JC Middlebrook_Storytelling with Nottingham Lace Artisans

jc middlebrook storytelling with nottingham lace artisans

jc middlebrook storytelling with nottingham lace artisans

COMING FROM AN INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE I met Jayne for the first time at Craft.Design.

Contemporary 2015; my attention got caught by her stand, rich of colourful laces and I could not resist from going and introducing myself.

We ended up talking a lot, and we agreed to keep in touch after Christmas to discuss ways to collaborate. I liked Jayne’s enthusiasm and passion for her work straightaway and I was sure that, with her friendly and pro-active character, she could be a perfect protagonist for my study ‘Storytelling with Nottingham Lace Artisans’. In fact, she kindly accepted my email invitation and welcomed me in her studio in Cotgrave, a short drive from Nottingham. She explained me that she has recently moved to Nottinghamshire, a bit outside of the city centre to build her brand new textiles studio detached from home, immersed in a green paradise. Working from home had allowed her to be flexible and not to waste any time in commuting.

Jayne’s work is inspired by the history of Nottingham lace, and the heritage of the local textile industry. She grew up in Leicestershire, in an industrial village called Barrow on Soar, near Loughborough. During the 70s and 80s the textile mills were all still working, producing mostly hosiery and socks. It was a kind of cottage industry, nothing as fancy as Nottingham lace.

While Jayne was growing up, such industrial heritage was always there, like part of her make up, and she would not think that it would ever disappear.

A TEXTILE INDUSTRY AS PART OF HER MAKE UP Jayne has enjoyed textiles since she was a child and learned sewing from her mum, who used to sew as a way of saving money, making clothes for her children. Jayne remembers that when she was a child she was very interested in making clothes for her dolls, out of anything, like paper or cello tape, and with the time passing, she started sewing clothes as well as decorative items. Her first sewing machine was her grandma’s; it was a power treadle machine, which Jayne still keeps in her house, as a table, as part of her heritage.

At the age of 18, she did her A levels in design, focusing on fashion and textiles, with the hope to register to the Loughborough College. Jayne herself admits she is not that good in drawing and she does not cluster herself as an artist; in fact, she did not get into the Art College. She did her degree in something else, but she always kept her passion for textiles as a hobby. Almost as a revenge, Jayne is quite satisfied that for the last years she has done a small amount of teaching in a fashion course at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), the course where she wanted to study at the age of 18 and where she was not admitted.

She teaches basic skills of industrial sewing to first year undergraduates, who are introduced to an industrial sewing machine for the first time, in their first two months of University.

A BUSINESS THAT SOUNDS LIKE A FACTORY After University, Jayne has worked for a long time as sales manager for a sewing machine manufacturer. Back then, she used to train other people to use a design software that she still uses; eventually, she started working with other creative businesses, supporting them, but not running a creative business on her own. Insatisfied by being employed in an industry, Jayne thought to start up her own business, bringing together her sales and textile backgrounds. Moving towards crafts gave her a good balance between economic selfsustainment and personal satisfaction, which she gets from making textiles instead of outsourcing the manufacturing of her designs. She had a big desire to make something creatively, not necessarily lace. However, at that time, Jayne had moved to Nottingham and was surrounded by the “ghost” of the Nottingham lace industry; she knew such manufacturing was always there, and then there was nothing left.

Jayne started up her own business 6 years ago.

JC Middlebrook is not Jayne’s proper name, but her business name. Jayne wanted to establish a business, which sounded like a factory named after its owner, but not really associated with her as a person; so she chose Middlebrook, which was her grandfather’s middle name. She somehow feels a family connection within her business; before building her new studio, Jayne used to work at her mum’s and sometimes she still enjoyes going back to sew with her mum, as they have not done for about 30 years.

A LACE DESIGNER-MAKER Jayne describes herself as a textile designermaker; she designs and makes textiles, specifically embroidered lace (which differs from the traditional type of Nottingham lace made by Leavers machines). Jayne is probably the only designer making such type of lace products in this way. She is self-taught, and she found her way of manufacturing using the skills she had.

