The American cotton feed sack is the stuff of legend. From the 1850s onwards it was skilfully repurposed by women across America into all kinds of garments and household goods. By the late 1930s when it became highly patterned, it's estimated that more than 3 million Americans were wearing feed sack clothing. Out of necessity, it was made into dresses and shirts, quilts and curtains, sheets, mattress covers, pyjamas, and even undergarments. 

Today feed sacks are valued by collectors and makers in America, and there is a lively market in them. But these soft cotton sacks have a much wider story to tell us than that. They have played a role in creating one of the world’s legendary cricket teams, they have saved a nation from the brink of starvation and in this episode of Haptic & Hue, we tell the incredible story of how a flour sack re-united a family with the something created by the grandmother they lost in in the Holocaust.

For pictures of the feedsacks talked out in this episode and more information about the contributors please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6/

An extraordinary quilt handstitched by convict women on board ship as they were transported from Britain to Australia in 1841 has just gone on display in a new exhibition at Australia’s National Gallery. Many of those who made the quilt were illiterate and led tough and impoverished lives. And yet these social outcasts and exiles - working in desperate circumstances - created one of the most important cultural artifacts in the colonial history of Australia.

The Rajah Quilt – named after the ship the women were transported on - has nearly 3,000 individual pieces. It is one of the only items made by convicts that survives from this part of Australia’s past, which was buried in shame for so long. The quilt gives us a rare chance to re-assess what it meant to be transported and to see how it has become an important part of Australia’s history and a powerful symbol of how many people first came to this country.

For more information, a full transcript and further links: https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6/ 

From the grandest palace to the poorest cottage, so-called ‘stained’ cloths brought colour and joy to everyday life in England for hundreds of years. These specially painted and stamped fabrics formed the backdrop to funerals, ceremonies, processions, masques, and tournaments that required banners, flags, pennants or scenery from 1300 onwards.  But this world of dazzling medieval colour and pattern has been mostly lost to history because so much of the cloth has perished, and the craft of the stainers has been so little understood. Now Haptic & Hue re-discovers the secrets of making stained cloth and looks at how it was used.

This episode uncovers the secrets of the 14th century fabric stainers which lie in a pocket-sized book, transcribed more than six hundred years ago, by monks at Gloucester Cathedral. It contains 30 recipes for preparing cloth and special water-based colours to permanently paint and block print wool and linen. Haptic & Hue took a trip to Gloucester Cathedral to explore the lost world of medieval textiles.

For more information, a full transcript and further links, see  https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6/

Great tapestries have been used to decorate and embellish homes and palaces for centuries, and yet the hands that created these works remain almost completely forgotten.  Art institutions treasure their ancient tapestries woven painstakingly over many months, and even years and know almost everything about them, except the names of those who created these extraordinary pieces. Modern artists, like Picasso, Henry Moore and Marc Chagall see their work rendered into a different and exciting form by tapestry weavers, but no-one remembers who the weaver was or is.

This episode of Haptic and Hue looks at tapestry weaving and the process of collaboration that goes on between an artist and a weaver to produce a new work. It asks if tapestry weavers are forever destined to be seen as anonymous helping hands, or if their skill, craft and artistry is now, finally, beginning to be recognised as an art in its own right.  We talk to a gifted tapestry weaver about what it is like to work on a piece for several months and how much of herself she pours into each new weaving.

For more information, a full transcript and further links, see  https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6/

There’s a piece of clothing that has a good claim to being a universal garment. It is thousands of years old and yet it featured on the catwalks last year. It’s stylish and at the same time the humblest and simplest of garments. It has been worn and enjoyed by rich and poor alike. It has been repurposed and reshaped throughout human history and it has fulfilled many functions.

The cloak has kept us good company throughout the centuries, it has marched with armies across plains and deserts, it has been sanctified and worn by saints, and was just as beloved by sinners such as highwaymen. It became the emblem of witches on broomsticks and superheroes flying through the sky. It was worn by hobbits to make them invisible and it is still revered as the ultimate in stylish outerwear by Venetians.

This episode of Haptic & Hue looks at the cloak, cape, cope, mantle, and all its other many forms through history and tries to answer the question of why it has proved such a joyful, useful and versatile garment.

For more information, a full transcript and further links, see  https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6/

As the war in the Ukraine brutally shows, few people have had as hard a struggle down the centuries to maintain their identity as Ukrainians. For hundreds of years, they have been occupied and subjugated by one power after another, the Ottomans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Poland, the Nazis, and Russia again. Through it all Ukrainians have held onto their traditions: one of the strongest of these has been the beautifully and skilfully stitched motifs on plain linen or hemp shirts.

The embroidery of Ukraine is one of its secret weapons and an incredible defence against the cultural annihilation that has been practiced against it. What it means to be a Ukrainian is powerfully expressed in the complex and beautifully worked stitches that go into decorating their national dress. The knowledge of what each stitch means and the skill to make these shirts is thriving and continues to be passed down the generations. This episode of Haptic & Hue is about how the beautifully embroidered shirts and blouses of Ukraine have endured as a symbol of the country’s fight for existence and have become so entwined with the identity of Ukrainians that some refer to it as part of their genetic code.

