2D3D2D: a diagnostic approach to textile and fashion research practice

In the School of Art and Design, at Nottingham Trent University, a range of research methods and practices have developed through PhD and post doctoral study in relation to printed textile design and new technology. Individual research projects have addressed pattern (Bunce 1993); photographic imagery (Briggs 1997); colour (Leak 2001); non-repeating pattern (Carlisle 2003) and 2D/3D (Townsend 2003). Post-doctoral research (Briggs-Goode & Bunce 2001) and Townsend's research into 2D/3D informed a group project and exhibition Transforming Shape (2004). The outcomes created by Gillian Bunce, Amanda Briggs-Goode, Gillian Bunce, Rosemary Goulding and Katherine Townsend explored the relationships between innovative surface imagery and three-dimensional prototypes, based on the simple geometric forms of square, rectangle and circle

Aeolia: textile enquiry and design

In this essay we introduce ongoing research in the field of technical textiles at Nottingham Trent University involving specialists from a range of disciplines. We will reflect on the roles and experiences of people as they worked within and across their usual boundaries of practice. In particular, the key aspects of risk, unfamiliarity, and criteria for success will be discussed. The project emerged from a strategic investment by the University in a number of interdisciplinary fellowships, in this case across Product Design and Textiles. A commercially available but under researched fibre had been identified as a starting point with the potential for contribution to the field. This carbonised rubber cord, 2mm in diameter, changes its electrical properties when stretched, meaning it may be used in conjunction with a circuit to drive outputs such as light, sound or movement

Electronically controllable colour changing textile design

Photochromic materials have often been categorised as a smart material as they could sense and change colour with reversibility from colourless to coloured once exposed to ultraviolet radiation. The aim of this ongoing research is to exploit the design potential of commercially available water based photochromic inks when applied onto textiles using a screen printing method. This research paper highlights the experimental design research conducted in order to design multi-colour change textile patterns and discusses an electronic activation method which could be used to activate dynamic photochromic colours. The results highlight the complex colour changing effects of photochromic inks and outline new variables which could be used to control the kinetic behaviour of photochromic prints

Introduction: Crafting anatomies

Crafting Anatomies places the human body at the center of a transdisciplinary exploration, revealing how it acts as a catalyst for craft-based collaborative research, using archives, creative dialogues, and technologically advanced fabrications. As the book demonstrates, nothing happens without collaboration in fashion and textiles, which involves intense, creative dialogues at all stages of the process (Anderson 2017). Increasingly, this applies to all contemporary artistic design practice—where the tradition of the “isolated auteur” and mastery of a specific discipline is challenged by the provocative and disruptive nature of information and technology (Mower 2017). This collection of illustrated narratives seeks to highlight how critical making and conversation around the contemporary body is manifest through a range of material and immaterial responses. The contributors, drawn from a network of creative thinkers and practitioners based in Europe, North America, and Oceania, exploit methodologies that resonate with wider transnational philosophies, “[paying] no attention to the boundaries between fine and applied art, high and low culture, gendered and racial identity, let alone, fashion, textiles and craft”1 (Hemmings 2015: 157). So, through the shared lens of crafting anatomies, researcher/practitioners in materials (textiles) and product (fashion) design are united with artists, writers, scientists, and curators to demonstrate how their/our response to the corporeal is constantly flexing and changing

Principles and pilfering: Nottingham lace design pedagogy

This paper explores the lace design pedagogy that developed in Nottingham during the first half of the twentieth century. It draws on teaching material and student work collected in the Nottingham Trent University Lace Archive and examines three sets of material in particular: portfolios of student drawing; a collection of lace draughts composed for teaching purposes; and student designed lace samples. These materials are records of a learning process influenced both by a national education system and the local lace industry. While the former were concerned to reproduce a canon of ornamentation obeying certain design principles, the later needed designers possessing specific technical skills and the ability to copy and adapt existing designs suitable for mass production and consumption. Lace design pedagogy encompassed the 'principles' of design, the 'technique' of design and the 'business' of design. In each of these fields, students learnt by copying, so that copying was, to some extent, both the method and the outcome of Nottingham lace design education

Wellbeing and smart textiles: reflecting on collaborative practices and the design process

