Stroud International Textiles

 a visit to Milliken’s at Lodgemore Mill

On previous visit I have been given a great tour of the mills by Jane Ford of Stroudwater textile trust. It was a fantastic insight into the  history of  textiles in the area. Only two mills are still in use and I was really interested in having a look at present day production of cloth in Stroud .

Lodgemore Mills is still making cloth, along with its sister Cam Mills near Dursley. Both these mills originate in the Middle Ages and together they are still a leading manufacturer of cloth. Cam weaves the covering for tennis balls - for championships including Wimbledon – and felt for snooker tables while Lodgemore ‘finishes’ the cloth and uses dyes including vivid yellow and traditional green

As Miliken are the only manufacturer of  such specialised quality cloth in Britain   the trades secrets are kept tightly underwrap so I didnt get the chance to take photographs in the mill . We were given a tour of the mill and a guide through the processes of manufacturing the felted wool cloth used in tennis balls and billiard felt. I was amazed at just how traditional the processes of felt making were and just how skilled the workers were at judging the quality of such a  specialised wool cloth.  I spoke with a ‘mender ‘ working there , a lady who spent her days looking closely at the (unfelted) white cloth  checking for faults over a lightbox.  Asking her about her job and strains on her hands/arms working all day at picking the cloth  she said  ‘ we may be on billards but we have tennis elbow ‘

We even got to see the machine they use to test the tennis ball cloth at the end of the process: a machine that bats the balls around to test the durability of the cloth . Each tennis ball is marked with a code representing the fabric lot  then bashed around to see what happens!  click to see a marked ball . Only a few tennis balls are made for testing and the fabric is sold and sent overseas to a variety of places including  CHINA to be made into tennis balls .. made in Stroud and sent to China

I have to say I have become a bit of a tennis ball nerd of late finding out just how they are made. I had no idea they were made from such high quality wool and by such traditional processes . 

If you feel the urge to learn more have a look here : http://www.itftennis.com/technical/equipment/balls/manufacture/cover.asp

http://www.itftennis.com/technical/equipment/balls/history.asp

 ….or you may want to buy your own personalised tennis balls from only Uk tennis ball manufacturer

 experimenting stitching into tennis  ball fabric with red silk

NEWS: Milikens  Mill have been supporting Bournemouth University of the Arts - Fashion & Textile students- who came to Stroud in the summer to collect a van load of ‘rejected’ Stroud woollen cloth from Millikens Mill and have they been embellishing, printing, dyeing the cloth and then designing jackets using the local cloth. They will be exhibiting the final pieces in the May Textile festival in Moonflower shop window. You can see some of work in progress HERE : studentsjacket.jpg

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 06:20 am and is filed under Artist In Residence blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.