For more information, a full transcript and further links, see https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-6 

The needle and thread have been humanity’s constant companions for tens of thousands of years: far longer than the dog, the sword, or the wheel, and much longer than reading and writing. Down the centuries the needle has rendered us incredible service and we have come to depend on it. And yet the activity of stitching has long been ignored in the record of human endeavour. Even the modern trend for embracing making and craft tends to leave out sewing. But a new book just out, comes to try to redress the balance.

Haptic & Hue’s Book of the Year for 2023 is Barbara Burman’s The Point of The Needle. In it, Barbara says ‘stitching and stitches are valued precisely because they embody human life and invention, and cloth itself is inseparable from them’. Barbara was the co-author of the well-received book called ‘The Pocket – A Secret History of Women’s Lives’, but in this new book, Barbara has a much bigger canvas: to rescue sewing from the twilight and to celebrate it as a fundamental human activity.

For more information, a full transcript, and further links, https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-5/

Sewing is one of the most vital but also one of the most overlooked human crafts. Every piece of clothing we wear has been put together by someone who has learned to sew. Millions of people sew for pleasure and millions more earn their living in the textile and clothing industries – often in underpaid and unprotected jobs. 

The craft of using a needle has been one of humanity’s greatest skills, ever since this tiny piece of technology came into use around 60,000 years ago. It is something that unites us all as human beings, regardless of ethnicity, religion or geography. For most of time, sewing as a skill was passed from generation to generation. But, in the last few hundred years, as textiles and thread have been produced in abundance, how we learned to sew became a political matter. Governments, churches, politicians, and corporations all had a view on the morality and the methods necessary to turn out the ideal needlewoman.

This episode of Haptic & Hue tells the little-known story of how two separate sewing schools on different sides of the Atlantic gave women all over the world a new life of economic independence, social status and personal power.  One of these education programmes took the Singer sewing machine into every corner of the globe. The other, a ground-breaking teacher training college in London, had an impact on the lives of millions of girls all over the world.

For more information, a full transcript and further links, https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-5/

There is a quiet revolution happening on Savile Row in London, home to some of the world’s finest men’s outfitters, as the makers of bespoke suits embrace textile recycling in a unique new scheme. A number of houses on The Row have been collecting woollen offcuts as they cut and tailor handmade men’s clothing – just as they did in times gone by– and sending them off to be recycled into new yarn, which is then woven into fresh cloth. The radical difference is that this time the recycled cloth is being bought back by these high-end workshops to be tailored and sold to the Row’s own bespoke customers. 

Savile Row, in the heart of London, has been at the centre of high-quality men’s tailoring for 200 years. It has supplied handmade suits, from the finest woven cloth, to film stars and royalty, to statesmen and sportsmen. It has a reputation for quality and excellence second to none. Now it is embracing recycling, and it seems, its top-end clients are happy to pay for it.

It’s incredibly rare to find a recycling loop like this one – especially in textiles - where the waste is turned into quality new material to be used by the same workshops that created it in the first place. This episode tells the story of how this is happening and follows the journey that turns tiny bits of fabric that would previously have been binned, into new bespoke garments, ones that come with great credentials and an interesting story behind them.

Along the way Haptic & Hue gets a privileged glimpse into the world of Savile Row tailoring – the training and the standards that need to be maintained from start to finish to produce a garment that may well last a century or more.

If you would like to see a full script of this episode, see photos or discover links to further information about the topics discussed you can find all this information at www.hapticandhue.com/listen. You can follow Haptic & Hue on www.instagram.com/hapticandhue/  

Have you ever wanted a Picasso on your walls – or maybe a Joan Miro, a Chagall, or perhaps a Raoul Dufy? For a time in the mid-50s in America you could buy work by these artists for just a few dollars: that's a few dollars a yard, because these were fabrics and not original paintings – but they were beautifully designed, sophisticated, and elegant. 

As peace crept back after World War Two there was an intense hunger for new design. After five long years of uniforms, and sacrifice, people wanted something interesting to wear, and colourful fabrics to decorate their homes with. In America manufacturers were quick to turn their machines from military production to domestic demand. 

This episode of Haptic & Hue is about how fresh and fashionable textiles were amongst the first items people were able to enjoy in the post-war period.  It focuses on a short period when manufacturers turned to established artists, like Picasso, Raoul Dufy, Marc Chagall and Miro, to help them create brilliant new textiles. It looks in particular at Daniel B Fuller’s attempt to build what he called “A Museum Without Walls’ with his Modern Masters series of textiles in the 1950s.

It is also about what grew out of that, and tells the story of a young artist, unknown at the time, who worked for these same textile producers as a pattern designer, using his experience and skills to change the face of twentieth century art.

For more information, a full transcript, and further links, https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-5/