took over 140 years to finish and a bed cover that resembles a plaster ceiling.   

What do clothes tell us about the times we live in and the people we are? A unique collection of American women's clothing goes on display in New York in the next few days. This is very far from the art or elite clothing normally held in museums and galleries: instead, this is what women really wore in good times and bad. Kiki Smith, who created this collection as a research resource, says that these garments have a huge amount to tell us: if anyone reads Steinbeck's book, The Grapes of Wrath and wants to know how the poorest of the poor coped, then showing them a dress from this time becomes a tangible connection to that story of survival.   In this month's Tales of Textiles, we also hear from Ekta Kaul about Bengal's beloved kantha cloth. For women in India and Bangladesh creating this cloth became a way of recycling old worn out saris and also a way of telling stories. Kantha is something that is passed on with love and affection from family member to family member. Ekta understands kantha and teaches people to use different kantha stitches. We also have news of a special Winter School for Textile Archaeologists and a preview of the podcasts coming up on Haptic & Hue this autumn.

Hampton Court Palace – just outside London – is famous for once being one of Henry the Eighth's favourite palaces. This is where he played tennis and courted some of his wives and, unsurprisingly, it is still rumoured to have several ghosts. Today they share the palace with one of the great institutions of the stitching world. The Royal School of Needlework is based at the palace, it has a professional studio, where it creates ceremonial garments for events like the coronations of Kings and Queens, it trains new generations of teachers and professional embroiderers. It also collects stitches in a unique stitchbank,  runs summer schools and year-round courses, and it has a collection of over ten thousand pieces of needlework and embroidery.   Join us this month as we take our microphones to the Palace to talk to the Royal School of Needlework's Curator, Isabella Rosner, who has the mammoth job of looking after the entire collection. She is an art historian who has studied material culture from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and she is, of course, the host of her own podcast, called Sew What.

The 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings took place this month, with much reflection on the lasting peace that the end of World War II brought to a devasted Europe. This episode of Travels with Textiles looks at how textiles have been used to mark and commemorate conflict and war. We tell the extraordinary story of Canada's Izzy dolls, two million of which have been distributed to children caught in conflict around the world. We go to Nottingham in England to look at a commemoration of the Battle of Britain, designed in vast linen panels, and we uncover the life of a wartime designer who managed to turn the most mundane of official slogans into fashionable and desirable scarves that flew off the shelves, despite rationing. Join us to explore a little of how textiles impact on war and conflict.

Faith Ringgold – who died last month – was an extraordinary artist and chronicler of 20th century American life. She used many media to carry her message and some of her best-loved works are her story quilts – pieces that combine craft, art, and activism, like Echoes of Harlem, Tar Beach, and Street Story. In this episode of Travels with Textiles we pay tribute to Ringgold's astonishing talent in an interview with Dr Sharbreon Plummer. We also explore the lost knitting patterns of a remote corner of Scotland and find out how the craft projects left behind by loved members of the family get finished when they are no longer here to do that themselves.

Georgina von Etzdorf has been called the most talented textile designer to come out of Britain since William Morris. Her fabrics, which had their roots in the Arts and Crafts movement, helped to define the 1980s and 90s and were worn by rock stars and royalty alike. In this month's episode she talks to Travels with Textiles about how she started as a designer and why she has now decided to sell her extraordinary archive. We also explore the lace makers of Burano as we launch the new textile guide to Venice and we celebrate the 50th episode of Haptic & Hue's Tales of Textiles.

The final report into the most extensive collection of Bronze Age textiles and fibres ever found in the UK at a site that has been called Britain's Pompeii is published this week. Travels with Textiles has an exclusive interview with the textile archaeologist who has spent years studying the materials from the site. We travel to Morocco to see the rug weavers and think about their changing lives, there's a sweater that's been lost in the post for 200 years and we say farewell to the last of the Canadian wartime quilters who died this month aged 102. It's all in this month's episode of Travels with Textiles just for Friends of Haptic & Hue.

