By Peter Coles

Earlier this summer, Suffolk artist Ruth Philo and I met John Sayers, the youthful 89-year-old former director of Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company, at his home in the market town of Sudbury. Founded in 1903, Gainsborough is one of four working silk mills in the town (there were five until 2022) which, together, weave about 95% of Britain’s silk.

John Sayers with a boxwood shuttle used for weaving silk

To the accompaniment of melodic chimes from his grandfather-clock, John told us how he joined Gainsborough as a 15-year-old apprentice, back in the 1950s, even though his father was director of the firm at the time, having taken over from its founder, Reginald Warner. John spent the next seven years learning every aspect of the business under the mentorship of the then foreman, Bill Smith. “He was a strict man,” John recalls. “‘There’s only one way of doing things around this factory,' he used to say, 'and that’s the right way.’”

Having started in the dispatch department – where he was even sent off to see where the brown wrapping-paper and string were made – he spent some years in the office. “I was privileged,” he says, “because the other weavers had never gone beyond weaving.”

“Later, not long after I’d finished my apprenticeship,” he recalls, “I went out to the customers.  We had no sales department. We were small, we didn’t need it. I ended up having a little Morris Traveller car and went everywhere – Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Channel Islands – all over. I also went to Denmark, Holland – and even America. It was fantastic!  I then became sales director.”

By appointment

A moment of pride for Gainsborough – and for John personally – was becoming Royal Warrant Holder as Manufacturers of Furnishing Fabrics, by appointment to HM Queen Elizabeth II. “That opened a lot of doors,” he says. “The Warrant is for the company but it’s awarded to an individual. We had a lot to do, dealing with the royal mews and carriages, for example.  You had to be on standby.”  One major commission for the company was to reproduce historical designs damaged in a fire at Windsor Castle in 1992.

When Princess Margaret visited the factory to discuss one particularly difficult commission, John recalls, there was some embarrassment. “She asked for an ashtray, but  no-one smoked, so we didn’t have one.” Having found a dish to serve the purpose, the princess quipped, “is that the best you can do?”

Equality at work

Red silk thread wound onto the  pirn

When John took over as director, men and women were still separated in the factory, both physically and in terms of their roles. “Looking out to where the looms were,” he says, “the men were on the right-hand side and the ladies on the preparatory side, the left side. The men did the weaving and the ladies the pirn winding and skein winding…  Eventually, I changed that. I saw no earthly reason why the ladies couldn’t do the men’s jobs.”

“We worked on a Saturday morning and on a Friday the pirn-winders had to prepare the shuttles for the weavers when they came in the next day. In the end, the men – you only had a few minutes before the shuttles ran out of yarn – used to go over [to the women's side] and wind the pirns. Then I got the ladies introduced to weaving.  There was quite a strong reaction to that because the men thought it was encroaching on their jobs and they were frightened.”

John demonstrates the shuttle’s perfect balance

The fiddly technique of twisting threads together for the warp.
"I used to love twisting” he says. “It would take about a day and a half to twist 6400 threads together.”

Raising silkworms

Although all the raw silk used for weaving is imported, there was still one part of the business John hadn't experienced first hand – how this precious raw material is created.  Having planted a mulberry tree some years before, John acquired silk moth eggs from master weaver and textile designer, Richard Humphries  – founder and director of one of Sudbury’s other silk mills – hatched them and raised the silkworms on the leaves of his own tree.

Cocoons spun by his own silkworms

“I got a cabinet-maker to make a little cage for my silkworms at the factory and used to rear them in there.  But what a fag it is, getting a matchstick and transferring those silly little worms from leaf to leaf. When you’re raising them indoors the leaves wilt very quickly and you’ve got to get the little baby worms off those leaves quickly and onto some fresh leaves.  But it’s worth it because they grow very fast. They’re a wonder of Mother Nature!  And to watch them when they’re spinning a cocoon – that old figure of eight with their heads. They’re amazing things.”

“I did get some silk – I’ve still got a bag with the cocoons. The poor little worms have perished inside.  There’s nearly a mile of silk in each cocoon – but then you’ve got to double it all up to get the silk.  We didn’t do it at the factory – we didn’t have the machinery for doubling. We use a certain denier for weaving – what they call a 40/44 denier or a 60/66 denier silk". [Ed: the higher the denier number, the thicker the thread].

On mulberries

Unlike in silk-producing countries, most of Britain’s mulberry trees are not grown for their leaves, of course, but for their juicy, purple fruit – long a favourite of John’s. And there is a 300-year-old veteran mulberry tree right in the centre of Sudbury, in the garden of what is now Gainsborough’s House – the childhood home of 18th century painter Thomas Gainsborough. In John’s day though, it was still a private residence, backing on to another historic Sudbury silk mill, Vanners, (which closed in 2022).

The veteran Black mulberry at Gainsborough’s House, with the wall of Vanners silk mill on the right

“I used to play a lot of tennis, in the season,” John recalls. “I knew the owner of Vanners silks. He had a private tennis court and some of us were allowed to play on it. When the mulberries were on the tree [in Gainsborough’s House], we could see them. Then, accidentally-on-purpose, the ball would go over the fence and into the garden where the mulberry tree was.  So, ‘knock-knock’ on the neighbour's door. ‘Can I please retrieve my tennis ball from your garden?’ Of course, it took ages finding the ball – we’d be eating the mulberries!”

© Photos and text Peter Coles, 2024