batting to and fro
I have become very interested in the trade of textiles and the idea of textiles as currency travelling all over the world. This brings me back to the tennisball cloth again .. cloth made in Stroud and travelling to China /East to be made into tennis balls and then batted back again to Britain …………………………. batting to and fro
batting to and fro …………………………………………………..
The following extract is from the Stroud Journal, published in 1868. It was further reproduced in the booklet ‘The Stroudwater Riots of 1825′ by John Loosely and published by the Stroud Museum Association in 1993. In the extract, the author remembers life for his grandfather around the time of the riots:
‘In my grandfather’s time the cloth weavers had their looms and did their work at their houses. The broad cloth loom was worked by two persons and this way of working the broad loom had always been adopted, I should say, from the first time that weavers began to weave broad woollen cloth. This double handed weaving as it was called, often brought on disputes between the parties who had to work at the looms, for when one person was absent the other was obliged to remain idle, but by and by there was a very simple plan adopted, by which one person could work the broad loom much better than two persons could before. Though simple, it was an excellent discovery for before it was adopted the weavers stood at each side of the loom. The shuttle was thrown across the loom by the weaver at the right hand side and caught in the left hand by the other weaver; so the shuttle in that old fashioned way was continuously thrown from one person to the other.’ ………………………………………………………………………..
red museum object : chinese/mongolian dolls 
January 19th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
the combination of the back and forth of the tennis ball and the working of the loom made me think of playing swing ball and the tangle it gets into!
January 20th, 2010 at 10:57 am
what a great idea ! i now have embroidered tennis balls attached to swingball travelling through my creative brain … participants can bat ‘history’ about !
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:25 pm
“An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance.
The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.” -Chinese proverb
Saw this proverb on the opening page of the Red Thread Project which you may have already heard of :
http://www.theredthreadproject.com/welcome.html
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January 22nd, 2010 at 01:32 pm
<p><p>thanks for this Hilary ..i have been looking at the website and the artist Louises work ..<br /><br /><br />
http://www.lbostudio.com/gallery/knocked-out.html
and this
http://www.lbostudio.com/attach/index.html
January 26th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Something that occurs to me as intriguing is the importance of helixes, eg the blades of the cross-cutting machine only work because they spiral (an early 19c invention); if straight the nap would just be flattened, not cropped. The same mathematics (but doubled!) gives the crucial form for the tennis ball - I always find it amazing that two identical flat pieces of fabric can make a sphere
February 24th, 2010 at 02:55 pm
threads weave to make fabric in the first place, and then to decorate (embroidery) or to repair (patching), or attach two pieces in making a garment requires thread. i wonder about the possibility of trying to stitch an unlikely material, sort of in the same way you had the red tennis balls?
the social impact of requiring two people to work the loom is an interesting analogy on life itself, the challenge of living and working together. it mirrors the sport of tennis where you can’t play on your own, which also works well with the idea of trade where there has to be more than one party for that to happen . . . so, as you put it, the batting back and forth