The first women to go to university in Britain are commemorated in a ground-breaking new 3D tapestry triptych woven by Dovecot Studios. It will have its world premiere on March 8th, International Women's Day. It honours the Edinburgh Seven who all studied medicine at Edinburgh University - they had a tremendous fight to get to medical school and an even greater one to complete their studies.   We also hear about the history of jumble and rummage sales and as much as we may think of these as interesting and fun, for the poor of the Victorian era they were a vital resource that helped them send their children to school and dress themselves so that they could go take part in society.   And what do you do when someone sends you more than a hundred pairs of old, holey, socks?Why turn them into art? Find out how the queen of mending, Kate Sekules, did just that. 

  Remember the humble jumble sale in Britain, or as they are called in the US, rummage or yard sales? There was always the thrill of the chase – you never quite knew what you might find, treasure or trash. Today they barely survive as everything has gone online, or into charity shops. But once these sales were important. They had their origins in the Victorian era and their history gives us a glimpse into the way in which poor families kept themselves clothed.   Emma Donovan, who is an independent scholar, has just published an interesting paper about the origin of jumble sales and why they were vital for working-class families – helping to keep them dressed so that they could go to school, and church or find a job at a time when clothing was expensive and every scrap was valued.

Meet Lesley and Kate - stars of a new animated film called Visible Mending – Emotional Repair Through Knitting. It's currently in the running for several awards and in this month's Travels with Textiles, you can hear Sam Moore, who made this profound and touching film, talk about the surprising story behind its creation. We also explore a unique set of mountain rock carvings in this episode: they are 3,500 years old and they are the only ones in the world that depict weaving looms.    It's the start of a New Year and we review the textile exhibitions coming on around the globe in the next 12 months with the help of Leigh Wishner in Los Angeles. There's an interview on the complexities of Irish lace and an insight into how women in the Balkans used the humble headscarf to determine their place and position in society. All this, as well as your e-mails, feedback, and Haptic & Hue's new book of the month.   

We are time-travelling this month back to the distant past. It's all about ancient textiles in November's Travels with Textiles: how they can survive thousands of years and what they tell us about human existence and our enduring love of fashion and decoration. We invited Margarita Gleba, one of the world's great experts on textile archaeology and ancient fabrics to join us as our special guest for this episode. She told us how the study of them is helping to change our understanding of the human story and how she sees every single new textile find as a teacher for her.   Margarita is an Associate Professor at the University of Padua in the Department of Archaeology. Her field of study involves thinking about and analysing the earliest kinds of yarns and spinning tools, weaving looms and fabrics. For the past three months, Jo has been a visiting scholar in her Department and in this interview, both Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor talk to Margarita about the joys, and also the difficulties, of textile archaeology.

This Month's Travels with Textiles takes a look at why Repair is the New Cool in The Netherlands, but what happens when no one knows how to do it any longer? Reaction to the EU Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johannsson, knitting in the Parliament during an important speech, and we hear from the founders of the US based Tempestry Project about why and how they created a universal yarn set to measure climate change.   There's also news of a show in London looking at propaganda and political textiles, from the French Revolution to Brexit, an interview with the master weaver, Helena Loermans, who re-creates the complex canvases of the old masters, and information about a new book on how the some of the hippies of the 1960 and 70s turned into expert textiles collectors and dealers. all this and more in this month's Friends of Haptic & Hue. 

  Look at a painting and what do you see – a great work of art or a textile? Many of the old masters from the Renaissance onwards are painted on canvas, which is in fact stretched hand-woven linen. New research done by a Dutch weaver living in Portugal shows that far from being plain woven canvas, pictures by some of the best-known old masters like Caravaggio, Titian, El Greco, and Velasquez were painted onto complex linen weaves.   Helena Loermans uses the latest X-ray technology to see the weaves that have been hidden for centuries and then reconstructs them, painstakingly, thread by thread, and recreates them on her loom. Jo talked to her about her project and how she discovered the complex fabrics lying beneath the paint.  

