"ideal for anyone with a passion for vintage costume or antique textiles, who wishes to explore ways to explore, research and create..."
Hannah Lamb
Historical Textile Stories
2 days: 19th-20th August 2027 Fee: £275.00
During this two-day class, students will be introduced to slow approaches to looking; studying items of historical textiles as the inspiration for new textile responses in stitch. During day one we will explore techniques of slow looking, drawing and mark making with hand-stitch. Day two will focus on storytelling, translating narrative through stitched text. By the end of the course participants will have either a series of samples or an art piece well on the way to completion.
Students are encouraged to bring their own sewing kit and an item/s of historical textiles they would like to study during the class. A kit of all essential course materials will be provided to purchase from the tutor. A list of additional / optional items to bring will be provided.
For those interested in developing a more in-depth body of creative work, this course can be booked with Blueprints from Historical Textiles Whilst there is some overlap, there is scope to expand and deepen your enquiry with further guidance from the tutor and/or self-guided work.
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ABOUT HANNAH
Hannah Lamb is a textile artist, lecturer and author based in Bingley, West Yorkshire. Working across stitch, print and fabric manipulation, she creates textile works ranging from intimate objects to large-scale installations. Her practice is centred on an ongoing dialogue with cloth, examining its ability to carry traces of care, labour and lived experience with sensitivity. Drawing on archives, textile heritage and site-responsive research, she investigates the relationships between material, memory and place.
Notable commissions and collaborations include Lasting Impressions (2016 and 2017) with Claire Wellesley-Smith at Salts Mill, Fragment of a Dress for the Brontë Parsonage Museum (2022), and A Cloth for The Lost Mills (2024), created with Hannah Robson for 509 Arts. She is particularly interested in working within historic buildings and post-industrial environments, where the character and histories of a site become an active layer in the work. Hannah has exhibited widely, including The British Textile Biennial, Midland Arts Centre (MAC) and The Crafts Study Centre, and is a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists.
Alongside her artistic practice, Hannah is an educator, lecturer and author. She leads the FdA and BA Textiles Practice programmes at Bradford School of Art and regularly delivers lectures, workshops and masterclasses for museums, universities and arts organisations, including Gawthorpe Hall, FibreArts Australia, Harewood House, De Montfort University, The Textile Study Group and the 62 Group. Her current work continues to investigate the cultural histories embedded within cloth through collaborative and site-responsive projects.
Hannah is the author of Poetic Cloth: Creating Meaning in Textile Art (2019) and Unfolding Cloth: Inspiration from Historical Textiles (2025), both published by Batsford.