The English Sewing Cotton Company Scrapbook

The Executive Committee minutes from the early years of WW2 reflects a sense of minor panic. A war emergency stock of Sylko Machine Twist was set up, with 13,000 gross of finished goods being set aside. The stock was stored in Belper, hopefully off the Luftwaffe's radar. They weren't so sure about the safety of storing it in Manchester - rightly so. In October 1940 a roof spotter was appointed to watch out for incendiaries landing on Arkwright House.  But there were also reports of a slackening off in the quality department.  In August 1940, the Committee declared themselves to be disappointed with the poor lustre of the Sylko samples. Earlier in the year, badly centred tickets were a cause for concern, and the issue of faulty ticketing also reared its head again in October.  But the company recovered from early panic due to the ongoing need for large amounts of thread for the war effort. Belper produced khaki fabric for the army and upholstery thread for Austin Motors wh...

 I made a second visit to the Manchester Archives to view some more of the English Sewing Cotton Company material. It is a huge archive and it's difficult to know what to choose to look at - which documents will hold the most information? There are no previews online - just a list of what the archive contains. This time around, I decided to view some meeting minutes. There are Directors' Minutes and Executive Committee Minutes for practically the whole of the life of the ESCC.  Too much to see all at once. Again - it's difficult to know what to select because there is no indication of the size of each item. In the end I selected one lot of Directors' Minutes and four lots of Executive Minutes. This did turn out to be too much - meetings were held very regularly and the books containing the typed sheets of notes were rather large. I was unable to do it all justice in the 3 hours I had at my disposal. However, I picked out a few snippets of information to bring away with ...

As the English Sewing Cotton Company, latterly English Sewing Limited, developed over the decades of the 20th century, so did the labels on their Sylko reels. It seems impossible to pinpoint when exactly Sylko labels were subject to often tiny changes and how many differences there are in existance. One end of the reels hardly altered - the red, white and blue logo end with the 3 shells branding. Not until the Tootal years did anyone dare mess with this branding.  It the blue and white ends stating the colour shade and number have myriad differences. And even after years and years of collecting  - for me it must be more than a decade now - those little surprises keep on popping up. Here's a new one, discovered in an antiques shop in Hebden Bridge this week: I have never before seen that wording "Fast to B.S. 3418-61". On all other reels that I have, the label simply states "Fast Dye". See the reel here with others for comparison: I would say that the Blue Crest ...

  Crafting magazines in the late 60s were embracing man made textiles, emphasising the ease in which they could be turned into clothes, and the subsequent ease in which these garments could be cared for. Not that you needed to look after them that carefully, everything was so cheap you could just make another at the drop of a nylon zip. It had never been so easy to be in fashion.  

  From a 1952 needlework magazine, when ladies were encouraged to make their home as beautiful as possible using their skills. The aspiration was dainty with a slight French accent.

 If you take a trip down the A6 south from Matlock, you can’t fail to miss Masson Mills. Built by Sir Richard Arkwright ‘s company in 1783, the cotton mill was deliberately constructed to stand out. Back then, the majority of Derbyshire buildings were constructed of local stone. Arkwright chose red brick for his new mill – a big sore thumb next to the Derwent. It showed off just how rich he had become on the proceeds of his cotton spinning. There is a ring attached to one of the internal walls which is reputedly where Arkwright tied his horse when he came to inspect the works. They say that if you touch it, you will become as rich as he was! Today, the mill buildings are a museum and heritage centre, and guided tours currently take place on Thursdays and Fridays. I decided to join one of these, as I thought it could be a source of ESCC information. Masson Mills became part of the ESCC combine when the grouping took place in 1897, and remained operational until 1991. I was very plea...

  In 12 years sewing magazine articles went from antimaccassars to beach holidays abroad. Publishers caught up with what women really wanted from life - especially the young. We didn't want to be pretty and becoming so much as having fun with our hair loose. The similarities are that dressmaking projects needed to be quick and easy. By 1968 there were now easy care fabrics available too.