By SDC member Adam Pursell
Held at SDC’s Perkin House Head Office in Bradford, Dr Mike Bartle gave the third lecture under the ‘Mike Crabtree Memorial’ banner. It’s maybe worth noting, that SDC’s North of England regional committee made the decision that the Mike Crabtree lecture was to be one that focused on historical events.
With a history going back almost 80 years, a mix of traditional skills, advanced manufacturing technology and the latest materials, Knightsbridge Furniture in Bradford employs over 100 people, with some going back several generations.
Staff at SDC were pleased to be invited recently to visit Knightsbridge, one of the UK’s foremost designers and manufacturers of contract furniture. They are based in an old building on Thornton Road in Bradford, just a five minute walk from SDC’s Perkin House head office. The visit was organised by Bradford Textile Society and included a tour of every stage of the production process from the stacks of newly arrived timber through to the showroom of finished products.
SDC and Bulmer and Lumb worked closely with Sunny Bank Mills recently on providing an experience to people attending their heritage days. Artefacts were supplied from the SDC archive along with fibre and yarn from the last working dyehouse in Bradford to educate about the history as well as the future of textiles in Yorkshire.