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.

Fun for families over half term holidays

We have had a busy half term delivering a variety of workshops to children aged 2 upwards across the district.

“. . .  really enjoyed it and facilities + staff were great. Thank you “

Families at Airedale Library had the chance to learn all about the fascinating, delicious and very very dangerous history of Britain's national drink. Along with the chance to look at some rarely-seen things from the museum collection, participants made their own teapot craft to take home!

At Wakefield Museum, families had a look at some mad-sounding medieval medicine, and recycling was the theme at Pontefract Castle.

 "We learnt about ancient rubbish and enjoyed making bows and arrows"

At Sandal Castle families learnt how Medieval folk would have made all their necessities from naturally sourced materials. Participants were invited to create some really cool things with natural materials at this fun workshop, including a bug village!

For the younger visitors to Wakefield Museum we created some food inspired art and crafts with oats, beans and peas – all food that was available in the medieval times.

“I liked the food project. It encouraged my daughter to think about which colour suited the different parts of her picture”

Our youngest visitors made sculptures and pictures from foodstuffs

Our next event is this Thursday, 6 June.  An adult talk 'A taste of living history: organic gardening today' by Bob Sherman.  6.30 in the Learning Zone, Wakefield Library and Museum.  No need to book.

Bob Sherman is Chief Horticultural Officer at Garden Organic, the national charity for organic growing, and has been gardening organically for nearly 40 years. He has been a regular contributor to gardening magazines for many years and has written and contributed to eight books.

Since 1996, he has had responsibility for Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library (HSL), a collection of rare, historic and endangered vegetables, now including seed of more exotic imports that have been grown here through several generations by immigrants to the UK from all over the world.

The collection and purpose behind it are the focus of his talk, 'A Taste of Living History: organic gardening today'. The talk will explain the value of this heritage and show how organic gardening looks to the future whilst respecting the past.

This talk is part of the You Are What You Ate project, funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Tonight at Wakefield Museum

Tonight is Artwalk night!

Wakefield Museum is proud to be part of this city-wide event.  

Come along from 5pm to 8pm.

Have a Historical Encounter!

Wakefield Museum’s temporary exhibition, Food For All Seasons, explores what was on the menu season by season in medieval Wakefield. With some amazing objects on display, including a medieval book of hours and the chance to peek into the larders of 14th century Sandal Castle, this exhibition is sure to whet your appetite…  

Drop in to meet: Thomas Dayville, Castle Steward

Thomas Dayville is a busy man. As Castle Steward he must manage the staff, keep up with the daily routine and of course serve his lord in the best way possible. With making sure the Castle is kept in good repair, and the stores well provisioned it’s never ending...

Part of the You Are What You Ate project, funded by the Wellcome Trust and in partnership with Wakefield Council, the University of Leeds and the University of Bradford.

Free entry 5 – 7.30pm

MadeInWakefield @ Create Cafe

Made in Wakefield by YOU! 

Click on image to enlarge

Knitter, painter, song writer, sewer, crocheter, card maker, poet, doodle drawer, designer, paper folder, or just like making stuff? Get away from those distractions and come do your creative thing! Bring your notepad, your needles, your pencils, your wool. We’ll provide the space to allow your mind to wander and your creative juices flow.

Whatever you make, come and make it with us, together.

Made In Wakefield is a hub for creative activity to showcase, inspire and celebrate all things made in the Wakefield District. Whatever you’ve created, however big or small, loud or quiet, Made In Wakefield is here to celebrate you!

There will also be a DOODLE WINDOW, with all materials provided, and some performances in the ground floor atrium from Wakefield singer songwriter Martin Waterhouse, and Ossett poet Matt Abbott. Tony Wade from Faceless Company will also be on hand to help you make your very own wire figure sculpture throughout the evening. Silk paintings by workshop participants across the district will also be on display.

So there’s plenty to do, see, hear, watch and participate in, even if you don’t have any projects of your own to work on, and even if you do!

