“The River Calder used to be dyed orange by corduroy factories in Hebden Bridge and purple from carpet factories in Halifax.” Account of the River Calder, early 20th century.

During the 18th and 19th century, the textile industry was subject to constant technological and scientific advances. Dyeing processes used natural pigments and dyes until the late 19th century when coal-tar dyes were discovered by W. H. Perkin. From 1856, synthetic dyes rapidly overtook plant, animal and mineral based dyes in the UK. Only three common natural dyes were derived from plants native to the UK: woad (blue), madder (red) and weld (yellow).

The River Calder, runs 45 miles between Lancashire and West Yorkshire spanning across 14 valleys and wild moorlands. In the later 18th century during the height of the industrial age, industrial garment production began along the river, diverting and harbouring its natural powers, with 65 mills that exploited the river as a resource. Mills extracted water for power and dyeing, returning the water in a more polluted state. In Pollution is Colonialism (2021), Max Liboiron discusses how the concept of assimilative capacity is used to justify pollution. It is often overlooked that bodies of water are living ecosystems, and they are more often viewed as “a sink, a site of storage for water” and as a resource inviting for its limits to be pushed.

This project explores the concept of assimilative capacity in relation to the polluting garment industry in the late 19th to early 20th century along the River Calder. I map the course of the River Calder, researching the locations and scale of dye works that once extracted from and polluted the river. Through natural dyeing and gum arabic printing, I represent the flow of the river’s water and its relationship to the dyes discarded by the textile industry, woven together geographically into a tapestry.