At NTU there is a course on textile design, where embroidery is taught as part of it, using large multihead embroidery machines. Jayne has never tried to teach lace-making at the University. Until she was working from home, she could not have interns working with her, but now that she has a dedicated studio and has changed her insurance, she would like to explore this opportunity further.

She had a couple of students on work experience, from the embroidery course at NTU. One of them was interested in learning how to make lace on embroidery machines, and in one week of work experience she learned it pretty well. So far, Jayne cannot afford to pay an intern, and since her work is very specialised and some of her time is spent on accomplishing administrative tasks (such as chasing payments, sending out invoices, finding retailers), she is not sure how much useful it could be for an intern. Since the most enjoyable part of her job is making and exploring with textiles, Jayne thinks it would be useful to have someone else dealing with the administrative work, although she also finds satisfying managing her own admin (for example working on her website, which means adding value to her job).

TWIN CITY, TWIN DESIGNER In the German town of Plauen, they run a yearly lace festival, which is apparently like a fun fair, a bit like the Nottingham Goose Fair. In Plauen they use to manufacture embroidered lace in a really particular way, similar to Jayne’s, although plotting by hand (and not at the computer), drawing up to scale and using much bigger machines. The city of Nottingham is twinned with Karlsruhe, quite close to Plauen. Jayne visits Karlsruhe every year, but her goal for this year is to go to Plauen with her German friend Brigitte Adolph in order to visit the local factories, talk to local people and get inspired.

Jayne is working with Brigitte to make silver jewellery from her lace designs. Brigitte is a goldsmith fascinated by lace and textiles in her work.

She describes her work as “only revealed through touch”: when looking at her precious creations, one assumes they are textiles, such is the detail captured in the process, but they are in reality solid silver pieces. Jayne met Brigitte in May 2011 when she participated at a trade show in Karlsruhe together with Nottingham’s designers-makers Debbie Bryan and Hannah Lobely, partnered under the Creative Twinning programme. The idea was to connect with local designers and invite them to Nottingham.

When Jayne saw Brigitte’s stand with all her silver jewellery, she immediately recognised they were made from lace. Jayne introduced herself as a lace maker and invited Brigitte to visit Nottingham and work together on some designs. In fact, in the following October Brigitte, together with other two German designers, went to Nottingham; that was the start of a collaboration, which is still ongoing.

SUPPORTED BY LOCAL ORGANISATIONS Jayne produces some lace bracelets and Brigitte manufactures silver jewellery using the process of lost lace (a reinterpretation of the traditional lost wax technique). The lace is used to make a mold, which is then burnt out and poured into silver.

After one year of development, Jayne and Brigitte won the first prize in the “Klassik” category for the German jewellery magazine “Schmuck”; that was an absolute thrill. It was quite tough working with a designer in another country, sending a lot of emails and photographs of work in progress, but in the end Jayne and Brigitte became more familiar with how each other’s design works and they are now firm friends too.

The Creative Twinning partnership was supported by the Future Factory (a hub for business support in sustainable design and practice) and Design Factory (a membership organisation supporting craft practice, funded by the Arts Council England). Design Factory is one of the biggest design organisations in the East Midlands, as part of the National Centre for Craft and Design (based in Lincolnshire and now working across all the UK), in parallel to DesignNation, (another membership organisation promoting British design). Such memberships are based on a panel selection, which ensures high quality and continuous innovation. They do some mentoring, but what Jayne enjoys the most is the peer-to-peer support between members; furthermore, being part of a selective organisation is a guarrantee of quality, both for customers and for trade show applications.

PORCELACE, WHERE LACE MEETS CERAMICS Jayne has also collaborated with the ceramist Samantha Robinson, based in Leicester, since their trip together to Karlsruhe some years ago.

In the past they made some ceramic boxes decorated with lace patterns and they have collaborated for the “Porcelace” installation for the Nottingham Lace Night 2016. Samantha made 130 white ceramic tea lights, and Jayne made lace jewellery using the same pattern, which decorates the ceramics. The installation was made of smaller laces sewn together into a 2 meters wide piece. The installation was located on the floor of the courtyard at the St Mary’s Church (a busy venue, providing the makers with a lot of exposure). Porcelace was born from one of Samantha’s ideas and was supported by the Nottingham Creative Quarter. The idea beyond the installation was to sell tea lights and jewellery during the event.

DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM ARCHIVES Jayne was lucky enough to gain from the Future Factory access to Nottingham Trent University’s Lace Archive, which provided her with inspiration for her collections. The archive is a really good resource, but not free of charge nor public facing, although it involves a rich social history. It can be visited only upon appointment and accompanied by staff – to avoid the risk of wreck – and the lack of personnel makes it difficult to access it; furthermore, only a tiny portion of it is actually used since not everything has been analysed and catalogued. The Archive was funded by the European Union and it is used as a resource for students as part of their courses; in fact, originally the Art School was developed and supported by lace factories to train future generations of workers.

When the University stopped teaching lace making, the material was shelved and neglected until it was rescued and rebuilt as a teaching resource or a commercial tool for licensing new designs in collaboration with industrial partners.

Nottingham City Council has also a lace archive at the Newstead Abbey, showcasing patterns, pieces of lace and garments. Neither this resource is public facing, unless once or twice a year when it is open to the public. At the Nottingham Castle there is a lace machine, but it is too expensive to make it work, and nobody knows how to use it.

Jayne is interested in drawing inspiration from such lace resources, but at the same time she enjoys discovering something hard to find – like rescuing a treasure – whereas sometimes is not motivated to engage with what is already put on a plate.

BUILDING A CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS Jayne has translated the local material culture into a bold aesthetics. It embodies her contemporary values, which come from positioning herself in the present and future times, rather than in the past. Jayne’s products stand out from her memories of a flat and not creative industry. She creatively makes contemporary items, detached from the traditional lace, which you could remember from your grandma’s house, used in curtains for example. In Jayne’s aesthetics, very rarely you can find white lace or vintage pretty items, as she rather uses strong colours which make a bold statement.

Jayne also makes bespoke designs; for example, she provides a large range of colours on her website and, as long as she has the colour in stock, she can easily change the colour of the threads and set up the machine to make a customised product.

SUPPLY OF SUSTAINABLE YARNS Jayne gets all her supplies from GS UK, an embroidery supplier based in Nottingham. Since she makes lace from scratch, it is quite easy for her to find supplies of yarns suitable to her designs, which do not require large orders. The stabilizer comes in a big roll, but she uses it a lot and this suits her needs anyway. Having an industrial background, Jayne knows how to get supplies from a direct manufacturer, which makes things much cheaper. She purchases big yarns, while some small ones are used to test out colours for prototypes. The fiber used is viscose, a manmade fiber made from wood pulp, a naturallyoccurring, cellulose-based raw material. Although it is treated with a oil-based dye, the amount of chemicals is minuscule and the overall material is still considered biodegradable. Jayne has also tried to use cotton, a natural fiber, but it makes a lot of dust when worked, causing maintenance issues for the machines; cotton has also a more stiff touch than viscose, and is available in less strong colours than what she currently likes.

Jayne uses also some polyester threads, an oilbased fiber which has a different touch also due to the chemical dye used. Jayne does not like such a material much, but so far this is the only option available for a fluorescent thread. Jayne declares to be quite environmentally friendly, and she tries all her best to protect nature, keeping all her waste threads and disposing them in a compost bin.

A LITTLE ARCHIVE FOR JEWELLERY Since Jayne has always worked in textiles, she knows the best suppliers for them, while it is hard for her to find fasteners and other accessories to finalise her jewellery. She collects small amounts of items, gathered a bit randomly.

In the early stage of her career, Jayne met Sass Brown (lecturer at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York) at an event organised by the Future Factory. Sass Brown has advised Jayne to think about the items that she has got already and use them creatively, like making fastenings out of the same thread, or using large scale hooks, for example. In the following years, Sass featured Jayne’s work in her Eco Fashion Talk blog, which gave her a lot of visibility.

DEVELOPING HER OWN DESIGNS Jayne develops her own design, which generally start from hand sketching on graph paper. These are like technical drawings, which are then copied or scanned into a computer-aided design (CAD) software, which translates the drawing into stitching points (while CAD makes vector drawings). Although the software could make the transition from the scanned copy to the digital drawing, Jayne does it by herself to make it more accurate. The file is then saved in a particular format that can be read by an embroidery machine.

