Scenery in Silk... Cryséde.

I always find it difficult to associate quaint, picturesque Cornish fishing villages today with the hardships of the past, when life was frequently mired in poverty and existence was largely determined by the ills linked to that. Nevertheless, when wandering around the back streets of Newlyn and Mousehole, you can just about imagine how far the fishing industry once defined the community on every level before fishing quotas, unemployment, tourism and Air BnB redefined it for 21st century purposes. However the old netting lofts and modest fishermen’s dwellings that had once housed families are now bijou properties that have outpriced the housing market. While the whole property game may now stink of filthy lucre, the acrid smell of fish no longer lingers. The fact that some derelict fishermen’s cottages in Sambo’s Row in Newlyn had been repurposed a century ago to accommodate a silk clothing trade of international acclaim was a little harder to get my head around!

Apart from a display cabinet in Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance, there is seemingly no trace in Newlyn of the company in question today; Cryséde. How strange that for all its vibrant colours and modern designs and patterns, Cryséde should have fallen into the shadows of oblivion. And yet in the interwar era, it was considered to be an avant-garde force in silk clothing manufacturing, not to mention being a key employer in an era of high unemployment. The clothes on display at Penlee House are curiously timeless, with their striking fabric motifs and bold colours which would not be that out of place today.

The choice of Newlyn as the production site for Cryséde was the result of the crossing of paths between the founder, Alec (George) Walker, and his future wife, Kathleen ‘Kay’ Earle. Walker was a Yorkshire man who had inherited a silk mill in 1912 and went on to set up the company Vigil Silks, with a shop in London in Sloane Street. Kay’s application for a job advertisement for a Vigil poster designer led to the encounter with Walker. As a former student of the Newlyn School of Art (under Stanhope Alexander Forbes), she was familiar with the growing art movements in Cornwall and in turn introduced these to Walker, in addition to the village of Newlyn itself. The war years saw Walker exempt from war service since his position as textile manufacturer producing fabric for army uniforms rendered him indispensable in civvy street. In 1919, Walker opted for a Cornish base for his new silk factory – Cryséde – the name supposedly being a literary reference to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

The company established itself and Walker fully mastered the techniques of preparing the wood blocks for his silk designs, dyeing and printing the fabric which was ordered from Yorkshire. Locals from Newlyn and beyond were taken on and given training in dress-making and while the clothes produced would have been rather too expensive for many of the women living there, Cryséde grew in popularity. Other lines of clothing and accessories were introduced to considerable success, with scarves, ties and handkerchiefs in a more affordable price range whilst the company’s fabrics were also sold by the yard. Alec Walker designed many of the items himself, with his style evolving dramatically in the post-war years due to the influence of the Modernist art movement. A seminal trip to Paris in 1923 and an encounter with the artist Raoul Dufy led to further change, with Walker encouraged to find inspiration for his fabric prints in the landscape sketches he had made of the Cornish scenery around him. The energy and bold colours of modern art were thus employed in printed textile designs representing local sites such as Ding Dong Mine and Zennor Woods and patterns were likewise named to honour the local areas; Mount’s Bay, Isles of Scilly, Cornish Farm. Walker’s wife Kay also created dresses inspired by Alec’s watercolours.

Cryséde opened three stores in Cornwall in relatively short succession; namely in Market Jew Street in Penzance, St Ives High Street and Church Street in Falmouth and a little later set up shop in Quiet Street, Bath. In addition to that, by 1923 sales were bolstered by a substantial international clientele – in Paris, the USA and Australia for example - that relied on mail-order for purchase. Cryséde’s visibility was enhanced by the work of the stage costume designer, Dolly Tree, whose creations showcased the silk internationally in the early 1920— before she left for the US and a job working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer! Around the mid 1920s, Tom Heron joined Cryséde as commercial manager, since T.M Heron & Company had had ties with the initial Walker family business, Vigil Silks, as the main buyers of their silk.

In addition, to meet demand, the company subsequently expanded its production by moving to St Ives on the other coast of the Cornish peninsula in the mid-1920s. The new premises occupied the converted fish-processing buildings of the Old Western Pilchard Company, set at the bottom of The Island, near to St Ives harbour. At this location - referred to as the Islands Works site – the former fish processing tanks were used for dyeing fabric – presumably exchanging one foul-smell for another. To maintain the same quality of production, the original Newlyn work force was transported from Newlyn to St Ives each day by bus, and Cryséde also ran a tidy side-line in short trips around the region in order to profit from these buses that would have otherwise sat idle and unproductive until the end of the workers’ shift. At this time too, the London fashion designer George Criscuolo also came to work for Cryséde in St Ives, thus consolidating the company’s name not just with regard to textiles but for clothing style too.

