Haptic & Hue

This month, we celebrate a woman who devoted her life to preserving her homeland's identity through stitch. Lubow Wolynetz, who has died aged 87, was born in Ukraine's Carpathian Mountains in 1938. After surviving occupation, war and a displaced persons camp, she spent more than fifty years in America as a museum curator and teacher, passing Ukraine's intricate expressions of identity on to hundreds of people.   There is something universal in Lubow's story which shows that however much a people's homes and buildings may be destroyed, their stitched culture, passed from mind to mind and hand to hand, is almost impossible to erase. It's a truth shared by the tatreez of Palestine, the arpilleras of Chile under Pinochet and the Highland tartans banned after 1746 in Scotland, and it makes Lubow's story one to treasure. 

The first group of people in the world to be called refugees were deeply tied up with the production of luxury cloth. In the 17th and 18th century a small corner of east London became a byword for some of the best woven silk in the world.   Spitalfields silk was worn by some of history's most famous people. George Washington, despite fighting a war against the British, had a waistcoat made from it, and his wife, Martha, had an entire dress made from the silk designed in London and woven by hand on the draw looms of Spitalfields. Queen Victoria wore it on her wedding day, and Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, wore it deliberately, to champion British industry.   There are estimated to be over 40 million refugees in the world today and they are often seen as a drain on the societies that shelter them and are subjected to hatred and harassment. But this episode looks at what the first group of people to be known as refugees – the Huguenots of France – contributed to the country that gave them shelter and how they made British silk textiles famous.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out more about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/    

In a few day's time the Bayeux Tapestry goes on show at the British Museum in London. The famous embroidery that depicts the Norman conquest of England has returned to the country where it was stitched for the first since it was made almost a thousand years ago.  It was created by defeated Anglo-Saxon women, commissioned by their Norman conquerors, and they stitched it to serve a very particular political purpose. We will never know their names but they made one of the most extraordinary works of art to survive from early medieval Europe. Down the centuries it has exerted a powerful hold over many imaginations: it was taken to Paris by Napoleon to rally his troops as he planned to invade Britain, and later eyed by Hitler for the same reason. But the Tapestry is much more than a beautiful object. It is a brilliant piece of communication and in this episode, with the help of Michael Lewis, Curator of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, we look at the labour behind it and the story it was designed to tell. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/  And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/  

A number of very special quilts have been arriving in North America over the past few weeks. A collection of more than 40 are being returned to Canada, 85 years after they were made in communities all over the country.   Most of them are tattered and deeply worn but they have an extraordinary story to tell. They are the last evidence we have of an astonishing operation that saw Canadian women and children make over 400,000 quilts during the Second World War. These were sent, largely, to Britain to comfort children orphaned in the conflict, families bombed out of their houses, soldiers convalescing, land girls in hostels far from home and a myriad of other uses.   In Britain, the Canadian wartime quilts were often loved and cherished. But gradually, as the years passed they faded from memory. A few hundred have survived and many museums in the UK hold them. In Canada they were completely forgotten.  Now it is hoped that with the return of this major collection a new generation will come to understand the work of their grandmothers and great grandmothers. The aim is that there will be a permanent exhibit of the entire collection to stand as a memorial, not just to the women of Canada, but to all those around the world who use their textile skills in times of conflict to bring comfort, compassion and care.   If you would liket o see pictures of the quilts of read a transcript of this podcast then please follow the link to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/ 

This month's episode is a little different: as many of you know we run a second podcast for Friends of Haptic & Hue called Travels with Textiles, in which we explore all kinds of textile topics that crop up in the news or that we come across in our travels and that we don't get the chance to talk about in the main podcast. Once a year we give you a special taste of what Friends of Haptic & Hue sounds like and invite you to join us.   This time we are giving you a listen to an episode of Friends that went out earlier this year. We know that knitting is one of the most popular textile crafts today, 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 is devoted to knitting and its history. We explore the origins of knitting and what we know about some of the earliest surviving knitted 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 with waves of different migrants arriving in the area.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/  

