Mr Gatty's Experiment Shed

Mr Gatty’s

Experiment

Shed Claire Wellesley-Smith

The madder plant, rubia tinctorum, is a hardy herbaceous perennial indigenous to Western Asia

Mr Gatty’s

Experiment

Shed

August 2019: I am standing in

the partially derelict building at the back of Elmfield Hall

in Church, near Accrington, the site of my long-term community-based artist residency ‘Local Colour’. I’ve been based at the hall, former home of nineteenth century textile industrialist F.A. Gatty, now the base of a social enterprise, Community Solutions North West, one day a week for the last three years. I’m taking some time to get to know the latest piece of equipment the project uses, a mangle, made in the early 20th century a couple of hundred yards down the road at the Ewbank factory.We’ve recently had it converted into a printing press. In the spirit of experimentation, I’ve spread pieces of madder root over the drop cloth on the print tray.The roots were dug up that morning from a garden bed for textile dye plants grown in a polytunnel behind the hall. As I turn the handle of the mangle/printing press the roots are crushed and a strong earthy scent is released.Vibrant orange/red stains are left on the drop cloth. Madder is where this project began, the building I’m in, is key to this story.

The madder plant, rubia tinctorum, is a hardy herbaceous perennial indigenous to Western Asia and has been used as a dyestuff since ancient times.

The maturation of the plant so it becomes suitable for dyeing takes up to three years from sowing the seed. Depending on the mordant (or fixative) used and the strength of dye, the textile shades produced range from pink, red, purple to black. William Morris described madder as ‘yield[ing] on wool a deep-toned blood-red, somewhat bricky and tending to scarlet.’[i] Madder has been found on cloth in Egyptian tombs and has been cultivated in Europe since the seventh

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Madder has been found on cloth in Egyptian tombs and has been cultivated in Europe since the seventh century.

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century. A story persists that the Spartans dyed their battle dress with madder dye to conceal injury and appear invincible on the battlefield.[ii] Demand for madder among textile makers in Europe was huge. It was the main ingredient in the creation of Turkey red, a dye for cotton that was bright and reliably colour-fast, the recipe introduced from Greece to France in the mid-eighteenth century. The process was complicated and initially expensive, involving multiple-steps and additives to the dye bath that included animal blood, dung and bile, rancid olive oil and hydrochloric acid.[iii] A Turkey red dyeing and printing industry emerged in the UK in the 1780s, first around Manchester and then Glasgow. Between 1859 and 1868, wool and calico printers imported an average of 17,500 tons of madder and its derivatives each year, mainly from The Netherlands and France.

Madder arrived in Church, transported on the Leeds Liverpool Canal in forty tonne capacity four-square iron boats known as ‘Tom Puddings’. Locations around Elmfield Hall testify to the importance of the dye in the local area. An 1848 map shows Madder Mill Wood, next to Coppy Clough Madder Grinding Mill, and a madder storage barn immediately adjacent to the area where Elmfield Hall would be built 5 years later. Madder also brought Frederick Albert Gatty (1819 – 1888) to live in Accrington in 1842.[iv] Working in the calico printing industry in his native Alsace he had become a successful innovator in textile colouration processes. He developed modifications to the Turkey red recipe using garancin and was invited to work in England by his compatriot Frederick Steiner.

He established a company, F.A Gatty and Co. Ltd. and his patented adaptation of the Turkey red process became known as ‘Gatty red’. His wealth allowed him to build Elmfield Hall and a personal dye house at the side of the building.

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Demand for madder among textile makers in Europe was huge.

It was the main ingredient in the creation of Turkey red.

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Warehouse, Randisi Textile Recycling Ltd. 20

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the Turkey red process became known as ‘Gatty red’. His wealth allowed him to build Elmfield Hall and a personal dye house at the side of the building.

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Warehouse, Randisi Textile Recycling Ltd. 22

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September 2019: The inside of Gatty’s shed is dark today, outside it’s raining.There are only two windows, one now boarded up.The remaining glass wreathed in dust and spider silk.The walls have lost some, but not all, of their original plaster, patches of the brick structure visible, metal work from the gas lighting system, hooks, a pulley. Looking up some of the roof laths are visible. At the back of the building there is a trap door to a now blocked up well: dyeing and printing are water intensive processes. Across the rear wall, below floor level, there is a dye vat, once lined with lead, long since removed. A small chimney breast and pipework to heat the vat. Other structures, racks, work surfaces, shelves.The room is swept clean.The Local Colour group is looking at the space, most of us using our phones as torches but it’s hard to see any detail.We talk about what might have happened in this space, the sounds – water, steam, bubbling. Smells – chemicals, oils, fabrics imbued with dyes and prints.What might have been on the walls, kept on the shelves… how it has survived mostly intact for all these years.