Welcome back to Travels with Textiles after our summer break. This is the monthly podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, hosted by Bill Taylor and Jo Andrews, it brings you textile news from around the world, information from listeners, updates from previous podcasts, and previews of podcasts to come. This month we move the Haptic & Hue podcast HQ from Dorset in the UK to Padua in the Veneto region of Italy and we explore what lies beneath some of the most famous paintings in the world.   We took a long summer break from podcasting to go exploring, and this northern summer we travelled Britain from Cornwall to the North of Scotland in search of textile stories. Hear about the treasure trove of wonderful vintage and artist's textiles in Cornwall, a city in the west of England that is telling its history through a special costume made by the community, to the derelict harbour-side shop on the North East coast of Scotland that houses a wonderful textile secret.   We also explore the secret of artists' canvases: what lies beneath the paint isn't as simple as you imagine. These are linen textiles sometimes of great complexity. All this, plus exhibitions and textile news, including details of why Haptic & Hue will be coming from Italy for the next few months.  

Quilts are at the centre of this month's Travels with Textiles. Quilts of comfort, quilts of protest, quilts of heritage, and quilts that arrive mysteriously in the post. The most important news is that more than 60 of the quilts that were made by the women and children of Canada during the Second World War to comfort refugees and victims of the war in Britain are on the move. These quilts are now more than 80 years old and have incredible stories encoded within them. They are battered, but beautiful and compelling. Listen to this month's episode to find out what is happening to them.   We also have news of the world's most expensive sewing machine, a brave swim down the Volta River to highlight the appalling pollution in Ghana from Europe's second-hand clothes, and a wonderful project in London to knit the air. All of this, plus your emails, book, and exhibition of the month, and all the other Haptic & Hue news in this new episode.  

  The story of nearly half a million quilts made by the women of Canada and sent to Europe to comfort refugees and those bombed out of their homes in the Second World War is one that touched many. It is the most listened-to episode of Haptic & Hue so far. The work and devotion Canadian women put into creating these quilts was astonishing. But, it was a labour that was almost completely forgotten once the War was over. By definition, all the quilts were sent out of Canada and none remained to remind people of the extraordinary effort, artistry, and sheer hard work that had gone into creating them. But now a project is underway to repatriate to Canada over 60 of the surviving quilts, bringing them home to the communities that made them and reconnecting them with the descendants of the women who made them. Many of the quilts are retunring with incredible stories attached:

We all have different views about Monarchies and Republics, Kings and Presidents, but regardless of those, the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in London was a feast of textiles and a celebration of some extraordinary skills. In particular, the work of the embroiderers of the Royal School of Needlework stood out. They contributed to a number of items that played a role in the ceremony. Two new items were the modern embroidered screen, called the Anointing Screen, and the Robe of Estate, the long purple train worn by Queen Camilla as she left the Abbey.   These were exacting pieces of modern embroidery and stitchwork made under the direction of Anne Butcher, who is the Head of Studio and Standards at the Royal School of Needlework. Anne spoke to Jo Andrews about the work and the planning that had gone into both pieces.

Welcome to May's Travels with Textiles, the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. This month's episode runs the entire social scale of textiles from a King's Coronation robes to an exhibition about kitchen cloths or tea towels.   We have an interview with the head of the Royal School of Needlework's studio and standards, in which she tells us about the work that went into creating both the Queen's new Robe of Estate – essentially the long purple train Queen Camilla wore after she was crowned and the modern screen behind which the King was anointed. And we look at the effort that went into making all the ceremonial textiles that were on show that day.   At the other end of the textile scale, this month's Travels with Textiles considers the importance of tea towels or dishcloths in all of our lives. These humble pieces of linen decorate our kitchens and have been carriers of some memorable art and design – truly the People's Art. And we have more of your e-mails, Book of the Month, Bill's Word of the Month, and more.  

An unusual and interesting exhibition has just been held in London of artists textiles. It was called Styled by Design and it will re-open later this summer in Somerset in England's West Country – so others will get a chance to see it. It included textiles designed by some of the giants of 20th century art, including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth and others. It has something important to tell us about textiles and art, something that many mainstream art critics have missed. Here's the story of Artists' Textiles and why they matter.

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles, the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. This episode has the tang of seawater about it as we explore the Shetland Islanders' method of fulling their cloth in rocky coves and pick up the story of a silk dress found in a chest on the seafloor off the coast of The Netherlands: who did it belong to and how did it find itself at the bottom of the sea?  There's also a macabre new textile book of the month, a chance to win a handmade huswif or sewing roll, and a new exhibition of textiles created by artists like Picasso, Matisse, Barbara Hepworth, and Elizabeth Frink.  Come on a new journey with us as we swim through the world of textiles in this latest episode.  

