After two years of stillness and silence, the Weaving Shed at the National Wool Museum is waking up, and the sound of machinery at work once again fills the air.
Now that the work of cleaning, repairing and conserving the building and the reconfiguring of the work space inside, the exciting work of learning how to operate the machinery has begun.
Before Melin Teifi closed two years ago, Raymond Jones was the last remaining maker of Welsh flannel, which is culturally important as it has been used extensively to make National Costume and workwear. This year Raymond has been in helping us to restore and tune the flannel loom, as it has been in storage and idle for two years.
We have produced a flannel warp that is unique to Amgueddfa Cymru and tied it on to the loom. We have learnt to use a warp stop which as the name suggests, stops the loom if any of the 1,500 threads break; reducing damage to the cloth and significantly reducing the time required to mend the cloth.
Also, as the yarn is a single ply it requires a higher level of skill and awareness when weaving with it. Working with single ply yarn has proved to be quite challenging and has presented us with different issues and problems which have challenged our understanding of how the looms function. It has been an interesting and rewarding experience.
By improving our knowledge and understanding of how the looms function we are able to consistently make better cloth. It is our intention to be able to make a variety of different cloth such as flannel, double cloth, and twill blankets. This will help us to generate income for the Museum and provide a more fulfilling visitor experience.
Over the last year, we as craftspeople at the museum have learnt a great deal, have encountered many obstacles and challenges as well as some frustrations. The greatest lesson we learnt as a team was… patience!
This year, the Weaving Shed will become alive again as we continue with the tradition of flannel making here in the Teifi Valley and we look forward to sharing this experience and history with you, our visitors!
Alyson Cole - Volunteer Ambassador, 1 December 2021
The National Wool Museum Exhibition of Hope was launched in April 2020. This was of course during the beginning of the national lockdown and I think it is safe to presume that no one could have predicted how successful it would be!
With support from the Ashley Family Foundation and Community Foundation Wales, the aim was to collect enough 20cm or 8inch rainbow coloured squares in order to weave together a substantial rainbow blanket to be displayed in the National Wool Museum, and then eventually at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea.
The idea of the rainbow colours was of course in accordance with the rainbow image, which during the national lockdown had became an important emblem. The rainbow symbolised light at the end of the tunnel after a dark and uncertain time. The blanket would therefore hopefully become a symbol of peace, hope, community and spirit.
The project surpassed all expectations and collected in the range of 2,000 rainbow square pieces from all over the country. These squares were knitted, felted, woven or crocheted not only from wool, but from cotton, silk and other wonderful fibres that people had to hand.
Due to the overwhelming response and the restrictions placed on volunteers in meeting and creating one single blanket, a decision was made to make many blankets instead. As a result, museum staff and volunteers began joining the squares from home!
With now many blankets in the making, the project took off to a new level and purpose! Not only were these blankets going to become works of art, they would also be donated to charities, such as the homeless charity 'Crisis'. The project grew further when the South Wales branch of the 'Crisis' Charity shared the exhibition on their Facebook pages and even going as far as providing people with physical packs of wool and instructions.
The project further snowballed when it was featured in Adult Learners Week 2020, when two videos were released of National Wool Museum Craftsperson Non Mitchell showing how to create a felted and woven square. Finally, maybe the biggest influence was when the Connect to Kindness Art Project, working alongside the Connect to Kindness Campaign and Carmarthenshire Association of Voluntary Services showcased the project in a collage of photos.
When I visited the exhibition recently, what I found fascinating is how, from humble beginnings, the project took on a life of its own and became more than simply helping create a blanket. Along with being beautiful pieces of art that could be enjoyed on their own merit, the blankets would now also help people in a physical and practical way!
In my opinion, what was lovely was how the exhibition has captured the array of positive feelings it had stirred in the volunteers and museum staff who took part in the project. I’m sure this was a somewhat unexpected or underestimated result of the project!
It was clear from the messages and notes received with the blanket squares, that it had brought many a sense of joy, achievement, comfort and a feeling of purpose. The blanket had brought people a sense of belonging and highlighted the feeling of community and what can be achieved when people "pull together"
This is perhaps the most interesting factor of the project for me - the stories of those creating the squares. I am delighted that the exhibition is reflecting this by showing "stories of the squares" in a video to go along with the exhibition, which will also be available online.
I had the pleasure of watching the video when I visited the exhibition in Drefach Felindre, and it was amazing to hear of the different stories of those behind the squares. There were stories of the project uniting family and friends along with chapels and schools. The exhibition includes an image of rainbow hands by the children of Ysgol Penyboyr.
The effort which some had gone to was also amazing. A big shout out to Elwyna who knitted 350 squares! One lady had even naturally dyed her wool in different rainbow colours.
One of the stories I found touching was of a lady who had recently lost her mother and who had left her a stash of yarn, mostly from America. Her mother had taught her to crochet and she felt the project was an amazing way to honour her mother's memory.
Crocheting also helped her deal with the grief during this time as she found it therapeutic and relaxing. Others also spoke of the art of crocheting and making the squares as being a therapeutic and relaxing process.
Another heart warming story was of how someone struggled with her memory and was overjoyed to discover that she remembered how to crochet.
