LOCATED LEEDS STATION LEEDS STATION “8 COLUMNS” 2019
LEEDS STATION ‘8 COLUMNS’
‘8 COLUMNS’ Artists Elise Liversedge and Mary Hooper have created a series of graphic panels located on 8 columns on platforms 8 -16 at Leeds Station inspired by the development of the Weaving and Textile Industry that helped to forge the identity of Leeds as one of the major cities of the UK respected around the world for the quality of its textiles. The reference material for the panels are the unique archive of Sunny Bank Mills in Farsley that has an inspiring collection of the working life of a family owned Mill founded in 1829. The panels are grouped into 4 sets with graphic representation of the different weaves layered with text and quotes on the themes of weaving terminology, processes, skills, Mill names, textures, patterns and weaves, and quotes from Oral History transcripts from former Sunny Bank Mill workers June Walton Pearce, Mender and Burler from 1949 -1959 & Jack Rigg who worked in the Finishing Department from 1941-1960. “8 COLUMNS” is part of an Arts Council funded 2 year Touring Art Project called LAST STATION; located and dislocated. Led by artists Elise & Mary the work is inspired by the ‘Guiding Lights’ and navigation systems of the Trinity House Guild and the importance of the inland waterways. Leeds Station is placed over and alongside the meeting point of the Aire and Calder Navigation and the Leeds and Lverpool canal systems, two major waterways connecting Leeds to the River Humber to the East and the River Mersey to the West. The work explores the states of location and dislocation, for individuals and communities, to place and identity, physically, culturally, emotionally and spiritually. During 2016 - 2018 LAST STATION has toured to Leeds, Hull, Scarborough and Southport, where research and community engagement artwork has been continuously layered into the artwork and ended its tour in Eastbourne in November 2018 at the Towner Art Gallery. The installation of “8 COLUMNS” has been made possible by the generous support of the Network Rail Team at Leeds Station.
Trace of Cloth Hall Leeds and Thomas Jefferson Map 1770
Research During 2017 Elise & Mary visited Armley Mills just outside the centre of Leeds which has a wonderful collection of machinery and a museum charting the history of the weaving industry. Inspired by this visit the artists began searching for an archive of fabrics designed and manufactured in Leeds to develop the artwork for the Sense of Place LOCATED : Leeds Station “8 COLUMNS” project. A visit to the Sunny Bank Mills Archive in Farsley 6 miles to the West of Leeds, provided a treasure trove of source material preserved in the archive of the working life of a family owned Mill founded in 1829 - from tiny weights and measures to an amazing collection of thousands of exquisitely woven Merino wool and Cashmere suit fabrics. Alongside the swatches of material samples from the 19th Century to the 1980’s, are objects that show a tangible working life of the Mill : peg card books, dye testing record books, thread sample books, accounts, ledgers, tools for testing cloth, magnifiers for invisible mending and an additional social history archive to help in understanding the working lifes in the Mill during the 20th century. The documentation of the visits to the Archive are the inspiration of the “8 COLUMNS” collaged drawings and text. Other research included visits to the two main Libraries in Leeds.: Leeds Central Library, the private subscription Leeds Library. and the main Leeds Museum looking at the development of the Canal system and in particular the Aire and Calder Navigation. The record of the types of freight that came into and out of the centre of Leeds throughout the centuries illustrate the canals’ invaluable role in the growth of the wool industry and the industrial revolution.
ARMLEY MILLS, LEEDS
ARMLEY MILLS LEEDS LOOM ROOM
SUNNY BANK MILLS
SUNNY BANK MILLS ARCHIVE ROOM
Investigating the Leeds Crest / coat of Arms The coat of arms dates to the 1660s.“Three stars taken from the coat of arms of Sir Thomas Danby who was the first Mayor of Leeds.The (golden, by the top left image) fleece, a sign of the wool stapler, symbolises the wool industry in the city. Three owls taken from the coat of arms of Sir John Savile who was the first Alderman of Leeds. The closed steel helmet is used by civic authorities.-� Wikipedia
Place
- LEEDS STATION
The place for the ‘LOCATED: Leeds Station “8 COLUMNS” artworks are platform 8-16 of Leeds Station, New Station Street, Leeds. Why : the reason for displaying “8 COLUMNS” at Leeds Station is its location above the centuries old inland waterway systems of the River Aire’s Aire & Calder Navigation and the Leed and Liverpool Canal. These two systems imported and exported goods to the West and the East Coast of England and was a main factor in the city of Leeds developing into a major Woollen centre and ‘the city that made everything.’ This transport interchange including both rail and canal still plays an important part in what gives Leeds its “Sense of Place.” The built environment of Leeds Station has been through many mergers, groupings and refurbishments during its development as a major train station, a description from Network Rail ‘s history of Leeds station outlines a part of it and its connection with the waterways. “In 1869 the London North Western and North Eastern railways jointly opened Leeds New Station. On the south side of the Midland’s Wellington Station, New Station was built at a higher level and on a wider collection of arches crossing the River Aire and with a wrought iron and masonry bridge over the Leeds and Liverpool canal basin which allowed it to have a more spacious train shed than its neighbour. Thomas Prosser, the North Eastern Railway’s architect designed the station building and train shed, Thomas E Harrison as Consulting Engineer for the Joint Station Committee was responsible for the arches which supported the New Station, and do to this day. The vaults created a series of tunnels, each about 80 yards long, running beneath New Station and connecting with the vaults beneath Wellington, running parallel between the River Aire and the basin of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Further side vaults, running east to west, connected many of the underground arches making a railway maze. These arches beneath the stations soon became important to local industry for storage and business premises and are still used in this way today.”
