Haptic & Hue
52 episodes - English - Latest episode: 25 days ago - ★★★★★ - 158 ratingsHaptic & Hue's Tales of Textiles explores the way in which cloth speaks to us and the impact it has on our lives. It looks at how fabric traditions have grown up and the innovations that underpin its creation. It thinks about the skills that go into constructing it and what it means to the people who use it. It looks at the different light textiles cast on the story of humanity.
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Episodes
The Forgotten Medieval Craft of Cloth Staining
April 04, 2024 04:17 - 38 minutes - 70.7 MBFrom 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 cra...
Invisible Hands: Tapestry Weavers and Artists
March 07, 2024 04:30 - 38 minutes - 77 MBGreat 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 for...
The Garment That Sweeps Through History: The Everlasting Cloak
February 01, 2024 04:30 - 38 minutes - 77.7 MBThere’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 dese...
Ukraine's Revolutionary Act of Embroidery: How Identity Survives in Stitches
January 04, 2024 04:00 - 43 minutes - 79.7 MBAs 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 Point of The Needle - How the Ancient Craft of Stitching Shapes Us
December 07, 2023 04:01 - 29 minutes - 62 MBThe 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...
The Language of Thread - Why Sewing Matters and How It Was Taught
November 02, 2023 03:30 - 39 minutes - 73.3 MBSewing 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 someth...
Cabbage and Mungo: How Recycling Returned To Savile Row
October 05, 2023 03:30 - 41 minutes - 76.2 MBThere 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...
The People's Art - Material and The Modern Masters
September 07, 2023 03:30 - 43 minutes - 60.3 MBHave 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 w...
The Tangled Tale of Tartan
June 01, 2023 03:30 - 41 minutes - 64.1 MBWho doesn’t love a good tartan? It is everywhere from high fashion catwalks to shooting parties on winter hillsides, from military uniforms on parade to much-loved old sofas. It is at home in the humblest of cottages and the most splendid of royal palaces. It has a kaleidoscope of different uses and meanings. It is one of the most recognised patterns on earth, a global textile, visible almost everywhere. But tartan is much more than a pattern, it is a fabric of contradiction and surp...
A Dance to The Music of Time
May 04, 2023 03:30 - 39 minutes - 71.7 MBThis is the tale of how textiles played a central part in one of the great cultural and artistic upheavals of the last century, helping to bring about a change that was to reach deep into many lives, influencing fashion, interior design, illustration, art, and dance. The Ballet Russe, gathered together by the mercurial figure of Serge Diaghilev in the early part of the twentieth century, was revolutionary in almost everything it did. The dancers, the music, the choreography, the set...
A Sliver of Deep Blue Cloth
April 06, 2023 03:00 - 49 minutes - 90.5 MBWarning: This podcast and the text below uses terms considered offensive and inappropriate today. An extraordinary sample of indigo cloth has been found in a British record office which is thought to be a rare surviving fragment of fabric used to clothe enslaved people in the Caribbean and North America. The Haptic & Hue team of Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor was alerted to its existence in early January. We travelled to Derbyshire to see it and realised from a note on the back that we ...
No Costume? No Carnival!
March 02, 2023 04:30 - 36 minutes - 67.2 MBIt’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...
Is the Needle Mightier Than the Sword?
February 02, 2023 04:30 - 44 minutes - 81.5 MBThe 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 – te...
Coarse Shifts and Fine Silks
January 05, 2023 04:30 - 41 minutes - 63.4 MBClothes are a window to our identity – they tell others who we are, what we believe in, and whether we are rich or poor, powerful or powerless. They also tell us a great deal about who someone is, whether they are tall or short, skinny or full-bodied, and what sort of life they lead, one of leisure or one of unremitting hard work. These clues make garments and textiles a wonderful way to understand the people of the past, what their lives were really like, and who they were. This episo...
Stitches by Candlelight
December 01, 2022 04:30Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here’s a new account that re-interprets her life from the point of view of the textiles she wore and the embroideries she stitched. It casts a completely different light on her difficult existence and brings her fully into focus as a living, breathing human being. Here is a renaissance queen displaying her power in violet taffeta and purple velvet, who wore silver to mourn, black to display...
