Haptic & Hue

It’s Carnival season, time to take to the streets for a party and see the spectacle. But Carnival is about so much more than that. At its heart is the idea that with costumes and masks, people can become shapeshifters, and transform themselves for a short period into someone else. Carnival is the work of a community and a chance for the powerless and the poor to be free for a day and claim equality with the rich and powerful. Each Carnival is different and takes its traditions and ideas from its own culture and the needs of its own people.

This episode looks at how different Carnivals developed and how textiles and masks play a central role in the political ideas behind them. It starts in Venice a thousand years ago as the poor were allowed to let off steam once a year. It crosses the Atlantic as the rich plantation owners brought Mardi Gras to the Caribbean, and saw it creatively developed by the enslaved and the poor into a series of glorious feasts of costume, music, and dance. It tracks Carnival as it was brought to Britain by Caribbean migrants as a celebration of their culture and community. And in all of these, it thinks about how textiles and clothing play a central role.

If you would like to see a full script of this episode, pictures of the carnival traditions discussed in this podcast, or discover links to further information about the topics discussed you can find all this information at www.hapticandhue.com/listen.

The little needle is one of the oldest tools in existence. We know that human beings began to use them more than sixty thousand years ago. Needles, and the textiles that came later have changed humanity completely and helped to make modern society what it is. But until recently very little attention has been paid to them. The contribution that textiles and the tools that surround them have made to our lives has been only dimly understood. This is changing as a new breed of archaeologist – textile archaeologists take centre stage and in doing completely alter our understanding of how humanity developed.

In this episode of Haptic & Hue, we talk to one of the world’s most eminent textile archaeologists, Margarita Gleba. The evidence that she and others are piecing together for the first time from precious ancient textiles tell us new stories about how human beings organised their families, farms, towns, and cities, waged war and traded, how they expressed ideas of status and identity in clothing and how they used textiles in every corner of their lives.

Some of the greatest mysteries of our existence remain to be unlocked and their secrets may lie in the textiles that have not yet been properly analysed or researched. Listen to Margarita Gleba as she takes us on an expert’s tour of the deep past and with her knowledge of textiles begins to sketch in some of the gaps.

If you would like to see a full script of the episode or discover links to further information about the topics discussed here you can find all this information at www.hapticandhue.com/listen.

Is costume design magic or camouflage? The second part of A Feeling of Transformation, looks at the enormous heart and skill that goes into getting costumes right for screen and stage. Find out how costume designers look at textiles and fabric with a different eye: they think how this will tone in overall and how will it read on camera? A talented, young costume designer, Sinead Kidao, who has worked on films like Beauty and The Beast, Little Women, and The Dark Knight Rises talks about how she uses textiles and the role the deep hand-skills of embroidery, weaving, knitting, and tatting play in creating authentic costumes. Sinead has created the first Costume Directory to help other designers use sustainable textile makers who pay a living wage.

We hear from the Breakdown Artist, Jo Weaving, whose job it is to make costumes look lived in, from ballgowns to battle dress. She specialises in wear and tear, from blood to bird poo.

If you go to Haptic and Hue’s website at www.hapticandhue.com/listen, you will find a full transcript of this podcast, pictures and links. You can also sign up there to get these podcasts directly in your in-box, as well as having a chance to win some of the textile related gifts I give away with each episode.

Thanks to Sinead Kidao and Jo Weaving for sharing the way they approach fabric and cloth, and what they do to it to make it look believable. If you want to see more of Sinead’s work you can find it at https://www.sineadkidao.com/. Her Costume Directory is a treasure trove of interesting and sustainable suppliers: it is free to download. And you can follow the Directory and Sinead on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thecostumedirectory/

Jo Weaving can be found at [email protected]. She has just moved into her new studio in Hastings, but she is planning to run some breakdown classes at the studio in future. E-mail her if you would like to go on the mailing list to stay in touch and find out what she’s up to.

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/

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/