Textile and Industrial Heritage - Marks and Spencer

Apologies for the lack of blogging for the last few months. I've finally found the passwords in an old diary.

Marks and Spencer is the feature today, for the last year or so we've been aware that the firm were having a purpose built archive in Leeds and on Friday of this week (March 16th) it will be open to the public for the first time. It's handily situated on the old Grammar School site at the University of Leeds so both M&S and Ulita (University of Leeds Textile Archive held in the former Grammar School Chapel) can be visited in one outing. Leeds is finally getting textile archives which reflect the history of the City.

Michael Marks(1863-1909) was born in Bialystock in Poland and came to England in 1882. Looking for Barran's works he stumbled into Dewhirst's wholesale factory, borrowed £5 and used it to buy goods to sell as a pedlar. In 1884 he opened a stall in Kirkgate Market where his catch phrase became "Don't ask the price; its a penny". By 1890 he had 5 of these Penny Bazaars in Leeds, Castleford, Wakefield, Warrington and Birkenhead and was looking for a partner to help with the expansion. Thomas Spencer (1888-1964), the cashier and book keeper for Dewhirsts was recommended and they formed the partnership in 1894. By 1905 together they had opened 70 bazaars

The embroidery was hand stitched by Joan Holah on printed fabric.

Textile and Industrial Heritage - Pear's Soap

Soap producers in Britain seem to have been quite inventive with their advertising campaigns. First with free gifts for returned wrappers, then children's beauty competitions and who can forget the free plastic flowers in the 1950s and 1960s. Improved hygiene in the 1800s produced many new soap firms until the industry reached saturation point at the beginning of the twentieth century leading to many of the firms amalgamating, it's interesting though that many of the brand names remain.


Sir John Everett Millais was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which had been founded in his home in September 1848. He often worked to commission, but Bubbles was painted for his own pleasure. He was captivated watching his grandson, Willie James, blowing bubbles and recreated this event on canvas.

Sir William Ingram bought the painting and the copyright thinking that it would make a marvellous presentation print for his Illustrated London News. He in turn was approached by Mr Barrett from A & F Pears with the proposed addition of the Pears soap bar and lettering to be used for an advertising campaign.

When the advert first came out a heated debate took place in a series of letters to the Times, with many believing Millais had painted the portrait specifically for the advert. Eventually many agreed that its use raised the standard of advertising.

In 1958 the firm introduced the Miss Pears promotion, inviting parents to send in shots of their daughters, the winners of the competition being photographed by eminent photographers for the advertising campaign. Ten years later an added bonus was introduced with the winner of the competition being painted by a well-known portrait painter.

A & F Pears is now part of the Unilever group, along with Joseph Watson, with a substantial branch of the company at Seacroft.

Joan Holah hand stitched this piece on printed fabric (40 hours)

Sports for All - Baron Hawke

A revelation.

Just been down to the Leeds Museum to see the new exhibition of costume - Heroes and Heroines (well worth the visit) - and happened to stray into one of the other galleries. I've wondered what these images on the Tapestry are, and where they come from. There's a whole collection of them on display and apparently they come from Baines of Manningham, Bradford.

The forerunners of collector's items such as whacky plaques and football sticker albums, they were sold at the turn of the last century (1890s onward) in packs of six for boys to collect. In the flesh they look similar to beer mats, but slightly smaller.

The subject of this particular card is 7th Baron Hawke (1860 - 1938) who was a noted captain of Yorkshire County Cricket. He was born in Gainsborough Lincolnshire, so presumably the rules for playing for the County were changed after he played for the team.

Hawke was first appointed Yorkshire captain in 1883 and held the post for 28 seasons until 1910, he remained the President of the club until his death in 1938.

I suspect the card came from Robin Dove's collection. An appropriate subject given that Muttiah Muralitharan has just taken his 800th wicket in test cricket today.

The embroidery was hand stitched by Joan Holah.

Textile and Industrial Heritage - Lunardi's Balloon

Vincenzi Lunardi (secretary to the Italian ambassador in London) was Britain’s first aeronaut and made a balloon ascent on 4 December 1786 from the area of the White Cloth Hall and descended forty minutes later at Thorpe Arch. Lunardi’s first flight was from London to Standon in Hertfordshire on 12 September 1784, using a hydrogen filled ballooon.

Browsing through Amabel Yorke's diaries of the period I found these entries:

September 16th 1784
"A Mr Lunardi went up in an air-balloon from London on Wednesday; we just saw the Balloon as a speck from hence. We hear that he descended near Ware in about three hours. Mr Cambridge was also here, and he told us that his son George had follow'd Mr Lunardi's Air Balloon last Wednesday and came up just as he was descending in a field near Ware and disengaging his tackle. The accounts in the papers of the cold he felt are exaggerated; the Thermometer was three degrees below the Freezing Point & it is true that a few icicles hung to his sleeve. The dog he carried came down safe, & he descended almost to the ground near Enfield to give out his cat who was ill, then rose again by flinging out a sand-bag carried for Ballast."

