War of the fibres

Free public workshop

Saturday 24 October 2015
10.30am to 2.00pm
Brotherton Room, University of Leeds

Rethinking Textiles was a two-year collaborative grant funded by the European Commission and based within the School of History, University of Leeds.

One of its goals was 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!

War of the fibres in October 2015 was a free public workshop open to anyone with an interest in textile history. It examined local history contributions to the traditional story of the Industrial Revolution. The day included talks on wool and flax, as well as cotton, a small exhibition of textile documents and artefacts from Special Collections at the Brotherton Library, and a walking tour of the University of Leeds campus and its textile history: all making a half-day day of fresh studies of industrialization and textile production in Leeds.

Prof Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Dr Barbara Hahn, researchers of textile history from the University of Leeds, took 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 in the Brotherton Room demonstrated 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 had 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 sought to tell a new history of the Industrial Revolution that includes West Yorkshire and Leeds industrialists and the fibres they produced.

This event was 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).