Haptic & Hue
Episodes
Fashion and Pandora Dolls: How Style Travelled The World Before Printing and Cameras.
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
There is a little mannequin which has played a hidden role in history. We admire the portraits of the great men and women of the past dressed in the ...
Finding A Foundling - Textiles of Identity
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In a small corner of London lies one of the most evocative collection of textiles anywhere in the world. The fabrics – which are quite ordinary - a...
The Glorious Quilts of Gees Bend
05 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An extraordinary new exhibition has just opened in the small Alabama township of Gees Bend, and it gives us some clues as to why this community of wor...
Althea McNish - Queen of Colour
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It's nearly five years since the Anglo Trinidadian textile designer, Althea McNish, died in near obscurity in London. In that time her reputation and...
The Dog Hair Blankets of the Coast Salish People
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Textiles have a tremendous power to hold our culture and identity, more so than most understand. For thousands of years the Coast Salish people of the...
Hooky Mats and Rag Rugs: How the Art of Necessity Helped Define a Nation
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hooked rugs are humble things made of recycled cloth and worn out textiles, originally born of need and lack: and yet they have come to mean much m...
The Intelligence of The Hands & The Creative Brain
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you were asked to stitch a picture of your brain what would it look like? A project that looks at the connection between our hands and our brains ...
The Mysteries of the Marshes: The Ancient Textile Secrets of Europe's Bog Bodies
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If we need proof that textiles can rewrite human history, then it lies with the bog bodies of northern Europe. Textile archaeologists are revealing a ...
Reviving Rocking Stitch and Saving Wholecloth Quilting
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Here's a surprise! An extra episode of Haptic & Hue. We said we were taking a break for July and August and yes, we are. But we thought we would give...
The Witches of Scotland: How a New Tartan Became a Living Memorial
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A very special tartan has just started to roll off the weaving looms of the Prickly Thistle Mill in the north of Scotland. This brand-new design in bl...
Textile Waste and the Catastrophe at Kantamanto
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Early this year there was a catastrophic fire at the world's biggest market for selling and upcycling second-hand clothes. Kantamanto market, in Ghan...
Coupons For Clothes: A Wartime Idea Made New?
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Creativity and invention aren't words often associated with hardship and suffering, but in the Second World War women in America and Britain faced wit...
Pleats Please: the Story of the World's Oldest Fashion Technique
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's a fashion technique that's been in continuous use for over five thousand years – proof, if proof is needed, that there is nothing new in fas...
The Quilts That Hold The Heart of Hawaii
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when one of the most traditional museums in the world revolutionises the way it presents the story of the past? The answer is not only ...
Tapestries For Troubled Times
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tapestries for Troubled Times The stitches of the Bayeux Tapestry fix the story of the Norman Conquest of England in our imaginations in an extraor...
Plain Sailing: The Cloth That Turned The Tide of History
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A coarse, plain cloth has a greater claim to being the most important textile in history than any sumptuous silk brocade or royal robe. Sailcloth is ...
Flax is Back! The Great Linen Revival
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There is a global flax revival underway. In the great linen belt of North Western Europe, the land under cultivation has more than doubled in a decad...
Elizabeth Wayland Barber & The Age of String
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Exactly thirty years ago a book came out that changed the way we think about textiles and fibre and the role they've played in the human story. Women...
America's Cotton Feed Sacks: And How They Changed The World
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The American cotton feed sack is the stuff of legend. From the 1850s onwards it was skilfully repurposed by women across America into all kinds of...
Australia's Convict Quilt: Something to be Proud Of
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An extraordinary quilt handstitched by convict women on board ship as they were transported from Britain to Australia in 1841 has just gone on displa...
The Forgotten Medieval Craft of Cloth Staining
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the grandest palace to the poorest cottage, so-called 'stained' cloths brought colour and joy to everyday life in England for hundreds of yea...