Alizarin, source of ‘Gatty red’ and the principal colourant present in the root of the madder plant, was the first natural pigment to be synthesized in 1868. By 1871 it was discovered that alizarin could be extracted from coal tar. William Perkin had created the first synthetic dye ‘Mauveine’ from synthesised coal-tar in 1856 and this had led to a rush of patents for other synthetic dye colours.[v] The vagaries of natural dye production: sensitive to time grown, soil quality, weather conditions, time of harvest, were now over. In synthetic form, an absolutely reproducible substance became available, with huge economic benefits for the early chemists. Marx, writing in Capital Vol III on the effect of turnover on the rate of profit, uses madder as an example saying: ‘The making of alizarin, a red dye stuff extracted from coal-tar, requires but a few weeks to yield the same results which formerly required years.’[vi] In Germany, Bayer began production of

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alizarin in 1870 and by 1871 a new factory was built for this purpose alone. The European market for natural madder collapsed rapidly. In Church, Coppy Clough Madder Grinding Mill and all its machinery is advertised for sale in the Preston Herald in April 1872. Gatty filed for bankruptcy in 1883 due to the impact on his Turkey red business. His fortunes were restored by his patent for a mineral khaki dye in 1884.

October 2019: I look back through the archive of information collected with the Local Colour group.This has been gathered from local libraries and archives, national collections, dyers notebooks in textile collections. I am reminded that the building is something of a mystery. It is presented as Mr Gatty’s personal laboratory but there are no definitive references that I’ve seen to link him directly with the building.We have fragments of information that can offer us different lines of enquiry to pursue.The survival of the building, virtually untouched since the 1880s, offers an opportunity to reimagine the space.

We can consider how innovation impacted on industrial production and how this in turn impacted on communities, workers and places.The shed is largely unaltered, but not static and its current precarious state is a concern.The dyeing industry in this area is gone, but we can look at it again through the exploration of materials: through the use of madder grown on site today, in re-examining the physical ephemera of the industry and through ongoing community conversations.

ClaireWellesley-Smith Endnotes: Morris, William. The Art of Dyeing, 1889 Chenciner, Robert. Madder: A History of Luxury and Trade. Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000 [iii] Nenadic, S and Tucket, S. Colouring the Nation: The Turkey Red Printed Cotton Industry in Scotland C. 1840-1940. Edinburgh: NMS, 2013 [iv] Crossley, Richard. Accrington Captains of Industry. Wardleworth, 1930 [v] Garfield, Simon. Mauve. London, Faber, 2000 [vi] Marx, Karl. Capital Volume III. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ [i]

[ii]

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Acknowledgements Mr Gatty’s Experiment Shed is a new work by Claire Wellesley-Smith supported by Arts Council England. It explores the layered histories of a former industrial site in Accrington, East Lancashire, the purpose built ‘experiment shed’ of Frederick Albert Gatty, 19th century textile industrialist and dye innovator. In the bicentenary year of Gatty’s birth this new interdisciplinary work, created through an authentic engagement and co-production process with local residents will produce an installation in this unique space that will be exhibited as part of the first British Textile Biennial.

The British Textile Biennial (3rd October - 3rd November 2019) throws a spotlight on the nation’s creativity, innovation and expression in textiles against the backdrop of the impressive infrastructure of the cotton industry in Pennine Lancashire. With its epic mills and grandiose civic architecture along the country’s longest waterway, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the landscape tells the story of textiles.

Curatorial support: Hannah Lamb.

Light and sound installation: Chris Squire, Impossible Arts.

Graphic design and image manipulation: John Stainton, www.whitemountain.net.

Projected images produced collaboratively with participants from the Local Colour project: Michael, Brian S, Brian B, Whyril, Trish, Louise, Marcus, Irena, Ian, Barry, Karen and Steph.

Local Colour is a long-term artist residency commissioned by Super Slow Way, an arts programme in Pennine Lancashire shaped by local communities working alongside a wide range of artists and organisations. It is part of Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme and hosted by Canal & River Trust. Mr Gatty’s Experiment Shed would not have been possible without the support of Super Slow Way, Community Solutions North West and participants from the Local Colour group.

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‘Improvements in dyeing certain colours on cotton yarns and fabrics’ from patents and related papers of F.A. Gatty & Co. Ltd., Accrington and Walton-leDale (courtesy of Lancashire Archives DDX 1325) ‘Pulling fabrics from the madder vat’ - taken from The Boys Book of Industrial Information by Elisha Noyce with 365 engravings by The Brothers Dalziel, London, Ward & Lock, 1858 Claire Wellesley-Smith is an artist, writer and researcher based in Bradford. Parts of this essay were previously presented as an unpublished paper, ‘The Red Bed’, at Textile and Place, a conference at Manchester Metropolitan University and The Whitworth Gallery 2018.

All images © Claire Wellesley-Smith.

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