By 1928, Walker’s textile designs were not reserved solely for use on silks but also for heavy linen, which was far better adapted for the beach and leisure wear that was in demand. Unfortunately, the pressures of commercial success and the drive for ever-greater expansion of the company started to take a toll on Alec Walker who was at the heart of Cryséde’s artistic design. Clashes broke out between Walker and Heron since they did not share the same vision for the company, with the latter being the far more ambitious of the two men. As a result, Heron left Cryséde in 1929, in order to set up his own company – Cresta Silks Ltd. Rather like Cryséde, little trace remains today of Cresta Silks although there is a rather nice door entrance mosaic bearing the company’s name in a building in Penzance. As Cryséde became a limited company with a board of directors, Walker lost much of his say in the running of the firm and the decisions taken. Furthermore, he and his wife Kay separated and in 1929 he suffered a nervous breakdown. In spite of a brief return to the company, Walker retired in 1933. Cryséde struggled with a series of financial difficulties in the following years and with war looming in 1939, it finally folded.

Meanwhile, Tom Heron’s Cresta Silks appears to have gone from strength to strength. Having made the shrewd decision to move the company to Welwyn Garden City due to its progressive image and enterprising forward-thinking design, he continued to use his business acumen to further Cresta’s success and renown. Apparently, one of the climbers during the 1939 ascent of Mount Everest wore Cresta pyjamas under his climbing gear! When silk was reserved for the manufacture of parachutes in the WWII, Cresta turned to wool for its base material. During the war years, Heron was on the Board of Trade as 'Advisor on Women's and Children's Clothing' and it was he who set up the Utility Clothing Scheme for the war-torn Britain.

Looking at the garments and accessories in the Penlee House Museum made me wonder how so much can be lost and left behind with the passing of time if we do not take care to preserve this heritage. The dynamism and sophistication embodied by the Cryséde dresses seem to have been cast off over the last few decades in favour of the ubitiquous black leggings and other varied items of sportwear that do not seem to reflect very much at all. And I will not even get started on trainers for footwear! l

The Sky in the Puddles...

Having witnessed truly shabby behavioir in public recently, I came to the conclusion that we appear to have largely lost our social skills and hitherto ability to get on with the others in a civil manner, whoever 'they' were. These days, an imperceptible static charge seems to be present in the air, making each individual edgy and trigger-happy, prompt to interpret any error or act of clumsiness or ignorance as a willful, heinous affront to which the 'victim' must respond with outrage and indignation proportional to the wrong visited upon them. Simultaneously, many of the social norms and niceties that kept the social machine ticking along are being stripped away, sloughed off as pointless and inappropriate. Observing social interactions where the basics such as a simple hello or goodbye have become redundant both shocks and saddens me, not to mention the loss of the staple British 'sorry' that was used in so many circumstances yet not necessarily as admittance of fault!

I always considered the dusty old expression 'minding your Ps and Qs (was that for one's 'pleases' and 'thank yous'? to be stuffy and meaningless, but I instinctively understand its significance today. Far worse still, is that nobody seems to remark on this lamentable state of affairs, so engrossed are they in being offended or hurt and signalling this to some kangaroo court. Is life lived through a screen to blame for this erosion, along with the myriad of social networks that are as divisive as they are unifying? I don't know since everything has become so contradictory and complex - I cannot differentiate reality from illusion, right from wrong, or tell to which degree the one is the reflection of the other. That is why I prefer finding a certain solace in Nature... The blue sky mirrored in the water below; no questions, just pleasure. Tangles and snags in the natural world are simply intriguing, not cause for some histrionic, overly-emotive reaction. Yet in society today, any complexity or grey area is no longer deemed acceptable in a world where you need to choose your camp and duly show your colours.

In this polarised environment, silence is violence and words are taken to be weapons in a war where it is not enough to agree to disagree but rather to defeat the other party whilst portraying yourself as both victor and victim. Everything today seems to focus on self, which in turn is largely dependant on how others perceive us, with the selfie now being so central to image and perception that we find it normal to pout and preen to some screen or other, finding some aspect of live to use as content. Personas are now 'curated' yet never have people so lacked originality and depth as they frequently do today - even language is peppered with the same old clichéd words and expressions which endeavour to give meaning and relevance to what is devoid of both.

Winter Bleakness...