September 25th 1784
"Air balloons are all the talk now and another is to go up with two gentleman from Ld Foley's Garden near Portland Place."

October 1st, 1784
"NB a Balloon intended to go up by Fire/ in Montgolfier's Manner/ from Ld Foley's garden under the care of Mr Sheldon a surgeon has been after some disappointment at last totally consumed in attempting to fill it."

October 8th 1784
"Blanchard said he used oars to guide his balloon. Lunardi had also Oars & Wings but they were of no use to him, or at most a very little descending."

An insight into the world before aircraft.

Hand stitched by Joan Holah in 30 hours.

Arts for All - Paula Rego Poster

This painting by Paula Rego was used as a poster advertising the Leeds Art Collections Fund, and thus was included on the Arts for All panel.

The fund was founded in 1912 and is one of the earliest "Friends" bodies in Great Britain. Through subscriptions and fund raising events the LACF enriches the collections of the Leeds Galleries including helping with the purchase of this painting.

1993

Rego depicts a mature artist, a sculptress - as can be seen from the background - having a reflective smoke after setting her two apprentices their daily task to paint a still life of an assortment of cabbages and objects on a table. The work is not a self-portrait as Rego used Lila Nunez as her model. Rego describes her sculptress as 'a type of George Sand character', Sand was famous for smoking a pipe and leading a resolutely independent life in a masculine way, but she also had a very feminine personality. The artist is placed at the centre of the painting with everything else subordinate to it and circulating round it. Imaginative power is what so distinguishes this work and, indeed, Paula Rego's art as a whole.

Included today to congratulate Dame Paula Rego on her DBE in today's Birthday honours list.

Congratulations to Graham Nash and John Cale too.

Joan Holah hand stitched this piece on printed fabric (70 hours)

Sports for All - John Charles Centre for Sport

This would appear to be the best all round sports centre in Leeds, but finding information about it on any website other than Wikki is like finding hen's teeth. The Council website gives the impression that it is only a Tennis centre, though controversially it is a difficult site to search.

So, the few facts found are that it was opened as the South Leeds Stadium in 1996 and renamed the John Charles Centre for Sport, possibly in 2006. The swimming pool is olympic standard and replaces the Poulson pool formerly in the City centre. It also seems that for the first time ever the election results were announced there, rather than at the Town Hall.

Hopefully no sportsperson was relying on this site for information about the venue and I will endeavor to find out more.

For swimmers there's this link, courtesy of Doncaster Dartes.

The embroidery was hand stitched by Joan Holah on printed fabric.

Post script

courtesy of Leeds Live it Love it

"Sporting excellence is part of the Leeds heritage, and with this in mind the John Charles Centre for Sport has been designed to the highest standards.

The stadium offers a wide range of activities for all ages and abilities. It has a 2,500 seat grandstand and four floors of top-class sporting and hospitality accommodation. Facilities include Leeds' first ever indoor bowls centre, indoor athletics centre, eight-lane all-weather outdoor athletics track conforming to full International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) specifications, indoor and outdoor tennis courts and multiple all-weather and grass surface pitches.

The centre has also been home to the Hunslet Hawks rugby league side since it opened in 1995.

Facilities:
2,500 seat grandstand
Indoor bowling centre (open seven days a week from 10am to 10pm for both competitive and casual bowlers)
Indoor athletics centre, for track running, all four jumping disciplines (triple jump, long jump, high jump, pole vault), and an area for javelin, discus and hammer.
Weights area
Eight-lane all-weather outdoor athletics track
Tennis courts, indoor and outdoor."

On the Move - cyclist

I've found another cyclist on the Transport Panel. Is he smiling for the cameras, or because he's not stressed sitting in his car in traffic queues or because he's cycling downhill on his way from work?

There's another image of a cycle path just below him on this panel, and there's a website dedicated to the cyclists of Leeds.


Both were hand stitched by Joan Holah on printed fabric.

Environment - Rivercare

This is the picture from the front cover of the Rivercare brochure. During the late 1990s this programme was introduced by Yorkshire Water to upgrade the region's 617 inland sewage treatment works and sewerage system. Yorkshire's sewerage system was built by the Victorians and during the 1980s Yorkshire Water began to tackle the years of neglect and underinvestment.

"We will be investing over £1 million every day over the next few years to further improve clean and waste water services in Yorkshire"

Unfortunately there's no date on the publication and there's no obvious information on the Yorkshire Water website about Rivercare. Has the programme finished? Were all goals met? Has it changed it's name to the Freshwater Fish Directive?

