By: The Gentle Author, @thegentleauthor, author and researcher of Spitalfield Life, a website dedicated to the area of the same name in London’s East End.
When Julius Walters of Stephen Walters & Sons says, “I am just a weaver”, it is an unselfconscious masterpiece of understatement, because he is a ninth generation weaver – the custodian of the venerable family business founded by his ancestor Joseph Walters in Spitalfields in 1720 and moved to Suffolk by his great-great-great-great-grandfather Stephen Walters in the nineteenth century, where today they continue to weave exemplary silk for the most discerning clients internationally, building upon the expertise and knowledge that has been accumulated over all this time. This is the company that wove the silk for the Queen’s coronation robes and for Princess Diana’s wedding dress.
Michael Hill of Drakes Ties in Clerkenwell, takes the train from Liverpool St several times a year to visit the mill and place his orders for silks that are woven there exclusively for Drakes each season, so I leapt at the opportunity to travel up with him and see for myself what has become of one of Spitalfields’ eighteenth century silk weavers.
Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Joseph Walters was there to greet us when we arrived at the long finely-proportioned brick silk mill overlooking the green water meadows at the edge of Sudbury, where his ninth generation descendant Julius came down the stairs to shake my hand. Blushing to deny any awareness of the family resemblance, that his proud secretary was at pains to emphasise, he chose instead to point out to me the willows that had been felled recently – as a couple are each year – for the manufacture of cricket bats.
We convened around a long wooden counter in a first floor room where the luxuriously coloured strike offs – as the samples are called – were laid out for Michael Hill to see, glowing in the soft East Anglian light. Already decisions for Drakes Spring/Summer 2012 collection had been made, the choice of fibre, its weave and pattern, and now Michael was here to make his final choice from the different options upon the table. There is such exquisite intricacy in these cloths that have tiny delicate patterns woven into their very construction, drawing the daylight and delighting the eye with their sensuous tones. Yet lifting my gaze, I could not resist my attention straying to the pigeon holes that lined the room, each one stacked with patterned silks of every hue and design. A curious silence resided here, yet somewhere close by there was a centre of loud industry.
“I’m more like an editor and a colourist than a designer,” suggested Michael by means of explanation, while excitedly caressing the silks between his fingers as he deliberated over the samples. “It comes from everything,” he replied with a bemused smile, when I asked him how he informed his choices, “It comes from when I used to drive around with my father who was a tie maker, memories of what his generation were wearing, and generally only from other designers in terms of doing something different. ”
“Everything we do comes from somewhere…” interposed Julius Walters enigmatically, as he swung open a door and that unmistakeably appealing smell of old leather bindings met my nostrils. There were hundreds of volumes of silk samples from the last two centuries stacked up in there, comprising thousands upon thousands of unique jewel-like swatches still fresh and bright as the day they were made. Some of these books, often painstakingly annotated with technical details in italic script, comprised the life’s work of a weaver and all now bear panoramic witness to the true colours of our predecessors’ clothing. A vast memory bank woven in cloth, all available to be reworked for the present day and brought back to new life.
Now you know what it means when Julius Walters says, “I am just a weaver.”
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