A Passion For Pattern: Macclesfield’s Silk Museum celebrates 200 years of textile printing

Collating its singularly enormous inventory of textiles, pattern books and various fabric-printing objects for the first time, the Silk Museum’s new exhibition ‘A Passion For Pattern’ provides unrivalled insight into the fascinating historic processes of textile design while celebrating 200 years of operations at Langley Printworks, once home to one of the largest silk-printing business in the world.

With a vast display of printing blocks, silk handkerchiefs, photography and many other captivating items from the museum’s Langley collection, the exhibition presents a vivid account of the methods, machinery and tools used to create the silk and print the fabric, focusing on designs from the 1940s and 1950s. Alongside the industrial history, ‘A Passion For Pattern’ aims to illuminate the long-forgotten human stories of Langley workers, with stirring photographs capturing the people whose creations had a ‘global impact’ and were frequently produced for fashion houses like Liberty of London, according to curator Bryony Renshaw.

Forming part of the exhibition, the Silk Museum showcases the incredible work of neurodivergent young people from Pinc College, a specialist college based in Macclesfield. Drawing inspiration from the museum’s pattern books and using paisley as a starting point, the students created unique designs, carved the blocks and then printed onto silk, with the fabrics now on full display.

‘A Passion for Pattern’ is entirely free and opened on 2 July. Alongside the exhibition, the museum runs print family workshops every Thursday of the school holidays, which costs just £5.50 per child. For more info, check out the Silk Museum website.