In the textile gallery

This poem was written in the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) where there is a display on Dr Schunk and other eminent Victorian dye chemists. Good stuff. The poem was first published in Iota.

Before you read it, or after - go and sign the petition to save the museum here http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/science-museum-group-save-the-museum-of-science-and-industry-mosi

In the textile gallery


Some of the substances contained in lichen
make bright dye; brush past a lily’s stamen
and your shirt is streaked with red and orange
showing against nap or strong pattern.

In Schunk’s laboratory, flowers grew on desks,
grasses twisted in the many-drawered chests
and, one corner set aside, the place for cotton.
Each strand dropped in a vial specked with forgotten
leaves, stalks, shellfish, reeds and rock
that he hauled back into a finely written log.

Colours the clothmen fought to use in their design
resplendent in granny’s cover for chaise longue
and pelmet. Fabrics that still give me a pang
stretched in ranks of glass case and machine.

  © Bridget Khursheed

MOSI and the thistledown coat

Paid a return visit to the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) while in Manchester doing geeky stuff last week. Hung out in the textile gallery of which more above. This museum is a must for poets with a techie interest.

Example 1: the thistledown coat (detail)

How was it made? How could it be made? And here is a little bit of Shakespeare in the middle of the machine floor. And I am sure that is how it was in the beautiful minds who worked there...not all  misery but also power. The treadle bending to the imagination.

More about MOSI here http://www.mosi.org.uk/ (full details of a seismic sound installation on the 30th June next week too).

And how it is under threat - how can this be? - here http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/save-museum-science-industry-mosi-4051169

Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!