New Textile Heritage Trail

This week sees the launch of a website and textile trail that brings together information about textile collections across West Yorkshire. This is the culmination of the West Yorkshire Textile Heritage Project, a partnership between Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield Museums.
 
The trail leaflet features a colourful map of West Yorkshire that shows the location of more than 30 museums, mills, historic houses and other places of interest with a textile theme.   Even more information is available on the website, which has links to all the venues and downloadable walks across the district. These walks include one around the significant textile manufacturing centre of Ossett and one along Wakefield Waterfront, which was a thriving industrial area in its hey-day with around 35 mills established on this site, as well as the boatyard which is still in operation today.

 

Trail leaflets can be picked up at Wakefield Museum or downloaded from the project website. The project website can be viewed here.

The online collections are hosted by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), which makes available over 1000 records from the textile collections of Wakefield, Kirklees, Bradford, Calderdale and Leeds museums.

The online collections contain nearly 300 objects from the Wakefield district, which tell unique stories of the textile industry in the region. Examples of textiles produced in the local area include knitting yarn samples and finished products such as clothing, bedding and soft toys. A large proportion of the collection is made up of photographs and ephemera, including correspondence, advertisements, catalogues, packaging and knitting patterns.

 

The project was supported by the Museums Association (MA) with a grant from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Sally Colvin from the MA said ‘We were delighted to support the West Yorkshire Heritage Textile project as the partnership approach from four museum services really stood out. Textile heritage is spread right across the region so it’s only right that the services should work together; the website and trail are great results from this approach.’

World Octopus Day

8 October is World Octopus Day. 

First thing's first...what is the plural of Octopus?  

This is what Oxford Dictionaries have to say:

The standard plural in English of octopus is octopuses. However, the word octopus comes from Greek and the Greek plural form octopodes is still occasionally used. The plural form octopi, formed according to rules for some Latin plurals, is incorrect.

Secondly, why isn't October the eighth month? 

Well it did used to be, the Roman calendar used to start from March.  January and February were added by Numa Pompillius around 713 BC. He did this so there were more months with an uneven number of days - Roman's considered odd numbers to be lucky!

Thirdly - why are we so interested in world octopus day? 

...Because of our new display...the knitted aquarium which is stuffed to bursting point with knitted (and stuffed) see creatures, including a plethora of octopuses...

The display is to celebrate Wool Week 6-12 October 2014.  The pieces took 25 people from WoolnStuff five months to create.

Here is a sample of some of the woolly Cephalopoda:

Make a splash, come and dip your toe in, cast off to an imaginary world at Wakefield Museum.  Display is free to visit.

If you visit take a picture and Tweet us @WFMuseums.

Bobbin to Wakefield Museum!

This Saturday Wakefield Museum reveals a special new garden made entirely from wool. Using knitting and crochet techniques local knitting groups, Wakefield’s Wool ‘n’ Stuff and Flock to Ossett as well as other talented individuals have come together to produce a beautiful and colourful array of flora and fauna. The garden includes a vegetable patch, a variety of flowers and even an apple tree. 

Patterns from the museum collection have helped to create a woolly garden!

Come and see if you can spot the squirrel in the case!

Local knitting groups have been busy creating a woolly garden!

The woolly scene is inspired by Wakefield’s textile manufacturing past. A patchwork of woollen industries since medieval times from selling to spinning and dyeing has shaped the town and the city is still spinning yarns today. Garments based on patterns in Wakefield Museum’s collections will also feature.

The garden is casting off a week of woolly wonder for National Wool Week, including a whole week of special school sessions in the museum, exploring the Victorian textile mills in Ossett.

Sirdar knitting pattern from the museums' collection

Special Event!

Wednesday 16^th October 

(5 - 7.30pm) 

Textile artist, Jane Howroyd, will be demonstrating drop spinning and medieval fingerloop braiding in Wakefield Museum, with opportunities to try it out for yourself – a spin-class that won’t get you sweaty! No need to book, just drop in.  

Our curator will also be on hand to show some wool-inspired objects from the collections - including some rather amazing knitting patterns which may inspire you to get knitting (or just make you giggle!).

All of these activities were inspired by our work with the West Yorkshire Textile Heritage Project.

West Yorkshire Textile Heritage Project

From April to June this year the West Yorkshire Textile Heritage Project team has been working with Wakefield Museum to preserve and share textile history collections.

The project is an innovative collaboration between Wakefield, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale local museum services and is funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund. Over the coming year the project will create a Heritage Trail, a searchable online collections portal and a legacy of shared knowledge. The idea for this project came from local museums’ commitment to celebrating the region’s industrial heritage and sharing museum collections with the widest possible audience.

Wakefield Museum’s collection offers an insight into over 200 years of textile production. A review is currently underway which will create a clearer understanding of the collection’s significance to the Wakefield area and to the wider national and international story of industrial textile production.

In the nineteenth century Wakefield and it surrounding regions has a strong textile manufacturing sector with companies dealing in raw wool, spinning yarn, weaving cloth and producing reclaimed wool known as ‘shoddy’. Some of the great objects in the museum’s textile heritage collection include fabric samples, sample books, advertisements, packaging and photographs which document everyday life on the mill floor.

A particularly interesting object is a Fowler & Co. Textile Calculator. This pocket-watch like object would have been used by weavers to calculate the relationship between ‘weft’, ‘loom’ and ‘dent’ and shows the intricacies involved in producing a piece of cloth. Fowler & Co. Calculators was a Manchester company originally founded as the Scientific Publishing Company in 1898 by William Henry Fowler. They were a well known manufacturer of circular slide rules and made a range of instruments for use in the textile industry. Today computer scientists study Fowler & Co. products as they investigate the history of computing.

Fowler & Co. Textile Calculator

Another highlight of Wakefield Museum’s collection are knitting patterns printed by companies based in the region, including: Sirdar, George Lee & Sons and Readicut Wool. This archive has been interesting to work with as it demonstrates the skill and pride which home-knitters brought to producing their own clothes. 

We’ve really enjoyed wondering at some of the fantastic models’ poses and sometimes impractical woollen outfits! 

Readicut patterns

Anyone working on their own pair of cable knit trousers? These patterns have inspired us to start planning some knitting activities for Wool Week (14-20 October) so have your knitting needles at the ready!

Take a look at the West Yorkshire Textile Heritage blog for more information about the collections review and textile history. 

You can also find the West Yorkshire Textile Heritage Project on Facebook and Twitter.