This paper reports on an inter-disciplinary, EPSRC funded research project, 'An Internet of Soft Things' (IoSofT) which seeks to bring soft surfaces, smart textiles and wearable technologies to join the Internet of Things debate. The project involves researchers from academic disciplines: design, computing and mental health in collaboration with a project partner, the Nottinghamshire network of the mental health charity, Mind. This paper will reflect upon the research project and specifically the approach the authors have taken to collaborative textile practice and how this has impacted upon the design process. This project was conducted through a number of practical workshop activities with Mind service user groups. The workshops focused upon the crafting of personalized textile objects with soft switches and various output and also recorded the clients' descriptions of their sense of ownership, awareness of their own and others' emotions and behaviours. The workshops included the researchers' reflections and observations to enable further understanding of how this community invests meaning in material things and modes of expressive output. The aim of the research project is to use textile craft practice and smart materials alongside therapeutic approaches to contribute to the development of a wellbeing and mental health toolkit to support future client work for Mind

Heritage and conservation of Nottingham lace through collaboration. Developing partnerships through museums, community, industry and education

Nottingham is both the birthplace and the global centre of the machine-made lace industry and is home to the Nationally Designated collection of machine-made lace and machinery. In 2017 Lace Unravelled was launched with the aim to conserve the collection and connect with local 'industry mentors' to learn more about its objects. This led to wider collaborations and the exhibition 'Lace Unarchived', held at Nottingham Trent University intended to reveal the legacy of the art school, established in 1843, and its impact on the generations of lace designers it educated. This paper proposes to explore the project’s achievements, what it revealed, and what it has meant for the interpretation and understanding of the collection, and wider understanding of 'Nottingham Lace'

Nottingham lace: stories of industrial decline and textile heritage

Nottingham’s relationship with technological innovation in textile manufacturing began in the sixteenth century with the invention of the Stocking Frame by Rev Lee. It was this technology which paved the way for the production of machine-made lace by the beginning of the nineteenth century in the region. It is both the manufacturing technology and the fabric which elevated the city of Nottingham to have global influence as the manufacturing capital of lace. The technological innovation to manufacture lace was driven by the demand for the consumption of handmade lace which was, until the early-nineteenth century, limited to the wealthy and considered a luxury product. In the eighteenth century the technology was adapted to create lace-like structures, using a knitted net, and later patterned lace, but the fabric was unstable and unraveled if a thread was broken. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, John Heathcoat invented a different way of making net by replicating the actions of bobbin lace makers and twisting threads together. This resulted in the ‘twist-net machine’ which created a more stable net fabric which could be hand embroidered to make lace. Shortly afterwards John Lever developed the ‘Leavers lace machine’ which integrated lace patterns to be constructed directly on the machine

Genetically manipulated phages with improved pH resistance for oral administration in veterinary medicine

Orally administered phages to control zoonotic pathogens face important challenges, mainly related to the hostile conditions found in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). These include temperature, salinity and primarily pH, which is exceptionally low in certain compartments. Phage survival under these conditions can be jeopardized and undermine treatment. Strategies like encapsulation have been attempted with relative success, but are typically complex and require several optimization steps. Here we report a simple and efficient alternative, consisting in the genetic engineering of phages to display lipids on their surfaces. Escherichia coli phage T7 was used as a model and the E. coli PhoE signal peptide was genetically fused to its major capsid protein (10A), enabling phospholipid attachment to the phage capsid. The presence of phospholipids on the mutant phages was confirmed by High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography, Dynamic Light Scattering and phospholipase assays. The stability of phages was analysed in simulated GIT conditions, demonstrating improved stability of the mutant phages with survival rates 102107 pfu.mL1 higher than wild-type phages. Our work demonstrates that phage engineering can be a good strategy to improve phage tolerance to GIT conditions, having promising application for oral administration in veterinary medicine.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and under the scope of the Project PTDC/BBB-BSS/6471/2014 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016678). Franklin L. Nobrega and Ana Rita Costa acknowledge FCT for grants SFRH/BD/86462/2012 and SFRH/BPD/94648/2013, respectively. Melvin F. Siliakus acknowledges funding from the Biobased Ecologically Balanced Sustainable Industrial Chemistry (BE-BASIC) foundation. Electron microscopy work was performed at the Wageningen Electron Microscopy Centre (WEMC) of Wageningen University