In 2002 there was an exhibition at Armley Mills showing photographs taken by the artist in residence, Ian Beesley, was this when the programme came to an end?

Questions, questions.

What I do know is that Joan Holah spent 80 hours hand stitching this on printed fabric.

Arts for All - Temple Newsam Wallpaper

I'm including this on the blog today as a reminder that the Wallpaper Exhibition at Temple Newsam is coming to a close at the end of the week. The Exhibition shows highlights of the collection of papers given to the house by Roger Warner.

The wallpaper collection at Temple Newsam was started as a research aid for redecorating individual rooms, each in a particular time period of the life of the house. Samples of historic papers have come from underneath floor boards (in rat's nests?) or have been recovered from behind woodwork added over the centuries as room sizes changed. Often very small samples have been just enough evidence of the pattern if the same was used in other houses.

The paper chosen to be represented on the Tapestry had just been re-hung in the Picture Gallery (1996), a facsimile of the flock hung there in the 1740s.

I could go on.........

Joan Holah hand stitched this piece on printed fabric.

LS2000 - Time Ball Buildings

I should apologise for the quality of the image this morning. When the Tapestry was begun it was always going to be important to keep a record of who had done each piece of work. Kate was very aware that large works of needlework and embroidery from history had obviously involved many workers, but none of their names has been recorded.

As each piece was completed a description of it, with the name of the volunteer was entered in a ledger. This was fine with the unique pieces but meaningless when the description was 'leaves' or 'tree' or 'lady in red coat'. When we finally acquired computers a and digital camera this could be remedied with a pictorial record of each embroidery.

So, the quality of the images on this blog is at the mercy of 1990s technology. Each piece was scanned at 150dpi (we were advised to scan at 72 to save space). I really should photoshop the background of this one.

Sponsored by Marriott, who took over this building, the Time Ball Buildings is one of the great curiosities of Leeds. Apparently behind this rich facade are two C17 houses, I wonder if either appear on the Cossins map? The elaborate stucco was applied in 1876 by John Dyson, jeweller and watchmaker. The building is named after the elaborate time ball mechanism attached to the clock above the entrance, which was linked to Greenwich and dropped at exactly 1 pm each day. It was installed in 1910 along with a second clock by Potts, with a gilded figure of Father Time carved by JW Appleyard.

The interior has now been converted into a restaurant but retains most of its ornate late Victorian fittings, including chandeliers bought at the 1890 Paris exhibition.

It was hand stitched on printed fabric by Joan Holah.

On the Move - Cossin's Map 1730

'A New & Exact PLAN of the Town of LEEDES' by John Cossins published in 1730.

In 1993 Sothebys offered for sale a notebook written by John Cossins. It contained notes on his maps of Scarborough, York and Leeds and also a list of the people who subscribed to those maps. This was bought by the City Archivist for York. Originally 138 people subscribed in Leeds to 192 copies; only one copy is now accessible, in Leeds City Museum. It has been suggested that Thoresby was instrumental in hiring Cossins, and a copy of the map is kept at the Thoresby Society.

I don't think any of the houses shown in the margins are still standing, or any of the buildings on the map. St Peter's was rebuilt in 1838. BUT is the White Cloth Hall on the map the same building which is currently shored up with scaffolding in Kirkgate?

Joan Holah spent 100 hours hand stitching on this printed fabric. It's fabulous.

Local Faces - Leonora Cohen (1873-1978)

After the last link I thought I'd better add Leonora Cohen. The people on the local faces were embroidered in colour if still living and monochrome if deceased. The men far outnumber the women in the deceased category so we could really have done with knowing about Vera Leigh in the planning stage.

Leonora Throp was born in 1873. Against both families wishes she married Mr Cohen who was Jewish and both husband and son were very supportive of her political activities. One of Leeds Suffragettes' most prominent activists she campaigned long and hard for enfranchisement and organized mass meetings on Woodhouse and Hunslet Moors. She achieved notoriety in 1912 by throwing an iron bar through a jewel case in the Tower of London and was, for a time, bodyguard to Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst. At the height of the suffragette movement Leonora was briefly imprisoned in Armley Jail, having thrown a brick through a window when Asquith was speaking and there she went on hunger strike. In 1923 Mrs Cohen became the first woman president of the Leeds Trades Council. She was also a magistrate. She retired to North Wales and died there aged 105.

Abbey House Museum holds a collection of Leonora Cohen memorabilia. As well as pamphlets, correspondence and news-cuttings, the collection includes a dress designed by Mrs Cohen in Suffragette colours which she wore at an Arts Club Ball in 1922.

The Leeds City Museums blog also has an interesting reference to Mrs Cohen.

The embroideries were hand stitched by Karen Pattison, Barbara Gray, Joan Holah and Joyce James