Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 4612 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| HERITAGE OF SKILL | 1962 | 1962-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 29 mins 55 secs Credits: Story by Edith Coughlan and R.F. Johnson. Narrated by J.B. Long. Photography directed by F.W. Dewhirst. Production by C.H. Wood (Bradford) Ltd. Subject: Working Life Industry |
| Summary This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage from the Lamtex Rug factory. There are shots of the various processes starting with shearing the sheep, spinning the threads and finally weaving the material to make the rugs. |
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Description
This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage from the Lamtex Rug factory. There are shots of the various processes starting with shearing the sheep, spinning the threads and finally weaving the material to make the rugs.
Title-Lamtex Rugs presents
Title-Heritage of skill
A couple are playing tennis on a grass court.
Title-Story by Edith Coughlan and R.F Johnson.
Narrated by J.B. Long.
Title-Photography directed by F.W. Dewhirst.
Title-Production by C.H. Wood...
This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage from the Lamtex Rug factory. There are shots of the various processes starting with shearing the sheep, spinning the threads and finally weaving the material to make the rugs.
Title-Lamtex Rugs presents
Title-Heritage of skill
A couple are playing tennis on a grass court.
Title-Story by Edith Coughlan and R.F Johnson.
Narrated by J.B. Long.
Title-Photography directed by F.W. Dewhirst.
Title-Production by C.H. Wood (Bradford) Ltd.
Two couples in tennis whites walk towards the tennis court; one of the women comments on the fact that the man and woman are still playing tennis. They decide to sit down at a patio table and chairs and watch them play. There are shots of the couples watching and the man and woman playing tennis. On one of the men says that the players have great skill, but the other man says that it is luck not skill. He says that everything is automated nowadays, but the first man continues on to say that they are many jobs that can only be carried out with the use of skill.
In the next section a man is blowing glass in a factory; he has an oval shaped piece of glass which he puts into a mould and blows into it again. This is followed by a man playing a French horn; the camera focuses on his fingers. Another man is making pottery on a wheel and the last craftsman is a watch maker who is working on a watch. One of the women says to John that he may as well admit defeat because there are so many skills still in use.
The next section opens in a wool factory where a man talks to the camera about his job; he has to look at the shorn wool and work out how much good wool can be got from the piles of it; there is a shot of a sheep farm. The wool expert says that like the farmer, he has to know about cross breeding; there are shots of the farmer shearing a sheep. The voiceover says that the fleece has to be laid out and the dirtier parts, from legs and tails, have to be removed. The farmer ties up the wool and throws it into a sack. The voiceover says that the wool is sent to sheds where he and other experts have to distinguish the characteristics of the wool; there are shots of the men pulling at bits of wool.
A lorry, piled with sacks of wool, arrives at the factory. The voiceover says that all the processing is done in-house, keeping down the cost. He says that the sorting of the wool is carried a stage further in the factory by sorting men who open the sacks and separate the wool. The voiceover says that they have to handle and look at the wool to distinguish the best pieces. Then there is an image of a sheep and the voiceover says that the coarsest wool is from the back legs, the finest is on the shoulder, and the most consistent quality comes from the back and the flanks.
One of the sorters opens out a fleece, and the voiceover says that the sorter likes to see the natural colour and texture of the wool. He pulls rough sections off the wool and separates the pieces into baskets. The voiceover says that the sorter looks for `crimp', the wavy design, as it is a sign of quality.
The wool is sent to an opening machine which opens out the fibres. It then goes to the hopper or scouring machine where it is washed. Long metal prongs separate the fibres so that they all get a good washing. When the wool comes out onto rollers, it is fluffy and much cleaner looking, and from there it is sent into a heated chamber where heated air is blown onto it.
There are shots of woman carding the wool by hand and then the shot cuts to a mechanical carding machine which, the voiceover says, churns out thousands of strands of wool. There are close-up shots of the machine, and as the wool goes through each section, the voiceover explains what it is doing. In the combing machine the longest fibres are separated and carried onto another section of machine where, the voiceover says, they are used to make Lamtex rugs. The wool goes through several more machines each one making it flatter and thinner until it resembles wool threads.