LEEDS STATION and the River Aire
8 9-11
12-15 16
LEEDS STATION TRACK PLAN View from the bridge looking across from platform 16 to 8
Artwork
: 8 C O LUM NS
SET 1 BLUE COLOUR WAY LEEDS STATION PLATFORM 8
set 1
- making it
Winding/Spinning; Yarn Dyeing; Warping and Dressing the loom; Weaving; Mending; Scouring. Fuller, Finisher, Warehousing. Cloth Dressers Ragsorters, women, Slubbers Piecers- machine attendants who joined the broken threads by hand, Overlookers, Hand loom weavers, Power loom weavers, Drawers Slubbing, a step between carding and spinning, one of the earliest mechanized processes. After the cloth had been fulled it was brushed and the nap was cut off with hand held shears
“You had to buy your own Burlers, scissors and needles” “How to hold your needle was harder than you might think. Thimble on middle finger, with the eye of a long then, bendy needle on it, to guide it up and down to pick up stitches. Then you had to hook your scissors over your little finger on the same hand in order to cut threads” Oral History transcripts from former Sunny Bank Mill workers June Walton Pearce, Mender and Burler from 1949-1959 & Jack Rigg who worked in the Finishing Department from 1941-1960.
“You started by learning how to read the ticket that the designer had made to tie out the warp. You could be a day tying out the warp depending on the pattern.” “It was all done by hand, dressed and put onto a beam, a warp dressing frame.” “A single weaver, minding two looms, could turn out 200 to 250 yards of cloth a week” Oral History transcripts from former Sunny Bank Mill workers June Walton Pearce, Mender and Burler from 1949-1959 & Jack Rigg who worked in the Finishing Department from 1941-1960.
SET 2 GREEN COLOURWAY LEEDS STATION PLATFORM 9-11
set 2
- M ILL NAM E S
CALVERLEY WITH FARSLEY: Calverley Mills Bank Bottom Mills Broom Mill Clover Greaves Mill Farsley Beck Bottom Mill Holly Park Mills Lydgate Mill Providence Mill Ravenscliffe Mills Rushton Mills Springfield Mills Sunny Bank Mill Belle Vue Mill
LEEDS: Aire Place Bank Low Bank Top Bean Ing Black Dog Buslingthorpe Byron Street Carlton Cross Carr East Street Ellerby Lane Elmwood Harcourt Hill House Isles Lane Lowe Fold Mabgate Nether Perseverance Shannon Street Trafalgar Valley Virginia Wellington
JAGUARD LOOM ARMLEY MILLS LEEDS
SET 3 PINK COLOURWAY LEEDS STATION PLATFORM 12 -15
set 3
- T E XT UR E S AND WE AV E S Flannel Gun Club Gabardine Pure Cashmere Herringbone Wool & Cashmere Hopsack Wedding Trousers Tattersall Check Face & Back Prunelle Bedford Cord Wool/Mohair Mock Leno Cavalry Twill Herringbone
“ a lot of people look at cloth but don’t really see it. Everything in nature has a pattern, so does cloth.” “A pattern was 36inches wide and as long as you liked. There were 10 Hattersley Jaquard Looms; that needed a lot of patterns and warps to keep them going. The design drawn is on paper, divided by machine ruling and into squares each square representing one thread in the fabric” Oral History transcripts from former Sunny Bank Mill workers June Walton Pearce, Mender and Burler from 1949-1959 & Jack Rigg who worked in the Finishing Department from 1941-1960.
“In the 50’s the Pattern Room had 3 designers Everything were in numbers, all code, all the patterns had different cards coded by thickness not colour except for black and white. Thick ones had low numbers 2/24, 2/18, 2/32, 2/36, 2,38 and so on; 2 = 2ply thread. If a number came up you had a good idea what colour it would be” Oral History transcripts from former Sunny Bank Mill workers June Walton Pearce, Mender and Burler from 1949-1959 & Jack Rigg who worked in the Finishing Department from 1941-1960.
SET 4 - YELLOW COLOURWAY LEEDS STATION PLATFORM 16
set 4
- T E R MINO LO G Y
perching inspecting and marking up the mistakes with blue chalk on the grease, fents - imperfect ends of fabric feelers fancies Burlers – fine tweezers to pull slubs out Slubs - thick
ends that haven’t gone through the spinning
Shoddy developed in Batley, Yorkshire by Benjamin Law circa 1813 mixture of recy-cled woollen rags and virgin wool Fulling: finishing the cloth by a process of applying moisture and pressure. Tenterhooks: After the cloth was fulled it was stretched to dry on long rows of Ten-ters with hooks to fix the cloth onto. Napping with Teasels, a thistle like plant used to brush the cloth and bring up the nap which was then cut close to the surface of the cloth . Cropping was one of the final stages in cloth production: after the cloth had been fulled it was brushed and the nap was cut off with hand held shears. Breaks in the weft and warp made ‘picks’ in the cloth which had to be replaced ‘Grease’ when it came off the loom
Aire & Calder Navigation Leeds “FREIGHT”
www.eliseandmary.co.uk @lastStationArt @last_station121