Stitches by Candlelight
December 01, 2022 04:30Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here’s a new account that re-interprets her life from the point of view of the textiles she wore and the embroideries she stitched. It casts a completely different light on her difficult existence and brings her fully into focus as a living, breathing human being. Here is a renaissance queen displaying her power in violet taffeta and purple velvet, who wore silver to mourn, black to display...
Stitches by Candlelight
December 01, 2022 04:30Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here’s a new account that re-interprets her life from the point of view of the textiles she wore and the embroideries she stitched. It casts a completely different light on her difficult existence and brings her fully into focus as a living, breathing human being. Here is a renaissance queen displaying her power in violet taffeta and purple velvet, who wore silver to mourn, black to display...
Returning The Spirit of a Soldier
November 03, 2022 04:30 - 49 minutes - 67.8 MBA ragged flag and torn flag, nearly eighty years old was posted last month from a home not far from London. It doesn’t look like much but it is infinitely precious, both to the person who sent it and to the family in Japan that created it. If the family can be found, this flag may be the only thing that remains of their brother, father, uncle or grandfather who went missing in the Second World War. If it is returned to them they will have something to mourn after all these years. The w...
Strong Community Threads
October 06, 2022 02:30 - 40 minutes - 55.3 MBImagine the person who sits behind the counter in the post office or serves your coffee in the Main Street coffee shop has a superpower, one that she shares with your child’s teacher, the administrator in a building company, and the nurse you met last week at the clinic. All of them are talented textile designers, part of a community that works to the highest standards and turns out work that bears comparison with the best being produced in America. The Folly Cove Designers were an ext...
The Secret Life of Second-Hand Clothes
September 01, 2022 03:00 - 39 minutes - 53.7 MBWhat happens to your old clothes? Do you drop them off at the charity shop or turn them into the textile recycling bin at the store? They leave your wardrobe and your thoughts – but what happens next and where do they end up? This episode of Haptic & Hue’s Tales of Textiles wraps up old clothes, flea markets, the invention of a special form of jazz, the horror of today’s textile excess, and glimmers of hope for the future. This edition of Haptic and Hue is about the past, the present, ...
The Long and Winding Road of Lace
July 07, 2022 03:00 - 40 minutes - 55.6 MBThe long arc of human history has been accompanied since the 1400s one way or another by lace. The Italians call this, delightfully, ‘Stitches in Air’ and it has many origin myths from the Venice lagoon to the gently rolling countryside of northern Europe. It has been smuggled and stolen, worn and desired by kings and cavaliers, by maids and madmen. It has been painted and preserved and the songs and rhymes of lace makers have been passed down the generations. This episode of Haptic an...
Pears and Pomegranates
June 02, 2022 03:00 - 37 minutes - 51.2 MBThe Italian Renaissance produced glorious masterpieces by artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo who are justly feted for their talent. But look again at these pictures and you realise that they show the work of other artists as well, artists whose work was hugely skilled, well rewarded, and just as valued by the elite of the day who could afford to buy it. But the names of these spinners and dyers, the weavers and embroiderers are lost to us, and their work has largely crumbled to...
Fabric and Foundlings
May 05, 2022 03:00 - 39 minutes - 54.7 MBIn 18th century London, the secret of your birth could literally hang by a thread. If your mother took you to the Foundling Hospital because she was unable to care for you, you were given a new identity to avoid any shame. But, in case she was later able to reclaim you, she left a token, often a textile cut in two, and she kept the other half as a way of proving she was your mother. Often it was just a scrap of cloth, the only thing that could prove the link between you and your birth mother...
The Refugees Who Dazzled London
April 07, 2022 03:00 - 36 minutes - 50.4 MBOver 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 ...
Introduction to Season 4
March 31, 2022 03:00 - 17 minutes - 24.4 MBWelcome 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, intoleranc...
Canada's Forgotten Quilts
January 27, 2022 04:00 - 43 minutes - 60.2 MBCan 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 than...
What Samplers Tell Us About the Hands That Made Them
January 13, 2022 04:00 - 41 minutes - 57.5 MBSamplers 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 ...
