The English Sewing Cotton Company Scrapbook

The British Colour Council continued to operate in the post war period, recommending uniformed colour trends of the coming year in fashion and home furnishings. As I outlined in my blog post about the set up and early years of the council, they particularly came into their own around royal events - or at least the colours introduced to mark these occasions received more prominent press coverage at the time. This trend returned after the WW2 hiatus and into the 1960s, with press reports dropping Sylko enthusiasts a few clues to the years that some of the shades were introduced.  In January 1953, a Leicester newspaper reported on the British Colour Council’s 2 day show in the city. Mention is made of shades introduced to mark Queen Elizabeth's coronation including Elizabethan Red, Princess Grey, Spun Gold and Beau Blue. I haven't seen these colours on a Sylko reel but then the article closes with the following line: "A joyous colour to my mind is Fiesta Pink, as different fr...

 I recently took advantage of a free weekend on one of the genealogy websites to investigate a few families in Skipton.  The first port of call had to be The Dewhurst family, resident at Aireville Hall.  In 1901, the head of the household was 81 year old John Bonny Dewhurst,  grandson of the company founder Thomas Dewhurst and son of the John Dewhurst whom the company was named after. He is listed as being a retired cotton spinner. Also resident at Aireville that cenus night was 49 year old Algernon Dewhurst.  He was the heir to the company and was the first Chairman of the ESCC on its formation in 1897. His occupation is given as Sewing Cotton Manufacturer.  Two of his siblings are also resident  - Frances (45) and Harold (39). Both are listed as being unmarried. Harold is in the family business as a cashier. In the 1911 census, 59 year old Algernon is now the head of the household and is now marked as being retired from the cotton spinning business. ...

When the English Sewing Cotton Company began publishing their internal newsletter in January 1966, it counted 21,000 employees. In this first newsletter the company made a statement: "From Monday 3rd January 1966...ESCC will become a holding company and parent company of the following:  1) Textile company to be known as English Sewing Limited 1 which will cover all textile operations   2) UK non-textile companies which will contine to be known under the present titles - Thermo Plastics Ltd, Yates Duxbury Ltd and Lithopak Ltd. 2 3) The overseas companies which will continue to operate under their present names." Notes: 1 - Therefore all Sylko reels labelled English Sewing Ltd date from 1966 onwards 2 - Lithopak was the Hazel Grove manufacturer of ESCC packaging, therefore making the Sylko boxes The locations of the textile company operations were given as follows: Spinning - Portwood, Bolton, Pendlebury,  Lisnaskea, Stanhill Thread - Neilston, Skipton, Belper, Dulwic...

 I obtained a copy of Needlework Magazine, dating from 1958. On the back cover - this splendid advertisement:  Judging by the wording -"be sure it is genuine" and "accept no other" - there had been a bit of trouble with copycat cotton. I wonder if it is a reference to those Sylvia reels you see knocking about. So let's have a flick through the rest of the magazine - what were we using our Sylkos for in the same year that saw the introduction of motorways, parking meters and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament? Here's some of the projects. 1. A picnic cushion bag embroidered with daisies. Something to both carry your magazine and sit upon after your first trip up the motorway. You'd probably want it in green to hide the grass stains so I'm guessing D107 Light Emerald. 2. A three piece towelling beach set - skirt, stole and bag. It's a black and white photo and doesn't suggest colours, but I can see it in a darker yellow. I'm going D21 Gol...

 SO NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW YOU MADE IT YOURSELF. This was a slogan for a 1974 advertising campaign for Trylko. A sad indictment of the way that things were heading for English Sewing - or Tootal by then - in the 1970s. In the early days of Sylko, home made clothes were a matter of fact and a matter of pride. All but the very rich made their own clothes and to have the skill to make something that looked fashionable or stylish was something to show off. But by the time that fast fashion was sweeping the High Street, to make your own clothes was just so square. You wanted to get yourself down to Biba and be groovy, not slave over a Singer. This was an early part of the marketing ramp-up of the closing years of Sylko and Trylko. The above slogan focussed on the quality of the threads - but this isn't enough when people are starting to not want the goods at all. A couple of years later there was a push to get younger people interested in the products with a film and information folders ...

Extracts from the book 'Skipton 2000 The Millennium Walk' compiled by Ian Lockwood. Published by The Skipton Millennium Task Force in 1999. These are the pieces pertinent to research into Dewhursts. P61: For more than a century textiles were Skipton 's major employer but when cheaper foreign imports came to flood the market it's decline was rapid. It took barely 20 years, from the 1960s to the 1980s for textiles to go from chief employer to virtually non-existant. Dewhurst's Mill still dominates the town but it's textile days are now long gone. As late as the 1970s Dewhurst's famous "Sew it With Sylko" slogan was a familiar sight in households and wooden bobbins with cotton thread in all sorts of colours were a feature of households across the land. The slogan was written in huge letters across a walkway above Broughton Road which connected the mill with its store sheds on the opposite side of the road. The mill was opened by a cotton spinner opera...