Over the past months, we have watched in horror as nearly ten million people have fled their homes in Ukraine to escape the Russian invasion. They have become the world’s latest refugees. That word was first applied to some of the most skilled and expert handweavers who began arriving in London in the 1500 and 1600s to escape death and persecution in France. This is the story of how these forced migrants – known as Huguenots - changed the face of London, and created some of the world’s most complex and beautiful silk fabric. It is also a tale of hope and resilience in a time of difficulty and darkness.

This episode tracks the story of the Huguenots, who they were, and why a summer wedding ignited a violent massacre that forced them to flee France. It looks at some of the striking parallels between the Ukrainian refugees and the arrival of the Huguenots in Britain, and it also thinks about the amazing silk cloth the Huguenots were able to create on draw looms, working entirely without power in London weaving lofts.

For a full script of this podcast and show notes please go to www.hapticandhue.com/listen  where you will also find pictures and links to further information about the people you can hear in this episode.

Welcome to the fourth season of Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles. This season is called Threads of Survival and the eight episodes focus on people who have seen hardship and difficulty, but who have survived and often flourished against the odds.

This introduction sets the context for the new Season and provides a mini-guide to the thinking behind the episodes.

In it, we will explore stories of different peoples and different threads and textiles that in the face of poverty, intolerance, violence, enslavement, or sometimes just indifference, have shown great resilience, and have survived and often triumphed. I hope these podcasts give us a fresh way of looking at the world - one that allows us to hear what textiles have to say and helps us understand the central role cloth plays in our cultures and how it enables us to express our deepest feelings and emotions.

There are some changes to Haptic and Hue for this season. Episodes will now be uploaded on the first Thursday of every month and will continue throughout the year with a short break in the summer. This is to give us a chance to explore more widely and to research some topics that we don’t know so well. We will also be announcing shortly details of a Haptic and Hue Membership or Community scheme where we hope to provide a regular behind-the-scenes look at what we are doing, as well as some extra content.

For a full script of this podcast and shownotes please go to www.hapticandhue.com/listen.

Can a nation simply forget an astonishing operation in which its women and children made nearly half a million quilts to comfort the victims of the Second World in Europe? It seems that Canada has come close to doing that.  Only now, nearly 80 years later, is this story being pieced together for the first time by some very determined researchers and textile sleuths. It’s a tale that has never been properly told and the women and children who made these quilts have never been honoured or thanked properly for their work.

This episode of Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles begins with a mystery quilt that turned up on a cold winter’s morning 30 years ago with a strange handwritten label on it. It tracks my efforts to find out what the quilt was and how it came to be made. It uncovers the astonishing story of how millions and millions of items from bandages to sheets, from pajamas to quilts were made by Canadian volunteers as ‘comforts’ to send mainly to Britain in the Second World War, but also later to the Netherlands, France, and Germany, to help those who had lost their homes and all their possessions. The podcast hears from someone who made the quilts and someone who received a quilt and it looks at why this amazing effort was almost completely forgotten.

If you would like to know more about the quilts or if you have a quilt and would like to register it or tell someone about it then please go to www.hapticandhue.com/listen, where you can find useful links, pictures and a full script of the podcast.

Samplers tell stories in stitch, but whose tale are they telling? Perhaps the story of a young woman describing her family and choosing her own patterns and pictures, a child learning her alphabet and numbers by stitching. Or maybe it’s an anonymous sampler from a woman being prepared for a role in which she will spend a life stitching other people’s stories, effacing her identity, working as a seamstress or a servant.

This episode of Haptic and Hue looks at how women in the past were united by their ability to use a needle. From the grandest monarch to the poorest maid they could all sew, it was a common language – one that they were fluent in and often better at than forming letters and numbers with a pen or pencil. It gave them a way of thinking that we have all but lost.

But what they sewed divided them. Middle-class women were urged to create a home with berlin wool-work, firescreens, and antimacassars, or handstitched gifts demonstrating their skill and devotion. Even Queen Victoria stitched and gave away her handiwork while working-class women were prepared for a life of earning their living from the needle – working as seamstresses or mending clothing, stitching other people’s initials onto table linen, and family laundry.

Find out more about how the needle and sewing united and divided women in this episode of Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles.

You can find a full script of this episode, on the Haptic and Hue Website at https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-3/ as well as links and resources to the people you hear in this podcast and the organisations they work for.

There’s a way of producing cloth that has been called 200 years of secrecy and lies. It has played a central role in wars, and slavery. It was the foundation of cheaper clothing and clothes rationing. It has changed laws and been the subject of many official inquiries as well as helping to grow the finest rhubarb in the world. This episode looks at how it may now be entering a new phase of its life, offering us a way to prevent our addiction to textiles from ruining the planet.

Shoddy cloth and its sister mungo were first produced in Batley in West Yorkshire, a town that became so filthy from the trade they said the birds flew backward to stop the soot from getting in their eyes. Shoddy production made this part of West Yorkshire’s fortune in the 19th and 20th centuries but also bought a myriad of problems – from accusations of moral hazard to charges of war profiteering and smuggling.  

This episode looks at shoddy’s past – its role in the American Civil War and in creating West Yorkshire's wealth. It also looks at how shoddy, as the ultimate recycled material, is now being recast as the perfect way to cut pollution from textile waste.