The shot cuts back to the woman hand spinning wool into threads; the voiceover says that the machine does it much quicker. Following this is a shot of the machine and the fibres becoming threads and then being twisted around another thread by the use of anther machine. Once the threads have been twisted, the voiceover says that they are wound onto frames. One of the operatives ties off the full frames and removes the bundles of wool.
In a laboratory a man sits at a machine and winds some threads around it to check for consistent thread twisting. There are shots of him putting wool into moisture measuring machine and winding hanks on wool around another machine.
In the dye house, workers put hanks on wool onto sticks and hang them onto a platform which is lowered into a large bath of dye. The wool is left there for several hours and then removed to be dried. The voiceover says that the wool has to be gradually dried without any squeezing; the pieces of wool are placed in a large spin dryer. Once they are fully dried they are sent to the cone winders.
A woman stands beside a large machine, feeding wool into it. The machine winds the wool onto cones and the woman removes the full cones. There are close up shots of all the steps that the woman goes through to set up the machine.
The material is woven on a large mechanical machine. A woman works on the machine making sure the wool is flat and threaded the correct way. She ties off sections of wool and keeps the machine working. This is followed by shots of the loom weaving large sections of material. There are close up shots of the shuttle flying back and forth, under and over threads. The voiceover explains how it all works.
There is a brief explanation of how the separate pieces of material come off the loom. This is done using a diagram which has been set up to represent the different threads and a piece of the loom. There is a shot of this happening on the machine and of the operatives removing the large rolls of women material.
Another machine is carding and processing other bits of wool for the interfelt part of the rug. The material is rolled together to create a wide piece of material. The next stage is in the sewing section where the women combine the wool rug, the interfelt and another layer. The pieces are sewn together inside out and then they are turned the right way out. The edges are sewn and the final touches and checks are done.
The voiceover says that all of the rugs are packaged into their own boxes so that during transportation they will stay protected. There are shots of different types of Lamtex delivery trucks leaving the factory.
The voiceover says that the skills that have gone into making these rugs are the Heritage of Lamtex. There are a few final shots from the various stages of the production of the rugs.
Title-C.H. Wood (Bradford) Ltd Production for
Title-Lamtex
Pure Wool
Rugs
Context
This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford. The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s. Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution. His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s. Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as...
This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford. The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s. Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution. His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s. Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region. C.H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filmmaking. Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE. His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications.’ The company closed down in 2002. See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C.H. Wood.
Many of the films that Wood made were to commission from Yorkshire businesses, and this is another example. The film was sponsored by J.L.Tankard & Company Ltd who manufactured rugs under the trade name of Lamtex (Luxury Rugs), which features in the film. The company can be traced back to James Tankard who owned a successful wool spinning business at Upper Croft Mills Bowling, and lived at Bolling Hall, Bradford from about 1871 to 1887. However, the company of J.L.Tankard wasn’t registered with Companies House until 1946, when Charles Germaine Tankard was the Managing Director (at least he is listed as such in 1949). However, in 1923 it was taken over by a wider group controlled by Illingworth, Morris & Co. Ltd, a large conglomerate of wool companies in the Bradford area (of which Tankard was also a director). According to Frances Parker, “The business still appeared to be operating successfully under Illingworth Morris in 1983. Notice about its removal from the register of companies was in the Gazette [London] in Feb 2011.” (Most of this information is taken from the Frances Parker and Alan Longbottom postings on the Roots.web.ancestry website, see References). The company was based at the Swaine Green Works, 5 Eldon Place, Laisterdyke, Bradford, perhaps where, rather fittingly, Allied Carpets is now situated. It appears that the trade name of Lamtex may have disappeared in the mid-1960s, about the same time as the Woollen Exchange in Bradford stopped operating as such. The company operated a Percival Prentice aircraft to advertise their