Shoddy: The Once and Future King
November 18, 2021 03:00 - 43 minutes - 59.4 MBThere’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 ...
Lyon: City of Silk
November 04, 2021 04:30 - 31 minutes - 42.7 MBHow 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 explo...
African Wax Cloth
October 21, 2021 03:00 - 38 minutes - 53.4 MBAfrican 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 t...
Whole Cloth From The hills
October 07, 2021 03:00 - 37 minutes - 51.5 MBTextiles 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. ...
Paisley - The Pattern Nomad
September 23, 2021 03:00 - 35 minutes - 49.1 MBCan 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...
A United Nations of Cloth
September 09, 2021 03:00 - 37 minutes - 51.4 MBIn 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 ...
The Chatter of Cloth - Introduction
September 02, 2021 03:00 - 17 minutes - 23.4 MBWelcome to the third season of Haptic and Hue’s Tales of Textiles. This series is called The Chatter of Cloth and each of the eight episodes starts with a piece of fabric and tracks its tale. This introduction sets the context for the season and provides a guide to what is in store. Textiles have been called a detective story that you can hold. Here are eight small detective stories for those of us who can hear what textiles have to tell us about great events, extraordinary kingdoms and empi...
A Feeling of Nostalgia
July 01, 2021 01:00 - 31 minutes - 42.9 MBThere is one kind of fabric that produces a powerful sense of nostalgia in many of us, and that’s the very democratic cloth that covers the seats and benches of public transport systems around the world. Whether you live in London or Los Angeles, Berlin or Bombay, our buses, metros, and trams use a patterned, wool, fabric called moquette. It comes in thousands of different patterns and weaves, and the sight and touch of each one enables us to reach into our memories and be transported ...
A Feeling of Belonging
June 17, 2021 01:00 - 36 minutes - 50.1 MBCloth is more than something useful or beautiful, it can also have enormous power. We are surrounded by fabrics of meaning and belonging, fabrics that tell us who people are and where they come from if they share a nation, a clan, a school or a religion with us. This episode explores the ultimate textile with a message – a flag. One commentator calls flags a kind of window onto history that can link people across time and anchor them to their communities. In this podcast, we look at on...
A Feeling of Wealth
June 03, 2021 02:00 - 38 minutes - 52.2 MBCloth and wealth have gone hand in glove for much of history: where there are textiles there has almost always been money, and often lots of it. The Medicis of Florence started life as wool traders in Tuscany before they became bankers, popes, princes, and queens. It was wool that started them on a journey that saw them become the principal financiers of the Florentine Renaissance, they were the backers of almost everyone who mattered including Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli, R...
A Feeling of Sorrow
May 20, 2021 02:00 - 36 minutes - 50.2 MBHow cloth helps us grieve. Sorrow is a universal human experience – whether it’s for a loved family member, for a way of life that once was, or for events that engulf nations and sweep away millions. The episode looks at how textiles are an essential part of the process of grieving, and how they bring us comfort and help us deal with deeply felt emotions. It looks at the special place cloth plays in mourning a much-loved father, the loss of a child or partner in political repress...
A Feeling of Warmth
May 06, 2021 01:00 - 36 minutes - 49.7 MBUnravelling the journey that fleece takes from the fells to fabric. This episode tracks how greasy wool bred in the wind and rain of a Lake District Farm becomes a smartly tailored jacket, a beautifully knitted pullover or a laceweight shawl, fine enough to pull through a wedding ring. A Feeling of Warmth looks at the skills and processes needed from the shepherd, the spinner, the weaver, and the tailor before we can put a wool garment made sustainably and ethically on our backs. ...
A Feeling of Resilience
April 22, 2021 01:30 - 38 minutes - 53.5 MBOn the face of it repairing and reinforcing textiles simply prolongs the life of our clothes and helps minimize textile waste, things worth having – but for many, it also delivers much more than that. The French sculptor, Louise Bourgeois said: ‘The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair’, it helps to centre us, and tells us stories about ourselves and the resilience of our families and communities. This episode looks at the case for mending and thinks about how different cult...
A Feeling of Transformation - Preparation
April 08, 2021 01:30 - 33 minutes - 45.6 MBIs 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 ...