If you would like to find out more about shoddy and see some of the pictures referred to in this episode or read the full script – you can find them in the show notes at www.hapticandhue.com/listen, where you can also find links to books about shoddy and access to Haptic and Hue’s textile bookshop, which has a selection of the best textile books in publication at the moment. Every purchase helps the podcast at no extra cost to you.

The bookshop for US listeners is here.

The bookshop for UK listeners is here

How do textiles shape a city, and how, in turn, does a city and its people shape and change the world of textiles? This episode looks at what the fabrics created in Lyon, in France, tell us about the lives of the people who lived and worked here. It looks at how the innovations that the weavers of Lyon helped to bring about changed us forever, ushering in early ideas of fashion, and at the same time witnessing and utilising the very first steps towards the digital age.  

This podcast explores one of the great textile cities of the world. For hundreds of years, Lyon was a byword for weaving skill and savoir-faire. The silk fabrics exquisitely woven here dressed the royal families of Europe, clothed merchants and muses, priests and politicians, courtesans and courtiers and produced some of the most coveted fabrics of the day.

You can find a full script of this episode, on the Haptic and Hue Website at https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-3/ as well as links and resources to the people you hear in this podcast and the organisations they work for.

African Wax Cloth is having its moment in the sun and it seems to be everywhere, from the catwalks of Paris and New York to the humblest country fabric shop. To the world’s eyes, it is joyful and original, a celebration of West African identity and culture. But what is this fabric, where does it really come from and what does it mean to the different societies and communities that have had a hand in shaping it?

The is episode explores the curious origins of African Wax Cloth, and the twists and turns in an extraordinary story that is behind the creation of the fabric that is one of West Africans most iconic fabrics. But the origins of this cloth lie thousands of miles away from the place that now calls it home. Find out more in this episode.

You can see pictures of the textiles we talk about in this episode, a full script and a list of further resources on the Haptic and Hue Website at https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-3/

Textiles can tell us different stories – not just those of the rich and powerful – they have the power to take us beyond that and tell us tales of working people, families living difficult lives in tough times, those whom history and the written records tend to overlook. This episode is about whole cloth quilting. It explores how this technique and process eventually settled in one area of England and became an emblem of pride and local identity for people who had hardscrabble lives.   

North Country whole cloth quilts are very different from patchwork quilts. Their showmanship lies in the swirling design of the quilting stitches on a completely plain background. Quilting is a process that goes back centuries, used by rich and poor alike to keep warm, as a rudimentary armour in battle, and to dress babies. Find out how this technique became identified with an area of England that stretches from North Yorkshire up onto the Scottish Borders and developed an elaborate artistry all of its own – one that even today is little known and appreciated.

You can see pictures of the textiles we talk about in this episode, a full script, and a list of further resources on the Haptic and Hue Website at https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-3/

Can something belong to us all – just by virtue of the fact that we are human beings? If anything has a claim to that – it is the Paisley motif, which has woven its way in and out of human history like no other pattern. This episode traces the history and some of the many appearances attached to this lovely shape, from its incarnation as a tree of life in Ancient Babylon to an emblem of America’s Wild West or the Swinging Sixties in London.

Paisley has many names and even more meanings. It is the sleeping dragon of patterns – retiring under the hill for decades of slumber before being re-purposed by new cultures and new generations to signify something different. It belongs to many hands and no one, in particular, can lay claim to it, making it one of the truly global patterns. Listen to some of the journey of this nomad in this episode of Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles.

You can see pictures of the textiles we talk about in this episode, a full script and a list of further resources on the Haptic and Hue Website at https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-3/

In the West of England lies an old house that is a quiet treasure chest of textiles. The man who has built up this astonishing United Nations of cloth is using them to change the way all of us value and understand textiles.

Over many years Karun Thakar has created a collection of handmade textiles from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Some of these fabrics would have been the height of fashion in their day, destined for trade, but others are humble domestic miracles telling tales of hardship and struggle, often outlining the difficult lives of the women who made and repaired them.

Karun Thakar believes that every fabric in his collection has a story to tell us about the eye for design and colour of the people who made them and the way they lived their lives. His brilliant appreciation of textiles means that he was collecting Kantha cloth, Japanese boro garments, Ottoman and French embroidery, English smocks, Tibetan aprons, Indian phulkari and more before most of us knew what they were. Now he lends and donates his pieces to museums around the world hoping the deepen the understanding of what they mean and the cultures they belong to.

Listen to him talk about why he collects and what he’s trying to achieve in this week’s episode, the United Nations of Cloth, of Haptic & Hue’s Tales of Textiles.

I provide a full transcript, pictures, and links to the work of the contributors to these podcasts, as well as a list of books and articles that have inspired me in making each episode on my website at: www.hapticandhue.com/listen. You can also find the Haptic and Hue bookshop at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/hapticandhue .

If you would like to sign up for your own link to the podcasts as they are released, for extra information and a chance to access the free textile gifts I offer with each episode then please fill out the very brief form at the bottom of the Haptic and Hue Listen page above. You can follow Haptic and Hue on Instagram @hapticandhue on Facebook or Linked In under the Haptic and Hue name.