These stories and indeed the whole exhibition being so visually bright and beautiful was very uplifting in what is still a fairly uncertain time. The words of one volunteer perfectly summed up the meaning of the project for me - although we couldn’t "be together, we could work together".
The exhibition can be seen in the National Wool Museum of Wales until mid January 2022. A walk around the exhibition will also be available online. The Exhibition will move to Swansea’s Waterfront Museum in July 2022 - October 2022.
National Wool Museum’s Exhibition of Hope… Exhibition Launch Date!
We are very pleased to announce the Exhibition of Hope will open to the public at the National Wool Museum on the 2nd of October 2021 and will be on display until mid-January 2022. The opening will form part of the Museum Wales digital Celebration of Wool Event taking place between the 2nd and 3rd of October. Click here for more details about the event. Celebration of Wool | National Museum Wales
The Exhibition will also be displayed at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea between July 2022 and October 2022.
Thank you to all those who contributed to the creation of rainbow coloured squares. Contributions for the Exhibition of Hope closed at the end of March 2021. Since the initial call out for squares in April 2020 at the beginning of the nation’s Covid-19 lockdown, we have received nearly 2000 squares! Participants used any materials which were readily available to them at the time such as wool or acrylics to create their squares. From knitted squares to crocheted squares, the response has been fantastic!
Crisis charity (South Wales), which supports homeless people, shared the Exhibition of Hope information on their Facebook pages and created physical packs including wool and instructions to send to services users to support them to take part. The Exhibition of Hope was featured in Adult Learners’ Week 2020 and two videos were released of National Wool Museum Craftsperson Non Mitchell giving a demonstration on how to create a felted and woven square. A collage of photographs documenting the Exhibition was submitted as part of the Connect to Kindness Art Project, a project which is run in partnership with the Connect to Kindness Campaign and Carmarthenshire Association of Voluntary Services, which aims to capture community kindness and support during the pandemic.
Nothing about this past year has been predictable and we have all had to adapt to huge changes. While we had originally planned to create one giant rainbow blanket from the squares, we have, on reflection, decided to create a number of smaller blankets instead. This is because we have received such an amazing number of squares and due to Covid-19 restrictions volunteers were unable to meet at the Wool Museum. National Wool Museum Volunteers and Museum Wales staff have therefore been joining the squares from home, creating wonderful unique blankets. Following the Exhibition, we still plan on donating the blankets to charities to be used as they wish, whether that be for example, as blankets or as pieces of artwork. More blankets mean more flexibility for display, and we are working on some exciting display plans!
Whilst our wonderful volunteers and staff have been busy creating the blankets, we have also been working on another aspect of the project. Over the past year we have received so many varied and beautiful squares from people up and down the country and it has been lovely to hear from many who have found that creating the squares has helped during the unprecedented and challenging times. We have therefore decided to capture some contributors’ experiences of taking part in the project. ‘Stories behind the Squares’ will be a brief interpretation video within the Exhibition and available online, documenting the thoughts and feelings of those taking part in the Exhibition.
We are thankful to Ysgol Penboyr, the local school in the village of Dre-fach Felindre, where the National Wool Museum is located who have created a beautiful rainbow handprint artwork which will be displayed in the Exhibition too.
Rainbows are often used as a symbol of peace and hope and as we know, they often appear when the sun shines following heavy rainfall. They serve to remind us that following dark times, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. The Exhibition aims to reflect spirit, hope and community during these challenging times. It is designed to be an immersive experience, a symbolic hug of kindness of the love that has been placed into every stitch and is created as a tangible embodiment of hope.
As part of the Exhibition, there will be an online page on the Museum Wales website. The page will include, amongst other things, the Exhibition of Hope ‘Stories of the Squares’ video as well as a brief walk ‘round of the exhibition itself.
We look forward to welcoming you to the Exhibition very soon. In the meantime, here is a brief video about the Exhibition of Hope, documenting some of the photographs that have been taken since the Exhibition was launched.
Keep an eye out on our social media pages to find out the latest information.
Thank you to The Ashley Family Foundation and Community Foundation Wales for their support with this project.
Many industrial processes are inspired by nature, and can be seen as a mechanised extension of a traditional hand process using tools from the natural world. The Teasel Gig is one such invention. Here's a little about this extraordinary machine which is a mixture of the natural and man made.
Teasels were traditionally used to ‘comb’ the surface of damp woollen cloth by hand to
Teasel Gig
make it soft and fluffy. This process is called ‘raising the nap’.
The Teasel Gig machine was invented to make this process faster and more efficient. The teasel gig contains 3000 prickly teasels in an iron frame and is powered by electricity. The cloth is passed over the teasels, giving it a more even, fluffy finish.
The Teasel Gig is a curious mix of the natural and man-made. It combined the hand processes of the past with precision engineering – the future of the textile industry
Teasel Gig with Teasels at The National Wool Museum, Drefach Felindre
A ‘Teasel Man’ travelled from mill to mill renewing the teasels in the gigs. It was a very skilled job as the teasel heads had to be carefully arranged to ensure the cloth was finished evenly. Most of the teasels came from specialist gardens in Somerset