Invisible Hands: Tapestry Weavers and Artists
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Great tapestries have been used to decorate and embellish homes and palaces for centuries, and yet the hands that created these works remain almost co...
The Garment That Sweeps Through History: The Everlasting Cloak
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's a piece of clothing that has a good claim to being a universal garment. It is thousands of years old and yet it featured on the catwalks last ...
Ukraine's Revolutionary Act of Embroidery: How Identity Survives in Stitches
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the war in the Ukraine brutally shows, few people have had as hard a struggle down the centuries to maintain their identity as Ukrainians. For hund...
The Point of The Needle - How the Ancient Craft of Stitching Shapes Us
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The needle and thread have been humanity's constant companions for tens of thousands of years: far longer than the dog, the sword, or the wheel, and m...
The Language of Thread - Why Sewing Matters and How It Was Taught
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sewing is one of the most vital but also one of the most overlooked human crafts. Every piece of clothing we wear has been put together by someone who...
Cabbage and Mungo: How Recycling Returned To Savile Row
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is a quiet revolution happening on Savile Row in London, home to some of the world's finest men's outfitters, as the makers of bespoke suits emb...
The People's Art - Material and The Modern Masters
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wanted a Picasso on your walls – or maybe a Joan Miro, a Chagall, or perhaps a Raoul Dufy? For a time in the mid-50s in America you co...
The Tangled Tale of Tartan
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who doesn't love a good tartan? It is everywhere from high fashion catwalks to shooting parties on winter hillsides, from military uniforms on parade ...
A Dance to The Music of Time
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is the tale of how textiles played a central part in one of the great cultural and artistic upheavals of the last century, helping to bring abou...
A Sliver of Deep Blue Cloth
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Warning: This podcast and the text below uses terms considered offensive and inappropriate today. An extraordinary sample of indigo cloth has be...
No Costume? No Carnival!
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's Carnival season, time to take to the streets for a party and see the spectacle. But Carnival is about so much more than that. At its heart is the...
Is the Needle Mightier Than the Sword?
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The little needle is one of the oldest tools in existence. We know that human beings began to use them more than sixty thousand years ago. Needles, an...
Coarse Shifts and Fine Silks
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Clothes are a window to our identity – they tell others who we are, what we believe in, and whether we are rich or poor, powerful or powerless. They...
Stitches by Candlelight
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here's a new account that re-interprets her l...
Stitches by Candlelight
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here's a new account that re-interprets her l...
Stitches by Candlelight
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most written about women in history. We think we know her well – but here's a new account that re-interprets her l...
Returning The Spirit of a Soldier
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A ragged flag and torn flag, nearly eighty years old was posted last month from a home not far from London. It doesn't look like much but it is infini...
Strong Community Threads
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine the person who sits behind the counter in the post office or serves your coffee in the Main Street coffee shop has a superpower, one that she ...
The Secret Life of Second-Hand Clothes
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to your old clothes? Do you drop them off at the charity shop or turn them into the textile recycling bin at the store? They leave your w...
The Long and Winding Road of Lace
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The long arc of human history has been accompanied since the 1400s one way or another by lace. The Italians call this, delightfully, 'Stitches in Air'...
Pears and Pomegranates
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Italian Renaissance produced glorious masterpieces by artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo who are justly feted for their talent. But ...
Fabric and Foundlings
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 18th century London, the secret of your birth could literally hang by a thread. If your mother took you to the Foundling Hospital because she was u...
The Refugees Who Dazzled London
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past months, we have watched in horror as nearly ten million people have fled their homes in Ukraine to escape the Russian invasion. They hav...
Introduction to Season 4
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the fourth season of Haptic and Hue's Tales of Textiles. This season is called Threads of Survival and the eight episodes focus on people w...
Canada's Forgotten Quilts
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can a nation simply forget an astonishing operation in which its women and children made nearly half a million quilts to comfort the victims of the Se...
What Samplers Tell Us About the Hands That Made Them
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Samplers tell stories in stitch, but whose tale are they telling? Perhaps the story of a young woman describing her family and choosing her own patter...