Sewing rolls can tell us extraordinary stories of lives lived. These are commonplace things, often overlooked, but they are a vital part of the sewer's and repairer's kit. In the past, they were used as much by men as by women. No soldier or sailor was without his 'huswif', the old term for a sewing roll derived from the word housewife. It was what he used to keep his uniform smart and his socks darned. Dawn Cook Ronningen has collected sewing rolls for many years and has now written a book about them, called simply Sewing Rolls, Needle Rolls and Huswifs, 150 Years of History and Tradition. In it, she tracks the development of these beautiful and often worn items but also tells the story of a blue velvet roll that belonged to a woman called Sarah Allcock who lived in Ohio and Kansas and, despite the fancy roll, had a hard and difficult life.

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles, the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. In this episode we launch Haptic & Hue's new guide: Paris in Textiles, we discover the story wrapped up in an antique sewing roll and we explore why what Geoffrey Chaucer wore really mattered. We also take a trip to the films to look at the knitwear and review two new exhibitions about quilts. Come on a new journey with us as we explore the world of textiles and its meaning for us all in this latest episode. If you would like to see pictures or links for this episode these can be found on the dedicated Friends page: https://hapticandhue.com/friends/travels-with-textiles-march-2023/

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles, the podcast for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. In this episode, we explore textiles of disaster and textiles of memory, especially those memories of textures from your childhood. We hear from listeners who told us more about the incredible history of needles, including the Japanese custom of laying worn and broken needles to rest in something soft. We preview next month's podcast, review the book of the month which is about fabric diaries, and introduce a special interview just for Friends with the curator of the first retrospective exhibition about the Anglo-Trinidadian textile designer Althea McNish. Find out more in the February edition of Travels with Textiles and check out the webpage for pictures and links

Althea McNish was one of the most talented textile designers of the 20th century. She was an incredible artist, technically assured and confident in her use of colour. Her work has been described as being like bathed in sunshine. She came to Britain from Trinidad in the 1950s and was enormously successful, designing scarves for Liberty, fabric for the upmarket furnishing shop, Heals, and textiles for Italian couture houses. The Queen wore her designs, smart cruise liners sailed with her work on their walls, and her weaves were on British Rail's new trains in the 1970s.   Althea McNish's best-known textiles were designs like Golden Harvest which combined an English wheat field with the colours of Trinidad, or Painted Desert, where small cities in black ink shot through with orange floated on a bright pink background. But as time advanced, Althea McNish was unjustly forgotten and at the end of her life, she was almost completely obscure. That is now beginning to be put right with an exhibition about her and her work which was first shown at the William Morris Gallery in London and is now at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester until the end of April 2023. The exhibition has been curated by Rose Sinclair, an academic and independent researcher, who has been doggedly tracking Althea and her work for some years. Here is Rose's story of how the exhibition came about and why it's important.   There are pictures and links to the exhibition on the special dedicated page for this episode on the Friends of Haptic and Hue site at https://hapticandhue.com/friends-haptic-hue/

Happy New Year and welcome to the first of the monthly Travels with Textiles, the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue. Every month Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor will bring you the stories we love, but somehow never find a place in the longer podcast. We talk about what happens behind the scenes, how we find stories, or how stories sometimes find us. In this first episode listen to an interesting musical follow-up to the podcast about Mary Queen of Scots, come with us behind the scenes at Mount Vernon, George Washington's home in Virginia, and find out about a new book to read and a textile word of the month, as well as a look ahead to Season Five of the main Haptic & Hue podcast, which has just started.

Provence, in the south of France, is known for its lavender and lemons, its olive oil, and jasmine. It is the centre of France's perfume-making industry and has been immortalised by artists like Matisse and Cezanne, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Provence also has its own memorable textiles, which are immediately recognisable: deeply coloured cottons that reflect the hues of the countryside and often incorporate local motifs like sunflowers and olive trees. The story of how this cloth came to Provence and then settled there, growing deep roots, is one that twists and winds as much as the old country roads that travel deep into this region. We begin in a small town, called Tarascon, not far from Avignon.