Friends of Haptic & Hue

Friends of Haptic & Hue is back with the first episode of 2025 in which we talk to a stitcher who committed herself to a project that took nearly a decade of her life. In this month’s Travels with Textiles, Sandra Sawatsky talks about her epic embroidery journey – the Black Gold Tapestry – which tells the magnificent story of oil in thread.

Friends of Haptic & Hue is celebrating its second birthday this month and to mark the occasion we are adopting two stitches in your name at the Royal School of Needlework’s Stitchbank. They are the Bayeux Stitch and Knotting Stitch. Join us in this episode to hear the extraordinary stories behind them, as well as the work that goes into Stitchbank itself as an effort to document every stitch in the world.

A remarkable new exhibition showcasing the very best of the textile heritage that the National Trust for Scotland’s palaces, castles, cottages and tenement flats hold opens next week at Dovecot Studios, in Edinburgh. It is called Stitched: Scotland’s Embroidered Art. Join us in this episode to hear Emma Inglis talk about her two year quest to dig out these pieces and conserve them properly so that they can be seen in public, many of them for the first time.

As 2024 comes to a close, we wanted to send the year away with a look back at some of your favourite episodes of Haptic & Hue. We learn a great deal from researching and putting together each one, but we wondered: what do they add up to? Does paying close attention to textiles down the ages reframe our history in a fresh way?

To celebrate Friends of Haptic & Hue’s second birthday and to mark your support to the podcast, we have adopted two stitches at the Royal School of Needlework’s famed Stitchbank. Stitchbank is an incredible effort to document every stitch in the world as a living heritage and to prevent them from being lost to us as part of human knowledge. Find out more about the two stitches that will have Friends of Haptic & Hue’s name on them and the stories behind them.

For the poor of the Victorian era the fun and interesting jumble or rummage sales were a serious business and a vital resource to help find the clothes necessary to send their children to school and dress themselves. Emma Donovan’s new research explores their hidden stories and origins dating back to the Victorians.

Woven through the fabric of the city of New York are the textile traditions of the people who made the journey across the Atlantic to seek a better life. New York is a celebration of the contribution of waves of talented immigrants and the efforts of passionate craftspeople who continue the savoir-faire of their ancestors today. There is so much to see and to do – this is a selection of our favourites to help you negotiate your way through all that is on offer.

Venice is one of the great textile cities of the world. For centuries it was a centre of intense cultural activity and exchange across the Mediterranean. Venice has always been a place where original design and superb craftsmanship is prized and rewarded. That is still true today. You can discover the traditional lace makers and the carnival costume creators, the private collections where you can see antique embroidery and handwoven silks, and find the last studio in Venice where they weave figured velvets by hand.
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Lyon is a fantastic city for the traveller interested in textiles. It is the birthplace of the famous Jacquard loom and was once the beating heart of Europe’s luxury textile industry. Thousands of silk weavers once made this their home turning out some of the finest fabrics of the day. There is a huge amount to explore, from historic silk weavers’ studios to secret passageways that wind their way under the old houses. Along with it comes a great deal of good food!