Behind the Scenes at Beckford Silk

Beckford Silk is one of the original ‘factory shops’ where visitors can come and watch the printing and get an insight into how our scarves and ties are printed and made.

We have two half hour tours a day, at 11.30am and 2.30pm Monday to Friday for individuals up to a maximum of 10. We also offer a talk and tour for larger booked parties by prior appointment. If you are coming along for one of the daily tours then it is worth phoning in advance to make sure it’s going ahead as party bookings will take precedence.

This morning’s tour was taken by one of our printers, Rob. He met the group in the shop at 11.30 and took them upstairs to where we do the printing.

He explained the colour separation and screen making before carrying on with the print that he was working on which was for an order of dress fabric.

Rob explains the printing

Once he had finished the print he took the group downstairs and through to the steam room to explain the steaming and fixing of the colour into the cloth.

Steaming and fixing the colour

They then went through to the main workshop which houses the dye winches and colour kitchen. James was in there making up a batch of dye for Rob’s next print.

James at work in the dye kitchen

Finally Rob took the group through to the Stenter Room. The Stenter is the large machine that we use to dry and finish the cloth once all the other processes have been completed.

Rob explains how the Stenter works

The daily tours normally run Monday to Friday and we charge £3 per adult (children under 15 are free). However this is then redeemable against a purchase in the main shop (not the Silk Store).

If you are interested in booking a larger group tour then do give us a call on 01386 881507 and ask for Anne.

Designing a scarf

So how do we go about designing a silk scarf?



Victoria working on designs



Well in the first instance we discuss with our customer what sort of scarf they have in mind – do they want a traditional silk square, a large square, perhaps a long scarf, or a small neckerchief? What sort of fabric have they got in mind? Light and floaty like georgette or chiffon, soft and luxurious like crepe-de-chine or satin, or rich and opulent like velvet?

Once we’ve decided on the format we begin to look at the source material. This is often in the form of digital photographs of objects or perhaps artefacts or paintings from a museum collection.

In the case of the velvet scarf that we produced for The Art Fund, the source material was a beautiful piece of furniture inlaid with semi precious stones, a technique known as pietra dura. From the photograph we enlarged the details and then hand drew the individual elements. We then scanned these drawings and tracings into Photoshop and manipulated them to create the finished design.



Design board for The Art Fund velvet scarf



The reason we do this is because the marks that a human being makes are often irregular and the brain picks this up. By using hand drawings from the start we retain this human element through to the finished design.

Hand drawing of designs

The Art Fund velvet scarf



Close up of The Art Fund velvet scarf



The scarf and tie design for Morgan Motor Company was a challenge. All they could send us were photographs of cars, bits of cars – and of course their logo! For this one we played around with filters in Photoshop to reduce the images to line drawings before producing hand drawings that we used for the final design.

Design board for Morgan Centenary scarf and tie

And here is the finished design, a simple two screen print on satin for the scarf, and silk twill for the tie.



Morgan Motor Co. silk scarf and tie



Our piece of Public Art

I was driving to work this morning and caught a piece on Radio 4 about public art in the UK. It got me thinking about our own piece of public art here in the courtyard at Beckford Silk and thought you might be interested in hearing more about it.

Sculpture at Beckford Silk by John Poole 1990

The statue that sits on a Cotswold stone plinth in the centre of the courtyard space created by our building is the representation of a skein of silk created for us by the sculptor John Poole (1926 – 2009).

His obituary in The Independent describes him thus;

"Anthony John Poole was one of the most distinguished and versatile British architectural sculptors, letter-cutters and restorers during the last half-century. His base was the Midlands, which has many of his sculptures, but his fine and often monumental works are to be found much further afield…. Poole was one of the last sculptor-craftsmen upholding the values of traditional practice and technique"

My father had started a tradition that when opening a new venture he would commission a work of art. For the opening of The Falconry Restaurant in Evesham he had commissioned a bronze statue of a falcon from artist Walenty Pytel. For The Wheatsheaf Restaurant in Tewkesbury local artist Bryant Fedden was commissioned to design and engrave glass panels for the entrance that depict the battle of Tewkesbury during the War of the Roses (this can still be seen in the building that is now a book shop). So as he was working on the design of the ‘new’ Beckford Silk building, he was already starting to envisage some sort of sculpture.