MAKING EVERYTHING FROM START TO FINISH Once the machine is connected to a USB stick or is cabled to the computer, it is possible to interact with a touch screen to access the file and set up the embroidery of lace. The stabilizer is held into a hook, which moves from side to side to create the movement of the thread. While a Leavers lace machine works more like weaving a thread up and down, in this embroidery machine the design is created by the x-y movement of the stitches. When using too big hooks, the machine slows down at half pace; therefore, Jayne prefers to make smaller pieces and sew them together afterwards. Once the textiles is washed flat in a basin or bath filled with hand-hot water, the stabilizer dissolves immediately and only the lace remains. After 2-3 hours, the lace is completely separated from the stitches, but some pieces (like the lost laces prepared for Brigitta, which need to be stiffer and flat and do not require skin contact) are not washed for long. Finally, she uses to iron the pieces.

NOT MUCH MANUAL WORK IS INVOLVED Since Jayne controls the process from start to finish, she can fix any defeat at the machine straightaway. Therefore, she does not need to do much finishing work by hand, but she may just have to mend a few stitches when they are missing, as a lace mender. In fact, her time is actually the most expensive input in the process and the hand work would not pay off. On average, she can make around 8 necklaces in a day, using two machines.

Jayne has invested in good quality machines, which cost ÂŁ5.000 each.

Jayne owns two machines: the more modern one is continuously used for manufacturing, while the other enables prototyping new designs, as well as sewing pieces of lace together. Actually, since she had worked as sales manager for a sewing machines manufacturer, she know where to find the best quality machines and her former employer uses to maintain her machines for free. The software she uses is called 60 Premiere Design Creator; it costs ÂŁ800, but she got it at a discounted price, as she used to work for it.

DEEP UNDERSTANDING & LONG EXPERIENCE For Jayne it is quite easy to use her design software; other people confident with CAD could manage to use it, but would struggle mainly in understanding the translation of the digital drawing into the embroidery machine, embedding information about the order of stitches, structure of the lace, thickness of the thread, type of finishing, etc. Deep understanding of such details come after years of experience, which Jayne has, having used the software for 15 years, being trained in her former company and having taught other people to embroider motifs on garments. By teaching this technique to other people and making a lot of experiments and searches to address all the questions she was asked, Jayne has build a well-mature know-how, and has probably become the most experienced in the country. Students at the university get the technical knowledge but they do not spend enough time on the machine and therefore are able to make fine designs but struggle to understand how the machine manufactures them.

This issue is also due to the fact that machines are expensive and technicians deal with the making to avoid the risk that unexperienced students can damage them.

WORKING OUT PRODUCT PRICES Jayne admits her business is not really economically self-sustainable, so she has to complement her income with other side jobs, like teaching a short university course. Since she self-manages her admin, Jayne is well aware of the cost of everything involved in her business.

For example, to make a necklace, on average it takes raw material worth about £0.30 in thread, plus £0.15 for the stabilizer (considering the most convenient supplies). The making process is quite low on electricity use; it takes about one hour to make an item, consuming less than 1KW, which costs £0.15. All in all, the main input cost is the long time spent in designing, which is about 4 or 5 hours solidly, spread over a longer period of time, between tests, breaks and refinements. Manual work also requires a lot of time, as in the case of making broaches, whose back is stitched by hand; therefore, broaches are not much profitable, but are balanced by other items with a higher profit margin. Broaches still need to be made to offer a wide collection and must be sold at an average price range. Earrings are easy to make, and big necklaces provide a large earning, when 1 or 2 of them are sold every quarter. Some products with a non-traditional flowery lace design are sold well at trade shows to other artists and rarely to the public. With these costs in mind, Jayne always works out her product prices, which range from £5 to £200 (with a necklace being sold for about £45). She always prices the design but not the refinement, which is a continuous process and would not be countable.

