Joins us from a studio in Glasgow and historian Jade how but here in the studio she's from the University of Huddersfield where she researches the fashion industry and the rag trade in Britain Clare let's start with you when people think about the idea of a history told through sewing that 1st thought might be of the by a tapestry which famously recounts the story of the Battle of Hastings over 68 metre of embroidery but when you went to see that you write that you were seized with theory why was that I deceived a few because what I hadn't realised was that by a tapestry which is 100 years old has really been treasured because of its story not because of how it was me and that natural fact the stitchers those people who actually made it our own acknowledged both in the commentary about the tapestry in the exhibition and the film that accompanies it and I was just astonished that those people from London is near Canterbury those women who had spent so many months years just using their skill their craft to such a high degree that they really captured the emotions behind the whole narrative of that war that their skill and the way they translated was just you don't thread that story is an acknowledged as I say this is a theme that comes up in your book this idea that women's history is a hidden and your book is about sort of uncovering those histories it seems to me one of these women is Mary lound and she says that the artist suffrage league in 1907 What was she doing for the suffragettes she was doing designing so she was a she was a stained glass artist and a graphic designer and a banner maker and and so she was really involved in if you like the branding of the suffragettes but more than that when it came to them doing their large demonstrations there their huge rallies then she decided that these should be was incredible visual and and. In a st feminine spectacles such had never been seen in the streets of London and says she brought her to book on banner making as a kind of aide memoire for people who knew her to sew but were really scared of actually making large scale in terms of making banners and she advocated that for those banners they should make things that floated in the wind that really carried the colors and the emblems of women onto the streets what is the value of the ban now I ask you that question because I know that your background is as a bond a maker and as a community textile That's right the think a lot about her is it's not just carrying your colors banners are such large bold declarations petitions even of things that people care about what matters to them and in the way they're made as a see they have a simple slogan they have a very bold image because you only have seconds for people to see your banner as you put it through the streets but then actually you can add into your banner much other smaller detail what fighting a combo another Bonamy had calls the whisper of discontent and I love that. Is it the bomb there itself I wonder if it's the making of the band The slogan on the band though the way that the band go the ninety's is people and presumably I think it's all those things I think people gather together to make collectively then obviously they're pressing in a little bit of themselves into the stitches and as a community takes down artists who works with groups a lot then that's one of the things I love about that process is sitting there in with other people thinking about what we're making and why we're making it and who will see it and what they'll be able to read from the way that we Sure it and then actually then the thing itself going into public and the creators as a group see the reaction because of course soaring isn't just our object it's a conversation it would it really becomes being full. Once other people see it Jade how but let me draw you in here because your research into the fashion industry in Britain is also about drawing out individual stories putting faces to the needs of women working in the rag trade and even interviewing some of them say can you tell me about who you've met and what you've been able to find out yeah enter views all sorts of rag trade workers from Kottaras to machinists suppress stores to agents to BIOS and the thing I think that I thought was the most kind of sad interview was the interview with the machinist shoes of a very skilled machinist skilled needle women as well and she talked about how she had been trained as a sore both at the hand and at the machine and how that SCO had never been values and I people's perceptions of women who worked in fashion factories and other sort of rag trade factories were regarded as somehow unskilled industry for Darwin actually nothing could have been further from the truth to say sewing machine and make a garment is an incredibly scary thing to do the entire reason for my career as a researcher is because I can thread the needle frankly and I believe that people who can are absolutely magic and nothing makes me happier than watching them work collapse part of your interests and sowing is also concerned with the therapeutic benefits of this every day activity and that has a history to you as an incredible story in your book about an 18th century mass remade glued Elizabeth Parker That's right there is evidence of quite a lot of sewing projects to place in what were called asylums for people who are mentally disturbed also people in prisons who were physically captive and even in the 1st world war the soldiers who came back were shell shocked then sewing was used as the 1st kind of occupational therapy Elizabeth Parker was a nursery maid who basically had a chapel story of abuse at the hands of her employers but rather than. Right Daryn she actually sold it entire unique tiny red cross stitch on a small rectangle of lead and. And I wondered why it was that she had chosen because of this she could have written it there and she was literate Why should chosen to sew it and my feeling behind it is that she was using as a kind of penance as a way of expressing her sorrow and her pain and her repentance a choosing a life and again its appearance device that then brought her into such suffering one of the things I learned through your book is that it was Elizabeth Hurley Craik a social reformer who was credited with introducing staring into prisons and listening to talk about the activity of saying I wonder what you think the the effect of saving in prisons and hospitals is. Where the different things about what is that of course is the practical aspect of it is the sorting can be done in small pieces it can be done on your lap it