rugs from 1959 onwards (a photo can be seen on a scale model website). The company representative in the film makes the claim that, “British wool is the strongest in the world”; an opinion backed up by the British Wool Marketing Board, “Manufacturers across the world regard British Wool as the strongest and most resilient wool for carpet” – although note the qualification that this only holds for carpets. Their advertisements claimed that Lamtex Wool Rugs were, “The fleeciest, the softest, the cosiest”. In fact historically a lot of the wool has been imported into Britain from Australia and New Zealand, and more specialised products, like cashmere, camel hair and goat hair from South Africa, South America, China and the Middle East. Doubtless the company wanted to stress its use of locally supplied wool. And of course wool spinning and weaving have a long history in the West Riding, and Bradford has become well known for worsted cloth. By the mid-19th century Bradford was swollen with woollen mills (with at least 38), producing around two thirds of England’s wool. The film, with its opening reminiscent of the contemporary Carry On films, and as its title suggests, associates the production of the company’s rugs with the passing down of traditional skills. It might, however, be thought to be somewhat ironic that the machines that displaced the traditional skills of weaving and spinning at the beginning of the industrial revolution are here presented as representing inherited skills. After all, it was precisely in the textile industry that the industrial revolution took off, especially with James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny in 1770, and then Richard Arkwright’s water frame and Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule (albeit across the border in Lancashire). Alongside the fast developing mechanisation, merchants realised the benefits of bringing together supply and production into a single process, with workers under a single roof, known as ‘factoring’ – hence the “the factory system.” Together these processes led to the demise of the old craft guilds, making the skills of thousands of craftspeople obsolete. Although the consequences of the factory system was not just the erosion of skills, but also rising unemployment and the lowering of wages. Hence the revolt led by General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, beginning in Nottingham in 1811. This revolt might have started in Nottingham, but Yorkshire quickly become the centre as croppers, as Luddites, attacked factories in Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield and Leeds in February and March, 1812. In particular William Cartwright’s Rawfolds Mill near Brighouse came under attack on 11th April, despite the government passing the Frame Breaking Act, granting the death penalty for anyone found guilty of smashing machines (breaking frames) – leading to 14 members of the attack being hung (see the account on Luddites at 200). With private armies and the state against them, the Luddites were eventually defeated – a defeat that paved the way for the establishment of the principle that industrialists have the right to continually impose new technology, without any process of negotiation, either with the people who have to operate it or with society at large. Yet although many skills were lost as a result of the factory system, some have argued that industrialization may have created as many new skills as it destroyed (see Form). Certainly new skills are constantly developing alongside developments in technology and the organisation of work. Although, doubtless, some of the skills shown in the film have subsequently become obsolete through technological change, wool judging is not one of them, and remains an art that can only be done by skilled individuals. However, in his book, The Craftsmen, Richard Sennett makes a distinction between skills and craft, with the latter entailing the emotional rewards of being “anchored in tangible reality” and being able to take pride in ones work; something that doesn’t necessarily go with having skills (Sennett, p 21) – see also the Context for Pipes (c.1935). Even as late as the 1950s Bradford was dominated by warehouses, mills, banks and offices dedicated to the woollen trade. Now most of this has gone. Bill Bryson, in his Notes form a Small Island (p 47), opines that, “Of all the once thriving wool precincts in the city - Bermondsey, Cheapside, Manor Row, Sunbridge Road - only the few dark buildings of Little Germany survive in any number, and even this promising small neighbourhood seems bleak and futureless.” But he goes on to write: “Bradford may have lost a wool trade but it has gained a thousand excellent Indian restaurants, which I personally find a reasonable swap as I have a strictly limited need for bales of fibre but can take about as much Indian food as you care to shovel at me.” References Bill Bryson, Notes form a Small Island, Black Swan, 1996. William Form, ‘On the Degradation of Skills’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 13: 29-47 (August 1987) Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Penguin, 2009. Luddites at 200 The Edinburg Gazette, 15th November 1968 Roots.web.ancestry Percival Prentice aircraft G-AOKH, scale model website The British Wool Marketing Board |