FILLING A NICHE MARKET Jayne recognises there is a wider market for embroidery than for lace making, whose products are more niche instead. On the other hand, embroidered lace is not a cheap way to make lace in comparison to the large Leavers machines whose purchase, however, requires a big investment. Overall, there may be not enough market to set up a University course on embroidery, but Jayne has found such a niche market to explore, and she may be the only one independent designer making lace in this way for this particular type of products. In fact, while others make jewellery using ready-made lace, Jayne makes her products from scratch, from yarns; this allows using her completely free creativity. In this way, she can make any designs on demand; for example, a one-off corset with customised motifs, or a big skull glowing in the dark conceived as a bold response to the traditional white lace curtains.

SMALL LADY JEWELLERY QUANTITIES IS OF THE QUALITY TARGETPRODUCTS PRODUCT Shawls Jayne’s tend product to be type made is jewellery in two days: and her they target are knitted customers in are theladies. first day, She would then like overlocked to make also and finished productsinfor themen, next.but They sheare does handnotorknow machinewhat washed, kind. Some depending men in theon past the had type brought of yarn. a bracelet While the called shawls “Lacelet”, are astill bit similar wet, they to the areone pinned madeout, by widening the Italian the brand shawls “Cruciani”, in thebut middle she has spots. not really They still marketed carry on such a 200 a years product old to finishing men. system Jayne also and they makes docards not want and bookmarks others to copy as gifts, it. Atas G.H. well Hurt as & bigger Son, they pieces, haven’t whichconverted are signed yetand theframed. methodFor of manufacturing example, responding to centimeters, to a fashionable as theytrend use old for stoles woodlands whichand areanimals, still marked she made in inches. a piece Finally, with shawls the shape areof dried a foxout face, overnight, representing then the folded county and packaged. of Leicestershire, where Jayne comes from. Her The sisterscale was aofbig production fan of thevaries Leicester a lot.City They Football used to Clubhave (also larger known production, as the Foxes)running and Jayne through made the first machinery. lace fox For to be example, given tofor herLaura as a present Ashley, G.H. and then Hurt she & Son kept used producing to produce such10.000 foxes.per Some 60 sqaures of the stories of a colour, behind and the products then theyareordered published 20 colours; on the website. so, they This spent is 6themonths case ofmaking an eagle, the Spring designed collection. and inspired Nowadays, by thethey district tendoftoArnold make smaller where Jayne quantities usedoftobetter live; the quality old English products, name but it fortakes Arnold longer. wasThey Ernehale, don’t which really count means how “Place many of shawls Eagles”. they Storytelling produce; would whenwork theyvery get an well order for all of the these same pieces type, inspired they are by able woodland. to do it faster, while if different machines are set to make different products, it may take longer to complete an order.

SMALL QUANTITIES COLLECTIONS BASEDOF ONQUALITY MOTIFS & PRODUCTS COLOURS Jayne generally Shawls tend to be works madebyin motifs: two days: she they designs are knitted a motif in at the her liking first day, and then then overlocked she develops and a finished in the collection of products next. They(e.g. are handearrings, or machinenecklace, washed, bracelet) broach, depending using on that the motif. type ofShe yarn. does While not the shawls work by seasons, are stillbut wet,rather they by are colours; pinned out, she widening the generally makes shawls 1-2 in colour the middle palettesspots. (following They still carrythroughout trends) on a 200 years the old year, finishing using system the same and they do Since design. not want Jayne others can to easily copyget it. her At G.H. material Hurt & Son, they supplies, it ishaven’t easy toconverted adapt her yet designs the method to them.of manufacturing For example, this to iscentimeters, a big necklace as they to be useworn old stoles awhich above plain top; are still Jayne marked has even in inches. sewn her Finally, logo shawls on the hanger, are dried and out she overnight, uses it at then tradefolded shows.and packaged.

The scale of production varies a lot. They used to have larger production, running through the machinery. For example, for Laura Ashley, G.H. Hurt & Son used to produce 10.000 per 60 sqaures of a colour, and then they ordered 20 colours; so, they spent 6 months making the Spring collection. Nowadays, they tend to make smaller quantities of better quality products, but it takes longer. They don’t really count how many shawls they produce; when they get an order of the same type, they are able to do it faster, while if different machines are set to make different products, it may take longer to complete an order.

