McBurney and Black

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Cloth Cultures Podcast with Amber Butchart

As part of the British Textile Biennial 2021 fashion historian Amber Butchart has curated the Cloth Cultures exhibition and associated podcast in which she explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. 

Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. 

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I am delighted to have taken part in Episode 3, the first of 2 'Linen' episodes. 

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To listen to this fascinating series of podcasts click on the link below:

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https://play.acast.com/s/cloth-cultures-with-amber-butchart/ep-3-linen-1

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"A Life in Linen" - In Conversation with Irvine Devitt

I was recently asked to conduct an interview for the Belfast Community tv station NVTV. I had the opportunity to meet and chat to Irvine Devitt, a former director of William Ewart & Sons Ltd, at one time the foremost linen producer in Northern Ireland.

After studying French and German at Queen's University Belfast, Irvine joined the company as a clerical assistant in the sales department. In our conversation he describes how he was quickly thrown into the deep end of the sales industry experiencing a life of travelling the world in the 1950s and 60s.

Here is a link to the programme:

https://www.nvtv.co.uk/shows/a-life-in-linen-in-conversation-with-irvine-devitt/

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