More images that I made recently at Bradford's Industrial Museum.
These are taken around the machines that processed wool from its original 'straight off the sheep' state, by disentangling it and arranging the fibres more or less parallel, into long slivers of wool. These were then 'combed', which sorted the long fibres (tops) used for making worsted cloth, from the short ones (noils) which couldn't be used for cloth. The machine in the picture below is a 'Noble comb'.
I've taken a fair few photos of waterfalls lately - and these cascades of wool reminded me of waterfalls. The processing needed to show up the fibres is similar to how I deal with processing long exposure shots of water, too.
There's something very therapeutic about the act of combing and disentangling which those photos transmit to me.
ReplyDeleteThe machines look very clean, compared to the wool...I would expect some wooly dust would be around them.
ReplyDeleteThese detail shots do stand out.
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