Free entry 5 – 8pm

Create Cafe Artwalk Menu

Wakefield Artwalk Special:

2 Courses with a tea or coffee - £10

Soup of the day with fresh bread £4
Create noodle soup £4
Classic Caesar salad £4
Warm salad with green beans, bacon and avocado £5

Spelt risotto, butternut and Yorkshire blue £6
Grilled salmon, herb mayonnaise, potato salad £6
Grilled bacon chop, pineapple salsa £6
Create marinated vegetable skewers, cous cous salad £6

Vanilla cheesecake, rhubarb syrup £3.50
Bakewell tart £3.50
Chocolate brownie £3
Treacle tart £4

Curate Your Own

Curator John Whitaker meets with Judi Alston from One to One Development Trust to make plans for Curate Your Own project.

Curate Your Own is an intergenerational project encouraging residents to explore museums being curators of their own exhibition. Participants will use digital media to document artefacts relating to their community sharing stories through digital recordings. An art installation for both Wakefield and Pontefract Museum will be produced along with a book documenting the journey and success of the  project.

It is funded through the Council's Creative Partners grant scheme which supports cultural excellence and innovation across the district, and run by One to One Development Trust. Projects deliver arts and cultural activity that make a real difference to the well being, health, happiness and life chances of our people, places and communities.

Curate Your Own will be delivered across the summer, the end results will be displayed in the galleries next year.

Fun for Museums at Night!

Last Friday saw 2 very different events at Wakefield Museum for Museums at Night. Museums at Night is an annual campaign during which museums around the country open their doors for out-of-hours events.


Our events included 'Museums at Knight' - a family event.

A knight in shining armour told tales of daring adventure!

Wakefield Museum and children’s library (at Wakefield One) were visited by a medieval knight who enthralled younger and older visitors alike with his interactive tale of dragon slaying and princess rescuing adventures.  Children aged 3 - 12 were invited to join the knight to help tell tales of his medieval quests.

Down in the museum itself visitors took part in a dragon themed trail and crafts.  With paper dragons and dragon mask making the museum was sure to require our knight's help...

Visitors were encouraged to come dressed for the event!

Comments from visitors included:
 ‘very well organised the boys loved it, thank you’

‘He was fab, please use him again’

‘Good for parents too!’

Thanks to our Medieval Knight for his story telling and interactive adventure.

  

On the same evening, we also had a very different event, but just as fun!  To come to an adult talk on historical vegetables called 'Flatulence and Phlegm', you would perhaps expect something a little different...

Dr Annie Gray, food historian, is a wonderfully entertaining speaker, who had her audience enthralled, inspired and giggling in equal measure!

Dr Annie Gray with the foods made to historic recipes

Annie explained that the range of vegetables available in the past was greater than it is today. Plants which are difficult to cultivate, or take a lot of space, now have very limited availability - such as the huge, beautiful cardoon which needs to be blanched to prevent it from tasting of cat wee!

We learned the virtues of samphire (and its correct pronunciation), that tea made with cleavers was supposed to keep you slim (but tastes 'green'), and that carrot puddings made from hollowed-out carrots filled with a pudding mixture aren't worth the effort (and look like severed fingers!).

Everyone gets stuck into the food samples after the talk!

Annie also explained that artificially colouring foods isn't a recent phenomenon - spring butter, produced before the cows go into pasture, is rather white, and so was coloured with carrot or saffron to make it yellow.

A final, random snippet - apparently hares have ear wax!  (Just to show that a talk on historic vegetables isn't just about rabbit food!)

Thanks again Annie - a very enjoyable evening!

New exhibition at Pontefract Museum

Click on image to enlarge

A new exhibition has recently opened in Pontefract Museum showing some beautiful images from the Pontefract Camera Club.

The exhibition runs until 29 June.

Free adult talks and events in May

Free talks and events for adults this month (the next on Thursday 16th!). For more details, visit the project website. 

Click on image to enlarge