Shoddy: The Once and Future King
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a way of producing cloth that has been called 200 years of secrecy and lies. It has played a central role in wars, and slavery. It was the fou...
Lyon: City of Silk
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do textiles shape a city, and how, in turn, does a city and its people shape and change the world of textiles? This episode looks at what the fab...
African Wax Cloth
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
African Wax Cloth is having its moment in the sun and it seems to be everywhere, from the catwalks of Paris and New York to the humblest country fabri...
Whole Cloth From The hills
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Textiles can tell us different stories – not just those of the rich and powerful – they have the power to take us beyond that and tell us tales of...
Paisley - The Pattern Nomad
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Can something belong to us all – just by virtue of the fact that we are human beings? If anything has a claim to that – it is the Paisley motif, w...
A United Nations of Cloth
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the West of England lies an old house that is a quiet treasure chest of textiles. The man who has built up this astonishing United Nations of cloth...
The Chatter of Cloth - Introduction
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the third season of Haptic and Hue's Tales of Textiles. This series is called The Chatter of Cloth and each of the eight episodes starts wi...
A Feeling of Nostalgia
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is one kind of fabric that produces a powerful sense of nostalgia in many of us, and that's the very democratic cloth that covers the seats and ...
A Feeling of Belonging
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cloth is more than something useful or beautiful, it can also have enormous power. We are surrounded by fabrics of meaning and belonging, fabrics that...
A Feeling of Wealth
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cloth and wealth have gone hand in glove for much of history: where there are textiles there has almost always been money, and often lots of it. The M...
A Feeling of Sorrow
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How cloth helps us grieve. Sorrow is a universal human experience – whether it's for a loved family member, for a way of life that once was, or f...
A Feeling of Warmth
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Unravelling the journey that fleece takes from the fells to fabric. This episode tracks how greasy wool bred in the wind and rain of a Lake District F...
A Feeling of Resilience
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the face of it repairing and reinforcing textiles simply prolongs the life of our clothes and helps minimize textile waste, things worth having –...
A Feeling of Transformation - Preparation
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is costume design magic or camouflage? The second part of A Feeling of Transformation, looks at the enormous heart and skill that goes into getting co...
A Feeling of Transformation - Performance
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do clothes conceal us or reveal us? Listen to how actors use clothes to make stories believable. Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, who have played...
A Feeling of Comfort
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is nowhere in the world quite like Gees Bend, Alabama with the story of how its quilt-makers were acclaimed as artists, and their work bought by...
Introduction Series 2
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why does touch matter so much to us? What is the connection between cloth and our emotions? This new season of Haptic and Hue's Tales of Textiles expl...
Majesty and Mannequins
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Majesty and Mannequins Episode 7 Catch her out of the corner of your eye as she skitters across the stage of history. She has seen revolutions, war, d...
Making Men
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sewing, mending, knitting and all the fibre skills are seen as 'Women's Work' in Western cultures. But why is this? We hear from men who were taught t...
Yarn Yarn Yarn
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This episode tells the story of the top designer of fabrics to the French fashion industry. It looks at the way in which a modern supplier, competing ...
Stitches in Time
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The haute couture embroiderers of Paris are amongst Europe's most celebrated and skilled artisans. This episode looks at the needlewomen who sit behin...
A Weaver's Tale
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to earn your living as a maker? Can you feed yourself? This episode looks at the renowned hand-weaver, Janet Phillips, who has done ...
Material Women
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the elegant, crisp and artistic textile designs that burst upon the world in the 1950s - the period now known as Mid Century Modern. It l...
Colour is Mine
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Britain's first black designer of international standing was a magician of colour. The Queen wore her dress fabrics, cruise liners sailed with her mur...
Introduction to Series One
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
History is full of the sound of spindles, the clatter of mills and the reek of dye baths as the knowledge of how to make beautiful fabrics has been ga...