Haptic & Hue

Hooky Mats and Rag Rugs: How the Art of Necessity Helped Define a Nation

Hooked rugs are humble things made of recycled cloth and worn out textiles, originally born of need and lack: and yet they have come to mean much more to the communities that produced and enjoyed them. In America they have become an emblem of homespun pioneer thrift and self-reliance and an important element in the definition of a certain kind of national values. Handmade hooked rugs are the stuff of everyday life, but in Canada they became a vital form of income for impoverished seafaring families in Labrador and Newfoundland. And in northern England and southern Scotland they brightened up the hearth of many rural and urban working-class homes. But in the far north of the British Isles a very different tradition developed where sewn pile rugs came to play a role as vital protection for sleeping bodies against night time trolls and witches. Join us as we explore the many forms of hooky, proggy, proddy, clooty, clippy, stobby, and bodgy rugs that have spread around the world. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/ [https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/]. And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/ [https://hapticandhue.com/join/]

The Intelligence of The Hands & The Creative Brain

If you were asked to stitch a picture of your brain what would it look like? A project that looks at the connection between our hands and our brains asked people to do just that. It was aiming to measure creativity and to find out what impact skill and experience has on our actions? These are difficult questions to answer, but this episode of Haptic & Hue looks at what happens to us when we learn activities like knitting, sewing and weaving, how do our hands and brains work together, and which guides the other? About ten years ago a doctor in The Netherlands started what sounds like a simple and practical project. She sent off embroidery kits with a print of the human brain on them and asked participants to stitch a brain. The results, captured in recently published book, are glorious, with a variety of stitched, fringed, appliqued, woven, beaded, woollen, and embroidered brains. Those who took part in the Stitch Your Brain project were being asked to do something complex: to use their handcraft skills to think about their brains and what happens to them when they make. It brought into sharp focus the incredible relationship between our hands and our brains and how we use them together to practice or learn a new textile skill and use it with ease and enjoyment. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/ [https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/]. And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/ [https://hapticandhue.com/join/]

The Mysteries of the Marshes: The Ancient Textile Secrets of Europe's Bog Bodies

If we need proof that textiles can rewrite human history, then it lies with the bog bodies of northern Europe. Textile archaeologists are revealing a whole new past about people who, in some cases, are older than Tutankhamen, but much less celebrated. Across northern Europe there are hundreds of bog bodies, who long ago were buried in marshlands and were preserved down the centuries by acidic conditions and lack of oxygen. We will never know all their secrets, but slowly we are discovering more about who they were, and how they lived. It is their textiles that bring us closer to them and tell us, not just about their skills, but also how they thought and designed cloth and clothing. In Denmark more than a hundred marsh bodies have been found - some in extraordinary states of preservation. They date from the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, and are between 1,500 and 3,000 years old. But what some of them are wearing can take us back much further than that, into a time when humans first started to cover their bodies with clothing. For this episode, Jo travelled to the National Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen, to explore the textiles of two of the world's most famous bog bodies. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/ [https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/]. And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/ [https://hapticandhue.com/join/]

Reviving Rocking Stitch and Saving Wholecloth Quilting

Here's a surprise! An extra episode of Haptic & Hue. We said we were taking a break for July and August and yes, we are. But we thought we would give you a taste of what Friends of Haptic & Hue sounds like and invite you to join the other podcast that we make every month. So here is the episode of Travels with Textiles that was uploaded for Friends in May this year, just as UNESCO announced that it was adding an old quilting practice to the list of crafts that have intangible cultural heritage status. Quilting in a flat frame with a rocking stitch has a history that stretches back certainly to the 16th century and maybe much further. This is one of the original forms of quilting on cloth, creating beautiful and complex patterns as it is done. This technique often produces a style of quilting known as whole cloth quilts. Hand quilting in a frame is being placed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts by the Heritage Crafts Council as the number of elderly practitioners of this skill, mainly in Wales, Northern England and the Scottish Borders continues to dwindle and quilting frames disappear. But here we talk to two quilters who are seeking to reverse that by recognising, protecting, and reviving whole cloth quilting, and the tools needed to carry it out. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/ [https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/]. And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/ [https://hapticandhue.com/join/]

The Witches of Scotland: How a New Tartan Became a Living Memorial

A very special tartan has just started to roll off the weaving looms of the Prickly Thistle Mill in the north of Scotland. This brand-new design in black, pink, red, and grey is part of a powerful campaign to remember the thousands of overwhelmingly female lives lost to accusations of witchcraft between the 1500s and the mid 1700s. This was one of the bloodiest miscarriages of justice Scotland has ever seen. Records suggest that at the time Scotland accused and executed more people than any other country in the world. The Witches of Scotland Tartan sold out long before it went into production after its registration was spotted by an eagle-eyed American, testament to the fact that the tragedy of the witchcraft trials spread to America with the colonists of the 1600s. It also speaks volumes for the power of textiles that the two determined women, who have been campaigning for a pardon for all those accused of witchcraft in Scotland, have chosen a fabric that can be worn by all as a living memorial to those who lost their lives, rather than a statue or a fixed monument. Cloth has a great power to hold the memories of those we have loved, but this may be the first time it has been called in use as a national memorial, to commemorate injustices done to unknown thousands who are long dead. It brings new meaning to the campaigns to exonerate witches in a world where these accusations don't seem to have died but merely changed shape. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/ [https://hapticandhue.com/tales-of-textiles-series-7/]. And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link: https://hapticandhue.com/join/ [https://hapticandhue.com/join/]