doesn't need it workshop doesn't need difficult to it's very basic content which is needs are but the other thing about that is that sewing is of course mind settling and it's a piece for the activity and particularly in prison where you've got that kind of boom and climbing of prison life are often particularly in prison of the fries the when they were overcrowded it claustrophobic atmosphere then sewing gives you a sense of the sense solitude of privity which is very hard to find in that kind of prison environment and it also is a see a save is a soothing thing and one more thing I think. Is patchwork as her kind of sewing technique and I thought that was probably because patchwork yourself as this is to militarism that you can watch something grow which for wound prisoners who were living in poverty who had very little to loot. Or were to to actually be in charge and in control of something that then became larger and could group at least their fingers I think was very self affirming that that mindset fling is so gorgeous isn't it so lovely Jade you don't so you've really confessed but I want to I'm thinking about that noisy noisy factory room what you have seen as the sewing do these women who so do they still so for relief and pleasure even though they're being compelled to sew for work every machinist unusual woman I've ever interviewed has taken incredible prate and their work I actually interviewed a man who had been the owner of several cut me trim C.M.T. Factories in Scotland in the seventy's and he made such an interesting point about the noise of sawing in a factory context and he said you don't see a good factory you hear a good factory and it's there in the read them of the machines in the read them of women working at machines play we should say that your book is A Global History of set and I'm thinking about because you know James talking about machine saying in Alaska but she is saying is a global trade as an especially delightful chapter that begins with the meeting him yeah woman one of the minority ethnic groups in China knew you exchanged hand in voided kids in a darkened hotel room what did you discover about the different sewing traditions in different parts of the world well in southwest China or the majority of the burial of what I discovered there is that because there are animists culture and they believe that everything has a spirit that even though that area had been closed off to the rest the world into it was of China till just 7 years before I went in 1905 and even though things aren't going to be seen apart from by the other villagers leave me everything whether it's peace and broidery or where there's a basket as beautifully as they can and they're embroidery has been handed during generation upon generation. And through watching it being done so they don't have the patterns they hold everything in their heads and in their hearts I loved the story about the Tibetans holding the sewing needle pointing to themselves yes that sounds so counter-intuitive but now I'm determined to say like it's a bet and do your research has been focused on the British rag trade specifically is it good is it possible to map Glasgow through its textile history absolutely so my period is the post-war period and I'm interested specifically and the 1960 S. Up to the end of the 20th century because that's when the British drug trade really reached as productive peak and I would say is peak of quality as well the training was so good but if you look at somewhere like Glasgow it's very easy to see how the rag trade works and sort of microcosm and you can apply what you learn from that small glass to example across the U.K. But in Glasgow for example the entire fashion manufacturing sector is can faint very loosely to to for streets a boundary or for streets to the media east of the city center the area where those clothes are sort of forms a slightly larger portion of the settee but to the west of the city center and in the city center and in the center of those 2 we have the sort of mediating fashion agent sector which was largely on Queen Street so that acted as the mediating line between the production center and the consumption center so I used Kelley's directories for example to basically map fashion businesses and it was still fascinating to see the clustering of certain types of businesses in 7 areas and to be able to link that really to the success of the British fashion industry in the post-war period short lines of communication between production and consumption were really essential and that's a hidden geography together with a hidden history isn't it what happens to this story of sewing when industrial scale serving arrives. You write about seeing and the invention of the sewing machine need 140 S. . Yes And of course that was a great alarm for many when the sewing machine came into being because it was seen as something that would take jobs away and indeed it did and it brought onto the into the marketplace a lot of people who had been hand sores who were no then. Promoting themselves as seamstresses cetera while others were going into the factories and of course in those factories because of the numbers that they started to employ then. The wages went down and so it wasn't a kind of situation with the sewing machine brought in better quality of of goods and the more skilled idea of sewing it actually took away the value it had and me that even lower in terms of economic and cultural value what's your sense of it Jade. My sense of the kind of enter engine of the sewing machine and fashion production really interesting evidence from objects of that period from fashion objects shows evidence of machine sewing on bodices but handsewing on Longstreet seems on skirts which seems completely the opposite of what we do expect we would expect and to do the long straight seams in a machine in the dainty sort of bodice work by hand the only sort of idea that we have for why that would have been is because actually very few knew how to muster the machine in the mid 1980 when it's when it's gaining popularity and so it was easier to rescue a small scrap of fabric on a badass than it would be to rescue maybe M.S.R. On a skirt but certainly fashion responds to the sewing machine when you get to be a 1970 specifically when when we start to get massive amounts of passing mention a suit trimmings on on skirts especially am and women begin to resemble coaches. Walking down the street but we really see huge amounts of trimming and that leads to another industry and which trimming and passing Mantri becomes important to fashion Well talking