A Feeling of Transformation - Performance
March 25, 2021 02:00 - 32 minutes - 44.9 MBDo clothes conceal us or reveal us? Listen to how actors use clothes to make stories believable. Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, who have played a huge variety of roles between them, from mobsters to Tudor ladies in waiting, from regency bucks to flower sellers, talk about why costume is so important to them. Mark Twain once wrote: “without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a ci...
A Feeling of Comfort
March 11, 2021 01:00 - 35 minutes - 49 MBThere is nowhere in the world quite like Gees Bend, Alabama with the story of how its quilt-makers were acclaimed as artists, and their work bought by galleries and museums around the world. Necessity is the mother of invention and this is particularly true in this small community, where for generations women have created quilts to keep out the cold and to furnish their homes. They used anything and everything that came to hand, and over time they honed their skills and their designs. Isolat...
Introduction Series 2
March 04, 2021 00:30 - 16 minutes - 23.1 MBWhy does touch matter so much to us? What is the connection between cloth and our emotions? This new season of Haptic and Hue's Tales of Textiles explores how we express ourselves through cloth, whether it's the comfort quilts and blankets bring us, the way we use clothes to take the burden of losing someone we love, or why certain patterns and fabrics connect us strongly with memories of childhood, school or first love. Each episode takes a different feeling and unravels what it means to...
Majesty and Mannequins
December 10, 2020 10:00 - 39 minutes - 54.3 MBMajesty and Mannequins Episode 7 Catch her out of the corner of your eye as she skitters across the stage of history. She has seen revolutions, war, disaster, pandemics, peace and joy, and survived it all. She is probably 3,500 years old, maybe more. She is called Pandora. This episode looks at the unseen role miniature mannequins, or Pandora figures, have played in diplomacy, war, royalty, communications, and marketing, down the centuries from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, through...
Making Men
November 25, 2020 20:12 - 32 minutes - 45.2 MBSewing, mending, knitting and all the fibre skills are seen as 'Women's Work' in Western cultures. But why is this? We hear from men who were taught to sew and knit in wartime, in prison or in isolation, and we talk to men who freely choose to stitch, knit and spin as a hobby. What are the barriers men face if they take up these skills and what does the world lose if they don't? This episode looks not just at the gender divide of the West but also thinks about the textile traditions of Afric...
Yarn Yarn Yarn
November 12, 2020 22:39 - 26 minutes - 36.3 MBThis episode tells the story of the top designer of fabrics to the French fashion industry. It looks at the way in which a modern supplier, competing in a global market, still uses ancient weaving technology with handweavers working on table looms to produce thousands of fresh designs every year. I provide a full transcript, pictures, links to the work of the contributors to these podcasts, and a list of resources that have inspired me on my website at: www.hapticandhue.com/listen. If y...
Stitches in Time
October 29, 2020 08:00 - 31 minutes - 42.7 MBThe haute couture embroiderers of Paris are amongst Europe’s most celebrated and skilled artisans. This episode looks at the needlewomen who sit behind the seams of the garments we see on the catwalks and in the fashion magazines. It tracks the history of haute couture and thinks about how it is changing in response to modern tastes and trends. I provide a full transcript, pictures, links to the work of the contributors to these podcasts, and a list of resources that have inspired me on my...
A Weaver's Tale
October 15, 2020 06:30 - 19 minutes - 26.3 MBWhat does it mean to earn your living as a maker? Can you feed yourself? This episode looks at the renowned hand-weaver, Janet Phillips, who has done just that for more than 50 years. It celebrates her half-century at the loom and asks what it takes to achieve this. I provide a full transcript, pictures, links to the work of the contributors to these podcasts, and a list of resources that have inspired me on my website at: www.hapticandhue.com/listen. If you would like to sign up for you...
Material Women
October 01, 2020 07:00 - 36 minutes - 49.6 MBThe story of the elegant, crisp and artistic textile designs that burst upon the world in the 1950s - the period now known as Mid Century Modern. It looks at the women who created them and in doing so became part of the first cohort of women to dominate any field of design, and it thinks about how these fabrics transcended their function and became a symbols of peace and better times. I provide a full transcript, pictures, links to the work of the contributors to these podcasts, and a l...