From Britain with Love

My family have been weaving cotton fabrics for six generations at our mill in Burnley in Lancashire and we are now the last working mill in a town that was once the global centre of cotton weaving. I trained as a press photographer but was soon drawn back to weaving – it must be in the blood – and have been working in the family business for 25 years.

I met Ian Mankin 20 years ago when we started to weave furnishing fabrics for him. Over the years the co-operation between the businesses increased to such an extent that we were weaving nearly his whole range and were closely involved in the creative process. When Ian retired in 2007 it was a natural step for me to take over the reins. We've now combined our two businesses and can take our ideas all the way from the drawing board, though dyeing and weaving, to the high street.

We have a shop and showroom in Fulham, London and our own weaving mill in Burnley, Lancashire.

We have one of the most modern and versatile weaving operations in the country allowing us to produce small quantities of our own, and our customers’, designs. The skills of our workforce have been developed over generations and passed down. Some of the family members of our current workforce used to work for my father and grandfather.

Our most simple designs are consistently the most popular. Our range is all about timeless classic simplicity and elegance. Ian Mankin is renowned for tickings - basic striped fabrics traditionally used to cover mattresses - which also work wonderfully as understated furnishing fabrics.
We've increased our collection of linen and upholstery fabrics over the last few years, which have been very well received and have won several awards in national interior magazines.

More recently we have created a range of products using our fabrics including a kitchen textiles range, cushions, door stops, draught excluders and even Christmas stockings, which have been very popular with our customers.

It's wonderful to be able to bring ideas to fruition. To see a yarn and to think of what kind of fabric it could be transformed into and then to be able to weave it, sell it and get the feedback from the final customer is a real treat. To have a job where you actually make something tangible is very rewarding.

Responding to challenges gives me great enjoyment. There's been a trend recently to use vintage grain sacks for cushions and bags, and people were commenting that “these fabrics just can’t be found anymore”. I took that as a challenge and have recreated these fabrics in our Grain Stripe range.
 

We have one of the last remaining cotton mills in Britain and want to do whatever we can to maintain the skills and employment in the country. Because we weave all our own fabrics we are in control of our supply chain so we can supply our range from stock and respond very quickly when we need to make more. Besides that, I have a family that I love to spend time with and I don’t fancy the idea of spending half my time in India and China having to buy goods there!

We don't use any agents or distributors so buying from Ian Mankin is effectively buying straight from the mill. This allows us to keep our prices very competitive and means that British Made Ian Mankin fabrics are often cheaper than other companies' goods made in the Far East.

All of our fabrics are made from natural fibres and it was a great thrill to be accredited by the Soil Association for the production of organic fabrics. One of our customers who uses our fabric to make organic mattresses was recently visited by HRH The Prince of Wales, and I was invited to meet him which was a great honour. He is a well known supporter of the organic movement but also has a keen interest in the area around our mill, the Weavers Triangle in Burnley, where he is doing his best to preserve the unique industrial landscape. He has been inspirational in his desire to keep the skills and crafts of the weaving industry alive.

We have a shop in Fulham, a mail order brochure, and a website where we sell online at www.ianmankin.co.uk. More recently we have put our whole range into a collection of pattern books and now have over 250 stockists in the UK and overseas. This year we exhibited at the Decorex trade show for the first time, which was a huge success.

Ian Mankin was an inspiration in his approach to design. He always kept things very simple and wouldn’t chase the fashion colours of the time, but would stick to tried and tested classics. I have stuck to this belief and it works!

Rhiannon Rowley has a business called Abaca, making organic mattresses in South Wales. Her dedication to the organic movement and her generous advice and support have been invaluable to me.

I live in Lancashire on the edge of the Trough of Bowland, one of Britain’s hidden gems. We are surrounded by farms producing some of the most wonderful food in the country - the meat and dairy products are second to none. The most successful restaurants in the area use locally sourced produce and do a wonderful job of promoting their suppliers. Where possible we grow our own fruit and vegetables and we have chickens which lay the most beautiful eggs.

My family are not keen on the heat so staying in Britain for our summer holidays is an easy decision. My in-laws live on Anglesey and last year we stayed in a wonderful house on the beach at Rhosneigr. The children were in the water (in wet suits!) all week and the relaxed nature of the town is a joy. The views are quite breathtaking and it's only a two hour journey for us – beats spending hours in airports! We live in the most beautiful countryside in a fabulous part of the country and so if the weather is nice I love nothing more than to be at home with my family.

I have a vegetable garden where I battle the Lancashire rain but manage to be almost self-sufficient for veg through the summer months. All my family are mad-keen tennis players so I do my best to keep up but am rapidly being overtaken. At the end of the day I like nothing more than to put my feet up with a nice glass of red wine.