Arriving in Birmingham this time, I was struck by the desolate state of the streets and the inhabitants, just off the shiny, brash and busy central shopping area. As always, the Brummie warmth shone through the cold, bland backcloth, where the dilapidated or derilect 19th century architecture still testifies to an era when the city was truly 'the workshop of the world' with 1000 trades. Today, the service sector has largely taken over where manufacturing became redundant, shopping and consumerism of all kinds now form the beating heart to a city where the machinery grinded to a halt, falling silent and inert. In this strange metamorphosis - this march towards an uncertain future - countless individuals have been sloughed off, discarded in the process, left by the wayside, unable to follow the social sea change wrought by mass de-industrialisation.

Entering the old Bull Ring indoor market through a side entrance, I was overwhelmed by the acrid smell of urine and the sight of people down-and-out, huddled together in the shelter afforded by the outdated building which is itself set for demolition in 2027. As I left the shell of this relic from my childhood, bracing myself against the chill, I was just able to make out the haunting notes of some beautiful music coming from street performers by St Martin's church. The incredible difference between the loveliness of this timeless hymn and the harshness of modern reality paid out before me made me catch my breath whilst the beauty of the music actually made me cry. However, when I thought of the words of this poem written by Christina Rossetti in 1872, it all seemed somewhat appropriate...

In the bleak mid-winter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.

To bolster myself up against ugly modernity, I decided to look at the church of St Martin, and gaze at its magnificent door with its intricate pomegranate brass fittings. To my dismay, I noticed that the central door knob had been stolen!

The Last Chrysanthemum

I always think that the French custom to mark Toussaint (All Saints’ Day) with chrysanthemums is rather bittersweet, as the flower seems intrinsically linked to a sense of loss, and the sadness which accompanies that. The beautiful autumnal colours of its blooms are likewise tinted, or tainted perhaps, with this same wistful essence, so much so that for many, the flowers have become somewhat mournful or morbid even, by association.

Certainly the chrysanthemum in its varied shapes and forms is sold widely across the country in the weeks leading up the end of October, to the point that the sight of all the flowers en masse leads to a fatigue which means that we fail to see the beauty inherent in each. And yet these beautiful, majestic flowers are works of art in themselves, and even more striking since they are one of the rare plants that bloom as autumn gradually prepares for winter.

The almost regal elegance and the purity of its understated beauty are surely the reasons why the chrysanthemum became an integral part of the cultural heritage of many Asian countries. Initially cultivated in China more than 3,000 years ago, it there took its place as one of the four symbolic plants; the Four Noble Ones (along with plum blossom, the orchid and bamboo). It is the national flower of China and is celebrated on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month – the Double Ninth Festival. Representing longevity and the ‘virtue to withstand all adversities’, and presumably offering this to those who partake of its health-giving properties through chrysanthemum wine and edible petals, the autumnal ‘flower of the ninth moon’ is valued for its medicinal benefits.

Despite that, the white or yellow flowers are frequently taken as a symbol of death and mourning in China and other Asian countries, much as the chrysanthemum in general is linked to such imagery in France. During the Heian period (794–1185), the ornamental chrysanthemum spread from China to Japan via Korea and the end of the 17th century saw Dutch merchants introducing the flower to Europe, and the rest is history, as they say!

In Japan, the chrysanthemum has been the emblem of the imperial family since the 12th century with the emperor’s crest symbolized by the 16-petalled flower whilst the flower motive adorns Japanese passports today. In Western culture, the flower marks the autumn equinox, a time of harvest and the fading of light and life itself. As one of the ‘short day’ plants, the chrysanthemum blooms when the number of hours of daylight are reduced, following the laws of photoperiodism as opposed to a direct sensitivity to temperature and sunlight. Not only does this apparently enable the plant to benefit from the unmitigated attentions of pollinators that are no longer distracted by ‘competition’ – the other nectar-providing flowers - but also allows it to use stored energy to maximise flower and seed production rather than a continued leaf growth.

Surely it was the mystery of such laws that led Thomas Hardy to write his poem The Last Chrysanthemum in awe and wonder at the functions of Nature that roll on, regardless of our human presence or intervention, controlled by a divine force – be that God (‘the Great Face behind’), natural forces or fate?

- The Last Chrysanthemum - Why should this flower delay so long.... To show its tremulous plumes? Now is the time of plaintive robin-song.... When flowers are in their tombs. Through the slow summer, when the sun.... Called to each frond and whorl.... That all he could for flowers was being done, Why did it not uncurl? It must have felt that fervid call.... Although it took no heed.... Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall.... And saps all retrocede. Too late its beauty, lonely thing.... The season's shine is spent.... Nothing remains for it but shivering.... In tempests turbulent. Had it a reason for delay.... Dreaming in witlessness.... That for a bloom so delicately gay.... Winter would stay its stress? - I talk as if the thing were born.... With sense to work its mind; Yet it is but one mask of many worn By the Great Face behind.