of trimmings I know he stopped by the Christian Dior Yes I know it seems exhibition which is just opened Victorian Albert Museum in London and that is a show stopping spectacle of luxury design and high quality materials but there is a room there dedicated to be a Tele is there yet the seamstresses in the but what what would you pick out from the show. Well Prezi and whole culture is a very specific type of story and the way those pretty man little hands the way that they are trained is very very specific walking and see expression and being confronted by the boss at $100.00 or so I mean a person who cries of fashion shows but I also get very emotional fashion expressions and looking at that boss and seeing on the jacket the evidence of the hand that had stepped you can see the puncture marks of the threads it's just utterly overwhelming but it's the most magnificent display of skill you can't compare anything top here and I think Dior is one of the master houses swooning It's like a chocolate box and what about the modern revival of sewing because I mentioned the great British sewing be a bit earlier but we're also living in this apparently make do in mend co-chair and this resurgence of vintage gorilla knitting up cycling what's happening there well why is this come about going I mean I think that people are actually very concerned and especially young people are concerned about the impact of fashion production not only the human cost but the environmental cost and that is leading people to value cooling more I mean know all people absolutely are so so much work to be done and in convincing people that Clothes should be expensive because they are they are difficult to manufacture and they use up resources but I do think that there is a move towards that which is interesting and hopefully will have positive outcomes for the for. An industry going forward I know also think that idea of people wanted to shore more personal side a more individual side of themselves is leading them to be more interested in actually making and making something that has a stamp of their of their personality on it reading a book I had this idea that something is something is an activity that happens in relation to time it in a way that's counter to our modern culture of high speed Internet connections and I wonder if there is something there about the slowing of time in setting that or is I think I think there's that aspect of slowing when you're not multitasking when you so you're focused just on one thing I'm doing that we like sitting in suspended time when you just concentrating doing your rhythmic stitching having that kind of repetition and watching something emerge underneath your fingers and there's something quite Ms Merrick up 0 to it that is a bit meditative contemplate of all those words that mindful all those words that nowadays we look to as as healthy ways for our minds to relax and I think suing is one of the resources that we can use for that somebody who does get very good at sewing Claire in your book is Magazine of Scots she had an awful lot of time on our hands when she was in captivity in England 1000 years and you you give us a really innovative way of approaching her history by suggesting that embroidery becomes a form of autobiography for yes it does I mean she is she used to pray she learnt to sew when she was young in the French court but she didn't really there's very little evidence that she used it to the same degree as other others around her but when she came to Scotland and as you see when she actually was then taken into captivity in 56 or 7 she began to saw and we've got lots of evidence of of the 2 descriptions or the little bit that should be left of what it was she was sewing. And she saw her through coded messages she sued the stories of her life she sued messages to her supporters and indeed she try to Elizabeth the 1st with embroidered gifts that she made especially for her for instance of a red satin skirt which was embroidered and silver intertwined bruises and the soles with rage being the color of blood ties of love and obviously the silver and tar and the swords and roses being the emblems of the 2 countries since we got to my Queen of Scots Let's bring in Chris in a far day he was such a cheater and Stuart art at the University of Cambridge and also works as a curatorial in turn is National Portrait Gallery currently hosting Elizabeth and treasures this 1st major exhibition of portrait miniatures and I put into the show yesterday Christina to have a look and costumes intact those are a big part of these portraits too can we start by defining our terms what do we mean by a miniature festival well for us I think the word miniature conjures a small oval hadn't shoulders portrayed probably with a blue background roughly 5 or 6 centimeters in diameter but originally size actually had nothing to do with the definition of the medium miniatures were defined by what they were made from it was a watercolor technique derived from manuscript illumination in fact the word miniature comes from the Italian mini Ari which means to eliminate and Latin minium which means red LED and that was a pigment that was used to manuscript illumination and the it is to be seen what living which was what they called miniatures comes from the Latin luminary which also means to eliminate So in theory you could have a massive portrait miniature and it would still be a miniature because it's made of the same stuff but it's unlikely in this gallery that tiny they're going just how did people use and keep miniatures in the period he would be made for and why they were often given as gifts and quite intimate often courtship. If there's one minute chair in the exhibition of a young man against a background flames he was literally burning for his lover they were usually worn. In cabinets stored in private cabinets and that's actually an account of Elizabeth the 1st sharing her miniatures to the ambassador to Mary Queen of Scots James Melville and they go to a cabinet in her bedroom and she carefully opens these jewels in her cabinet and takes these miniatures out of the layers of tissue paper and sort of gradually reveals them to him and this is to the gallery are given a magnifying glass at the entrance to the show so you feel like and detective but it doesn't make a big difference seeing the portraits through the glass like that how would they have been viewed originally would they have been inspected with a glove it's probable that they used magnifying glasses to paint them and they probably were viewed under magnification at times as well but you can a