Endorsements

After the works closed and newcomers moved into new builds over the former mills of the world-renowned Firths Carpets Limited, the social infrastructure of a previously thriving village broke down. Threads of labour argues that left-behind deindustrialised places require acts of social re-making if their communities are to survive. Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the heritage of woollen textiles in the region, workshops brought together a divided ex-industrial community to generate cohesion in ways the government's Levelling-Up programme was failing to provide. Drawing on a wonderful cache of images from the company's archives, the book mines the history of a firm that carpeted interiors at home and across the globe from the mid-1800s. Women's labour and domestic tastes were business critical to the production and sale of Firths carpets. The book examines the company's prestige as it navigated the challenges of the twentieth century, from the dour and hedonistic 1930s to the affluence of the 1950s. Drawing on the author's personal connection to the village, an ethnographic sensibility and novel research techniques, ex-worker responses to a place radically altered by the effects of deindustrialisation are explored. Ageing ex-workers felt nostalgia for the dignity of work, found it hard to navigate an unrecognisable landscape and felt homesick in a village ghosted by industrial spectres of the past. Most of all, they felt bereft of community. This essential book evaluates how creative arts can generate conversations about lost labour and the industrial past as an act of re-making infused with radical hope.