The Secret Codes Of Textiles

We’re doing our first joint presentation.

It’s to help out a local textile arts museum, which (like everywhere) is working out how to best do public outreach at this time of closures and distancing. And it has allowed me to research something I have long been fascinated by – codes in textiles.

There are literal codes to make textiles, and then there are secret ones – spy stuff. My home town of Manchester, England was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. They used Jacquard looms to weave – which used punch cards to program weaving patterns, a century before computers used the same kinds of cards for data. Is it a coincidence that the first stored-program computer is also from Manchester? It’s an intriguing historical thread.

Then there is the cloak-and-dagger stuff, of secret messages hidden in knitted patterns that might have affected the outcome of a war, and other spy stories.

But of most intrigue to me in the research was another category – codes and meanings in textiles hidden in plain sight. You only have to know the insider “language” to know what someone means when they wear a particular garment, or use a particular pattern. The subject is much more compelling than I ever imagined.

I hope you’ll join us when we share all this online.