War of the fibres

War of the fibres is an exciting free workshop that examines local history contributions to the traditional story of the Industrial Revolution.

The day includes talks on wool, flax and cotton, a small exhibition of textile documents and artefacts from Special Collections at the Brotherton Library, and an optional walking tour of the University of Leeds campus: all making a half-day day of fresh studies of industrialization and textile production in Leeds. It takes place on Saturday 24 October 2015, starting at 10.30am.

Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Dr Barbara Hahn, researchers of textile history from the University of Leeds, will take a close look at the rivalry between Yorkshire and Lancashire in the period of the Industrial Revolution in two talks over the course of the workshop.

A small War of the fibres exhibition will demonstrate how important and innovative Leeds textile manufacturers were. The papers of Benjamin Gott and John Marshall, kept in Special Collections at the Brotherton Library, show that Leeds industry pursued new machines and methods of production in their textile factories. They both experimented actively to make their fibres competitive even while cotton stole the glory at the time.

Following lunch, attendees will have the option to join a guided walk across campus.

West Yorkshire’s textile history is fun and fascinating. The documents and talks as part of War of the fibres will tell a new history of the Industrial Revolution that includes West Yorkshire and Leeds industrialists and the fibres they produced.

The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in textile history. It is free to attend but booking is essential. To register (or for further information) please email enterpriseofculture@leeds.ac.uk or phone (0113) 343 1910.

Please note this workshop is now fully booked.

See here for more information.

This event is a collaboration between the School of History and Special Collections in the Brotherton Library (University of Leeds). It is part of a European Commission-funded grant to the University of Leeds called Rethinking Textiles and is organized in partnership with The Enterprise of Culture (a three year collaborative research project looking at the business history of fashion, funded by the HERA Joint Research Programme).

One of the goals of Rethinking Textiles is to include understudied fibres in the history of the Industrial Revolution. The history of Leeds and West Yorkshire add flax and linen production, woollens and worsteds into a story more commonly associated with the Lancashire cotton industry. The Industrial Revolution did not happen only in Manchester!