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 for 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 and in spite of a brief return to the company, he 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 population.
Looking at the garments and accessories in the Penlee 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 elegance and sophistication embodied by the Cryséde dresses seem to have been cast off over the last few decades in 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!
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