This summer marks the 250th anniversary of America's founding as nation, born in a successful rebellion from the British crown. Events and politics tell us one tale, but textiles always give us another view. Much of the textile history of America is deeply painful – a story of enslavement and hardship in Victorian mills and garment sweatshops. But there is another side to this, because creating textiles for the home has always involved community, and throughout the two and half centuries America has been in existence, quilting, knitting, sewing and mending have been deeply social activities.   This episode of Haptic & Hue is about one group of people who designed and made craft textiles at a particular moment in America's history. The Folly Cove Designers came from a little-known area of Massachusetts. They had no professional qualifications and they were taught around a kitchen table by one woman. For nearly thirty years in the mid-twentieth century they formed a close creative and supportive network making work of the highest quality. Even today, over seventy years later their story has a lot to tell us about how communities help individuals shine.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/

There is a little mannequin which has played a hidden role in history. We admire the portraits of the great men and women of the past dressed in the height of fashion. But how, in an age without cameras or magazines, did they know what was in style?    Step forward the Pandora doll, who may be as much as 3,500 years old. These miniature mannequins have played a role in communicating fashion down the centuries from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, through the Second World War, right up into the era of COVID.   We know that the fashion dolls were owned by Mary Queen of Scots, and Jane Seymour, wife of Henry the Eighth of England. Elizabeth the First of England was sent a set by the Queen of France. They played an important role in diplomacy amongst the royal houses of Europe and above all they worked hard to cement the role of Paris, and French dress-making, as the world's style-makers.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/  

In a small corner of London lies one of the most evocative collection of textiles anywhere in the world. The fabrics – which are quite ordinary - are in the so-called billet books which recorded the identity and clothing of every baby accepted at the Foundling Hospital from the mid 1700s onwards.   What makes these books so moving is that often the birth mother left a scrap of cloth or ribbon when she gave up her baby. She held onto the other half so that if her circumstances changed, she could return to the Foundling Hospital, match the two pieces of cloth and reclaim her child. The result, two hundred and fifty years later, is one of the best collections of textiles samples worn by ordinary people in Europe the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.   It is hard to imagine today how we would feel if we had to place our own child in a foundling hospital, if this was part of our family history. One woman recently discovered that this is exactly what happened to her ancestor. She arrived at the Foundling Hospital in 1758 at just a few weeks old. But she lived to be 87 – an incredible age for that time – and became a mother and grandmother herself. Find out more in this episode.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out more about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/  

An extraordinary new exhibition has just opened in the small Alabama township of Gees Bend, and it gives us some clues as to why this community of world-famous quilters became home to one of America's greatest creative legacies.   The quilts of Gees Bend were first exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, nearly 25 years ago and today their quilts hang in many global art galleries. Since then the critics have repeatedly asked how an isolated community of Black American women could have prefigured many of the traditions of modern art without any formal training. These quilts were born of need, but they were fresh, and utterly original.     Since then not only has their legacy and reputation grown, but other African American quilters have also come to the fore. These include communities in Mississippi, as well as those who carried their southern quilt making traditions to California during World War Two.   Now the exhibition in Gees Bend tells the story of the first named quilter in the township – a woman who almost certainly arrived in America from West Africa as a child on the last known slave ship to enter US waters in 1860, over 50 years after the trade in human beings had allegedly been outlawed.   For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/  

It's nearly five years since the Anglo Trinidadian textile designer, Althea McNish, died in near obscurity in London. In that time her reputation and her standing has grown dramatically and she is now recognized around the world as the one of the first black designers of international standing.  There has been a retrospective exhibition of her work, the Victoria & Albert Museum highlights her work, and there is a biography of this remarkable woman in progress.   Althea McNish as a designer was a magician of colour, a woman who brought the light and the hues of the Caribbean to a drab post-war London. Queen Elizabeth wore her dress fabrics, cruise liners sailed with her murals on their walls and she changed the lives of millions with her textile designs. This episode takes another look at the life of Althea McNish.    For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-8/   And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/