The Millfield Lady Drapers
January 13th and our first meeting of 2022. The meeting, now back in St Marks church hall, was well attended for such a dark damp evening. Several new members were welcomed. The topic for the evening was entitled ‘Stitched Memories: The Lady Drapers of Millfield’ Presented by Peter Wazak and Tilly Rose.
Peter, a member of the History Society was a librarian, is a historian and author. The evenings topic was about the recently discovered archival history of two generations of the women of his family. Women who in the first part of the twentieth century were running their own Drapery business in a number of premises along Lincoln Road and in Millfield. Peter gave us a visual presentation of the timeline, the history and his thoughts of these women from his family. Women, who between the 1890s and the 1950s. a time when women were expected to be homemakers, had established and run their own successful drapery business in Millfield, independent of male influence,
Tilly Rose is a creative mixed-media textile artist and an author, who knows the Millfield area well and was commissioned by Peterborough Presents for the Millfield Link project to create a textile piece of visual artwork depicting the lives and times of these Ladies and their work. Tilly had meetings with Peter and access to Peters families archives to be able to design and create her stitched multi-media textile timeline of the Ladies history. She had brought the artwork with her and explained her thoughts and the process of creating the piece of art inspired by the lives of real people.
The fascinating presentation of this forgotten history provoked recollections of one of the Drapery shops during the 1950s by some of the audience and the mixed media stitched artwork was much admired by many of the members who had an interest in needlework. Thank you Peter and Tilly for such an inspiring presentation.