DESIGNING AND MAKING THE PACKAGING Having worked in sales, Jaynes is well aware of the importance of how the work is presented to customers. She designs and prints packaging herself to keep the cost down; then she stamps her logo on boxes fully made of recycled cardboard, supplied by the Tiny Box Company (in her early career she even made boxes). The new type of boxes she uses are more expensive, yet easier to manage; she just has to insert a little card with a short description of the product and contact details, and the packaging is ready to go.

A PR ISSUE IN NOTTINGHAM Jayne is quite well known among the local creative community, although her main customers are not from Nottingham. She points out that coming from Nottingham is sometimes felt a bit as a hindrance, due to a weakness in communication to reach out trade buyers. Being a bit cynical about the impact of storytelling, Jayne highlights that target customers buy a product just if they like it, and not because they are interested in the story of its place of origin, which is just perceived as ordinary for local customers, if not additional. She has even experienced that sometimes people are interested in hearing the story of Nottingham lace, but then they get satisfied from knowing that story and they do not need to purchase the physical product. All in all, Jayne prefers letting customers think about the present and the future instead of communicating histories of the past, which could sound confusing. She does it through her jewellery, which carry a contemporary aesthetics, not necessarily explicitly in tune with traditional Nottingham lace, whose flowery patterns and vintage look could instead be appreciated by a different type of customer.

SELF-PROMOTING THE BRAND Jayne has designed her own logo, but now she feels the fonts used (Perpetua and Vivaldi) look quite traditional and need re-designing to better suit her style. Jayne is fortunate to have a friend who has helped her with photographies and graphic designs. Sometimes, Jayne takes phots of her products by herself using her DSLR camera and posts them in her social media – Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram – but not very often.

For self-promotion at trade shows, Jayne has made a large logo “JCM”, sewing together on some net all scrap pieces of laces that she has made throughout the years as test pieces. Instead of throwing them away, she has collected and upcycled them into this large display piece. Since these scraps were all in different bright colours, Jayne has boiled them using a colour remover – like bleach – to take the dye out of them; as a result, they now have all different tones of white. Overall, Jayne is not much satisfied by this outcome, as it looks like vintage lace, which is against her personal style. Hence, she would like to spray paint it in a bright colour, like red, to make it more contemporary-like. Eventually, she would make the full logo JC Middlebrook, and it may become the new branding, but not in white. All in all, Jayne enjoys this big piece, which embeds sustainable principles of upcycling scrap materials and slowly crafting the piece by hand.

This has involed a lot of hand work, much more than what Jayne is used to, as she generally just presses a button and the machine does the work.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SALES Besides being featured in many online platforms, Jayne has developed a website by herself, including an interactive Google map of her stockists; she is very proud of it. She has stockists all over the UK, mostly in the northern part of the country, and a couple in London. Some of her pieces are sold in Germany (thanks to the trade shows in which Jayne has participated) and in Spain. In particular, Jayne’s main income comes from sales through shops (like Debbie Bryan in Nottingham), galleries and trade fairs. Online sales would be more convenient to Jayne, to overcome retailers’ profit margins, although this involves managing by herself the packaging, marketing and delivery.

Jayne has done a showcase in New York, but she finds the USA a really peculiar market, and the cultural difference makes it difficult to receive honest feedback from customers. Jayne prefers selling her products within the European Union, where the trade is very easy and cheap, although the currency exchange from pound to euro makes her products not always convenient.

Outside of Europe, import duties make things difficult and knowing all the regulations for exporting – for example in the USA – is terrifying.

For this, she may benefit, for example, from the information provided by the UK Fashion & Textiles organisation (UKTF).

WILLING TO TAP INTO THE FASHION MARKET Jayne would like to tap more into the fashion market to get a more specific target customer and avoid the competition with all the other craft media. Jayne enjoys making in her own studio and would not like to own a shop; she would rather have her products sold through other stores. For example, in Nottingham she would like to try and sell in One BC (an independent fashion design store, which has opened its back shop to external brands) or in some of the stores recently opened in the Cobden Chambers. Jayne also participates at the Craft.Design.Contemporary fair during Christmas, where her products are suitably targeted as gifts. Nevertheless, Jayne is interested in finding suitable places to sell her bigger pieces, which are more satisfying to make but at the same time more difficult to sell. For instance, the Nottingham Market at the Syson Gallery could meet her need for higher-end fashion products.