The contact with John Poole came via the boyfriend of one of our employees at the time and in 1989 James commissioned John to design and carve a statue that was to be inspired by a skein of silk.

The stone came from Hopton Wood Quarry in Derbyshire and started as a two tonne block. John worked on it in his studio in Bishampton Worcestershire but the piece also travelled to an art festival at Water Perry Gardens near Oxford where John was demonstrating. James remembers going to see him at work there. John completed the sculpture back at his studio and the finished piece was installed at Beckford Silk ready for the grand opening of the building in August 1990.

The finished sculpture is approximately 1.5m x 0.9m (5ft x 3ft) and weighs about one tonne. It is our own small contribution to ‘public art in the UK’.

Close up of sculpture A Skeine of Silk by John Poole

A Skeine of Silk by John Poole

Our first big commercial order

 As James developed his printing skills he started to get small orders for bespoke silk scarves from local shops, hotels and golf clubs. His first big commercial order however came in 1978 and was to a large extent thanks to his wife’s personality and home cooking.

Mother was managing the Wheatsheaf restaurant in Tewkesbury at the time and through her hard work, excellent food and extrovert personality had built up a good regular clientele. James had by now converted the skittle alley at the rear of her restaurant into a print room and mother was in the habit of occasionally inviting some of her regulars back to see him at work. One of these honoured diners, a lady called Ruth Segar, happened to work at the local headquarters of The National Trust and having recently commissioned a scarf design for The Trust, suggested that James might print it for them.

The National Trust was at the forefront of what we now call ‘Heritage Retailing’. They, along with institutions such as The Royal Academy of Arts and The National Gallery in London, were starting to develop the whole idea of museum shops and the development of ranges of gift products inspired by their collections.

Ruth arranged for the scarf designer Pat Albeck to come down from London to discuss the project and so James and Marthe suggested that the meeting should be held over lunch in their own kitchen at home. Mother put on a wonderful spread, several glasses of wine were consumed and the meeting apparently went very well indeed!

Over the years many museum and gallery buyers, designers and artists were invited down from London to discuss business, always over a home cooked lunch around the kitchen table at Beckford. It seems that word of their hospitality spread around the museum community and invitations were always eagerly accepted!

That first ‘landscape’ scarf design was the start of a long association with both Pat Albeck and The National Trust and set us on the path of printing and later designing for many prestigious museums and institutions. It is of particular significance to us therefore that it is this design that features on page 78 of Albrechtsen & Solanke’s SCARVES (published by Thames & Hudson) and described as “the definitive work on scarves in the 20th century…”



Pat Albeck's Landscape design for The National Trust



New Digital Printer Arrives

Yesterday was quite a momentus day for us all at Beckford Silk. It saw the arrival of our new digital textile printing machine.

We have always printed silk using screens, one for each colour in the design. This new machine will enable us, when appropriate, to print directly from a computer onto specially coated silk. This print method is suited particularly to multi-coloured and photographic type designs.

This T5 textile belt machine finally arrived by ship from Hong Kong a couple of days ago and by 2pm yesterday was being unloaded at Beckford.

We start to unpack the crate and then try and work out which way round it is!

Steve our builder has already taken down a couple of internal walls, removed two double doors and had to cut into the brick work so that we can get the machine in.

The machine weighs about 900kg so it takes a few of the guys to start manoeuvring it into the building

After quite a struggle they get it into the building

And there it is! It's taken three hours to get it into place but the new technology HAS LANDED!!

Now it's down to my brother Robbie to get it to work!

Our first shop

Having set up his workshop at the bottom of the garden, James spent a lot of his spare time experimenting with silk printing. He produced some designs, hand colour separated them, made up his own wooden framed hand stretched screens and had a go.

Silk has always been a luxury fabric and doesn’t come cheap. My mother is the keeper of the privy purse in our family and she began to get concerned about the amount of money that was sitting around in the form of Dad’s ‘experiments’! She had a chest of draws in the sitting room that was getting more and more full with printed silk and she finally decided to do something about it. She got James to set her up with a trestle table where she could display her wares, he made her a hand painted sign and attached it to the gate, she opened up the French Windows and ‘hey presto’ her first shop.

This temporary arrangement was very quickly formalised as us kids were chucked out of our play room so that it could be converted and a few years later when the workshop was extended, a smart new shop space was included in the plans. To this day my mother can be found reigning supreme in her shop and there is nothing that makes her happier than the sound of a ringing till!