How Beckford Silk began

So how did it all start? …. Well back in the early 1970s my father James, a trained chef, had taken over the running of his own fathers business being a number of small restaurants and cafes in the local towns of Tewkesbury and Evesham. He and my mother ran them together and when we were old enough, my brothers and I were drafted in to help with things like washing up and laying tables.

James however was also a keen and accomplished artist with a passion for colour and in his spare time he would often take a walk up Bredon Hill with his oil paints and easel and paint the Cotswold landscape around him.

He had an idea that he wanted to start up a business from home that used colour in some way but at first wasn’t sure what he could do. An original idea was to do hand painted ceramics but he wasn’t convinced that he would be able to compete in the market place with so many others in the area doing a similar thing.

James was in Evesham one day, dashing from one restaurant to another, when he spotted a gentleman walking towards him sporting a very colourful silk tie. It grabbed his attention and it got him thinking!

James started to make some enquiries. He read up about printing silk, got in touch with dye manufacturers and talked to printers in the north of England who were prepared to offer him some consultancy.

He started off experimenting on the kitchen table with hand made screens and his first steamer was a stock pot on the kitchen stove.

Mother however was not impressed with this arrangement and so my father soon set about converting an old building at the bottom of the garden into a workshop. My parents still live at the Old Vicarage in Beckford and this out-building had, in a previous incarnation, housed the vicar’s pony and trap. When they moved in however it was very run down and full of junk. One of their discoveries on clearing it out was a long horse drawn carriage base, which they later learnt had been used to transport coffins! Dad used it as the base of a miniature gypsy caravan that he designed, built and decorated for us to play in.

At this point James was still working full time in the restaurants but devoting as much of his spare time as possible to experimenting with silk printing.

Next time I’ll tell you more about those early years and how he got his business off the ground.