The Ruby Exhibition was held from Tuesday 17 May to Sunday 9 October 2022 at Bradford Industrial Museum.
For many years, the Guild held exhibitions, each lasting for a couple of weeks, in the Bradford Industrial Museum. However, the Museum changed their requirements, wanting exhibitions to stay in place for a couple of months or more. A relatively small group such as ours could not cope with stewarding/demonstrating for so long a period of time, even if only at weekends, so we were compelled to look for alternative venues.
In 2012, to celebrate our 30th (Pearl) anniversary, we staged a very successful exhibition at Gibson Mill, in the National Trust’s Hardcastle Crags property, near Hebden Bridge. As part of this event, we issued members with the challenge to create an item on the theme of Pearl, offering a small prize to the piece judged to be the best. Ten people entered, creating a remarkably diverse range of beautiful objects
For our 40th anniversary, we decided to do something similar. This time, there was not to be a competition, but the Guild created an incentive to participate, by providing materials to anyone wishing to have a go. Each member could choose to receive 100 g of red-dyed Corriedale wool and 50 g of similarly dyed Bombyx silk, a like quantity of undyed fibre (for the dyers to work their magic on), or similarly dyed yarn, for the weavers. People could add other fibres, yarns or accessories, if they wished.
A total of 38 Ruby items were submitted, not a bad haul from 52 Guild members. As always, there was a remarkable range of pieces; it is extraordinary how inventive people are, given that everyone had essentially the same starting point.
As always, the exhibition’s main purpose was to showcase Guild members’ work; a further 60 items were submitted that were not related to the Challenge.
We hope that we shan’t wait ten years for our next Guild exhibition, but also look forward to seeing people’s Gold efforts in 2032!
The Entries
Click on the images to see more information about each object that was in our exhibition at the Bradford Industrial Museum in 2022.