In the past she has participated at Catwalk Edit, a fringe event for the London Fashion Week. It was perfectly organised: it encompassed a catwalk and trade show during one day (avoiding the need to stay overnight in London). It was great value for money, but unfortunately it has no longer been repeated, as it may have been not profitable enough for the organisers. Being in Nottingham, Jayne struggles to find such events since most of the trade buyers are in London, and generally it is quite onerous to participate to such trade fairs. Furthermore, not being sponsored by a gallery, makes it difficult to get products exhibited at events, such as Collect by the Crafts Council.

PRODUCTS HARDLY GO OUT OF FASHION Customers tend to keep Jayne’s lace jewellery for long since they are expensive to be regarded as fast fashion; eventually, some people can get bored of wearing them, while ornaments (like the Christmas tree decorations) are surely kept for long time. Since most of the customers buy products from shops, Jayne has not much direct contact with her buyers; however, she has never been notified of any broken item. Not necessarily people buy new items every year, but more often when someone receives a gift, then he/she purchases other pieces to match with the present (e.g. a bracelet and a necklace).

RAISING CUSTOMERS’ AWARENESS I believe that showcasing the beautiful products of Nottingham (especially if local designers and makers joined their efforts to become a stronger critical mass) could contribute to raise customers’ awareness. For example, a well-curated selection and offer of local products – as in the Debbie Bryan shop or Made in Nottingham – could support a valuable idea of a local label.

“the future holds a great promise for a more ethical fashion industry. one that is small and diversified. one populated by emerging designers and artisans, each with their own unique voice and character. it’s far more chic to invest in pieces that tell the stories of every hand that went into the making� sass brown (fashion institute of technology)

FRANCESCO MAZZARELLA PhD researcher at Loughborough Design School Funded by the AHRC Design Star CDT Supervised by V. Mitchell, A.J. May & M.C. Escobar-Tello With the invaluable contribution of all the artisans who kindly offered their time, knowledge and enthusiasm for this research project.

FRANCESCO MAZZARELLA PhD researcher at Loughborough Design School Throughout my doctoral journey at Loughborough Design School, I investigated artisan businesses manufacturing heritage textiles, having a meaningful story to tell. I started focusing on textiles due to its high employment of skilled artisans, wide range of applications, and ever-�increasing consumption trends, causing urgent environmental challenges. Since small businesses cannot compete with mass manufacturers, I decided to narrow down the scope of my research on the stories that artisans convey through their socially and culturally significant processes and products. Looking at the context which surrounded me, I found the story of Nottingham lace very meaningful. Here, all the landscape and architecture are marked by the strong presence of lace factories, but new generations are forgetting this heritage. With this in mind, I conducted contextual interviews aimed to showcase the people who are actively involved in the Nottingham lace supply chain, yet whose voice is hardy ever heard.

This photo-story is part of a storytelling study, conducted in January and February 2016 with selected Nottingham lace artisans. I collaborated with Cluny Lace Co Ltd (the oldest local manufacturer of traditional Nottingham Leavers lace), G.H. Hurt & Son Ltd (a family business producing heritage lacy knitwear like shawls and scarves) and JC Middlebrook (a designer making embroidered lace into jewellery and accessories).

Each artisan gave me a guided tour of the factory, while explaining the current work and related

routines. The aim of the first meeting was to understand what being a Nottingham lace artisan means for them nowadays. The second meeting aimed to aid the artisans in making sense of what a sustainable future may look like for their businesses and identify the challenges and opportunities for a transition towards sustainability. Throughout this study, I have captured the artisans’ intangible stories and made them tangible in the form of photostories, using a diary-like text and photographs taken in the factories while documenting their practices. This collection of photo-stories was then shared with other local stakeholders in the second part of this participatory design research. After this series of individual interviews, a co-creation workshop was organised as a platform to codesign strategies and services for Nottingham lace artisans to achieve a sustainable future. In order to avoid that future generations of designers, artisans and customers forget their local material culture, this storytelling study intends to show that there is still enthusiasm around Nottingham lace and this is a great opportunity for designers to activate meaningful social innovations within this context.