Cloth and Memory [2]

yearofhappy and I met up in Saltaire this afternoon and after a catch up in the café in the Mill, we took a tour of the new exhibition 'Cloth and Memory [2]' which has been installed in the Mill loft, only occasionally open to the public.

It is a grand space to walk around, originally a spinning room and the longest room of its kind at the time it was in operation. According to the guide sheet, Salts Mill manufactured 18 miles of alpaca cloth per day. The exhibition aims to reflect that tradition of cloth and the memories held by the Mill.

I don't reckon to understand much about art installations but some I liked and others were incomprehensible to me, but I did enjoy walking around them in the amazing space. My blip is of vintage wooden reels which have been attached to the wall. Each reel has the name of a woman who lived in Saltaire and worked at the mill. I was particularly drawn to this because the name on the reel in clearest focus is the same (first and surname) as the daughter of a friend, which was a bit spooky. The reels also record the age and job and address of each woman and you get a powerful sense of their role in the working of the mill. The S stands for Salt (the name of the Mill Owner, Titus Salt) and Silver (Jonathan Silver who bought the mill in modern times and made it into the fantastic visitor attraction it is today). If you would like to see more blips of the installations see here.