Friends of Haptic & Hue

  Remember the humble jumble sale in Britain, or as they are called in the US, rummage or yard sales? There was always the thrill of the chase – you never quite knew what you might find, treasure or trash. Today they barely survive as everything has gone online, or into charity shops. But once these sales were important. They had their origins in the Victorian era and their history gives us a glim...

The first women to go to university in Britain are commemorated in a ground-breaking new 3D tapestry triptych woven by Dovecot Studios. It will have its world premiere on March 8 th , International Women's Day. It honours the Edinburgh Seven who all studied medicine at Edinburgh University - they had a tremendous fight to get to medical school and an even greater one to complete their studies.   W...

Meet Lesley and Kate - stars of a new animated film called Visible Mending – Emotional Repair Through Knitting . It's currently in the running for several awards and in this month's Travels with Textiles, you can hear Sam Moore, who made this profound and touching film, talk about the surprising story behind its creation. We also explore a unique set of mountain rock carvings in this episode: they...

We are time-travelling this month back to the distant past. It's all about ancient textiles in November's Travels with Textiles : how they can survive thousands of years and what they tell us about human existence and our enduring love of fashion and decoration. We invited Margarita Gleba, one of the world's great experts on textile archaeology and ancient fabrics to join us as our special guest f...

This Month's Travels with Textiles takes a look at why Repair is the New Cool in The Netherlands, but what happens when no one knows how to do it any longer? Reaction to the EU Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johannsson, knitting in the Parliament during an important speech, and we hear from the founders of the US based Tempestry Project about why and how they created a universal yarn set to m...

  Look at a painting and what do you see – a great work of art or a textile? Many of the old masters from the Renaissance onwards are painted on canvas, which is in fact stretched hand-woven linen. New research done by a Dutch weaver living in Portugal shows that far from being plain woven canvas, pictures by some of the best-known old masters like Caravaggio, Titian, El Greco, and Velasquez were...

Welcome back to Travels with Textiles after our summer break. This is the monthly podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, hosted by Bill Taylor and Jo Andrews, it brings you textile news from around the world, information from listeners, updates from previous podcasts, and previews of podcasts to come. This month we move the Haptic & Hue podcast HQ from Dorset in the UK to Padua in the Veneto re...

Quilts are at the centre of this month's Travels with Textiles. Quilts of comfort, quilts of protest, quilts of heritage, and quilts that arrive mysteriously in the post. The most important news is that more than 60 of the quilts that were made by the women and children of Canada during the Second World War to comfort refugees and victims of the war in Britain are on the move. These quilts are now...

  The story of nearly half a million quilts made by the women of Canada and sent to Europe to comfort refugees and those bombed out of their homes in the Second World War is one that touched many. It is the most listened-to episode of Haptic & Hue so far. The work and devotion Canadian women put into creating these quilts was astonishing. But, it was a labour that was almost completely forgotten o...

We all have different views about Monarchies and Republics, Kings and Presidents, but regardless of those, the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in London was a feast of textiles and a celebration of some extraordinary skills. In particular, the work of the embroiderers of the Royal School of Needlework stood out. They contributed to a number of items that played a role in the ceremony....

Welcome to May's Travels with Textiles , the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. This month's episode runs the entire social scale of textiles from a King's Coronation robes to an exhibition about kitchen cloths or tea towels.   We have an interview with the head of the Royal School of Needlework's studio and standards, in which she tells us about the work th...

An unusual and interesting exhibition has just been held in London of artists textiles. It was called Styled by Design and it will re-open later this summer in Somerset in England's West Country – so others will get a chance to see it. It included textiles designed by some of the giants of 20 th century art, including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth and o...

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles , the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. This episode has the tang of seawater about it as we explore the Shetland Islanders' method of fulling their cloth in rocky coves and pick up the story of a silk dress found in a chest on the seafloor off the coast of The Netherlands: who did it belong to and how did it fi...

S ewing rolls can tell us extraordinary stories of lives lived. These are commonplace things, often overlooked, but they are a vital part of the sewer's and repairer's kit. In the past, they were used as much by men as by women. No soldier or sailor was without his 'huswif', the old term for a sewing roll derived from the word housewife. It was what he used to keep his uniform smart and his socks...

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles , the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. In this episode we launch Haptic & Hue's new guide: Paris in Textiles , we discover the story wrapped up in an antique sewing roll and we explore why what Geoffrey Chaucer wore really mattered. We also take a trip to the films to look at the knitwear and review two new exh...

Welcome to this month's Travels with Textiles , the podcast for Friends of Haptic & Hue, with Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor. In this episode, we explore textiles of disaster and textiles of memory, especially those memories of textures from your childhood. We hear from listeners who told us more about the incredible history of needles, including the Japanese custom of laying worn and broken needles t...

Althea McNish was one of the most talented textile designers of the 20 th century. She was an incredible artist, technically assured and confident in her use of colour. Her work has been described as being like bathed in sunshine. She came to Britain from Trinidad in the 1950s and was enormously successful, designing scarves for Liberty, fabric for the upmarket furnishing shop, Heals, and textiles...

Happy New Year and welcome to the first of the monthly Travels with Textiles , the podcast just for Friends of Haptic & Hue. Every month Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor will bring you the stories we love, but somehow never find a place in the longer podcast. We talk about what happens behind the scenes, how we find stories, or how stories sometimes find us. In this first episode listen to an interestin...

Provence, in the south of France, is known for its lavender and lemons, its olive oil, and jasmine. It is the centre of France's perfume-making industry and has been immortalised by artists like Matisse and Cezanne, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Provence also has its own memorable textiles, which are immediately recognisable: deeply coloured cottons that reflect the hues of the countryside and often inco...