I spent most of 2018 working on my research project for the Geoffrey Squire Bursary from the Costume & Textile Association, recreating some of the amazing colours and weaves from the 18th century Norwich Pattern books. I presented the work at a talk held at the Castle museum on Saturday 13 October.
Ten years ago I arrived in Norwich as a ‘stranger’ to begin my textiles degree at the University of the Arts. The first few weeks were spent exploring the city, following a trail I had found on the Norwich Textiles website.
everywhere i went there were clues as to the city’s rich textile heritage - and i became fascinated with the story of Madder and the people who created the colourful cloth the city was famous for…
Specialising in weave and dyeing, I visited the Costume & Textile Study Centre as part of my research for various projects. It was there that I fell in love with the Norwich pattern books filled with colourful 18th century worsted samples.
image courtesy Norfolk Museum Services
Over the years my practice has developed using natural dyes and weave. I have often taken inspiration from the pattern books for my work this was a yarn wrapping collage made using paper yarns dyed with natural dyes
This was a woven landscape made with a palette use local yellow dye plants and Norfolk woad to create a variety of greens
Working with Dr Michael Nix on the Geoffrey Squires Bursary project, I enjoyed finding out more about the textile trade in our fine city during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The record books tell stories and with my background in fashion and textiles I was curious about their working practices and processes
image courtesy Norfolk Museum Services
The pattern books hold a huge selection of woven designs, all with their own distinctive names and characteristic elements.
image courtesy Norfolk Museum Services
Although I marvel at the technical ability of the weavers to produce some of the more complicated designs with interesting names such as batavias, taborets and brocaded callimancoes, as a dyer my favourites are the simpler weave structures where the emphasis is on the dyer’s skill in creating a range of vivid colours.
Three different worsted stuffs inspired my work for the project. The simple camlet, the callimanco and the camlettee. The first is a celebration of the skill of the dyer, the second requires a combination of skills from dyeing the skeins to sewing on the buttons… and the third would be a 21st century interpretation of a simple cloth to create a contemporary textile.
image courtesy Norfolk Museum Services
I decided to create a sample ‘blanket’ warp in three sections, red, yellow, blue, with two different ways of achieving the colour in each section. so the red was madder and cochineal, the yellow weld and quercitron and the blue woad and indigo.
this would allow me to experiment with different colour combinations in an ‘end on end’ cloth by varying the weft threads intersecting the warp. these samples are presented in a simple fashion to allow the beauty of the natural colour to shine
i designed a simple concertina sample book that would allow the samples to be mounted and stand alone.
I decided to weave a ‘clouded’ callimanco with a repeat stripe 18 inches wide with a sett of 48 warps ends per inch. This made a total of 956 warp threads which took quite a while to thread up!
I wanted to celebrate the Colours of Norfolk™ in my design so incorporated an ombre blue stripe for the sky and sea, the canary yellow and green and of course madder and cochineal in the painted section to represent Norwich red.
THE WAISTCOAT
Although there are samples of callimanco in the archive there are no garments that illustrate what the fabrics could have been used for. I decided to create a waistcoat based on late 18th century designs. I found a pattern online and adapted it to fit Dr Michael. I also looked at some of the waistcoats in the archives, looking at details like buttonholes and pocket designs.
the entire process of making this waistcoat has been about the touch of the hand.
from winding the skeins of wool for dyeing, winding a warp, threading up the loom, weaving the cloth, making the pattern, cutting the cloth and stitching the garment together. All done by hand and using the knowledge and skills i have acquired over the years. my past as a designer pattern maker has been revisited and i have really enjoyed creating this piece.
