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The 1960s was an era of revival for many handicrafts, including textile making. Examples of batik, hand-dyed fabrics and weaving all show practitioners bringing new ideas to these crafts. This fitted in with the late 1960s philosophy that making a limited number of items by hand was preferable to commercial overproduction.
Batik is a technique for dyeing fabric that originated in Indonesia, an area colonised by the Dutch. Batik was first popularised in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. The 1960s saw a renewal of interest in ethnic techniques.
Many leading 1960s craft practitioners had been trained by an earlier generation and craft methods were sometimes modified for commercial use. Susan Bosence was a teacher and producer of block printed and resist-dyed textiles. She learnt these techniques from Barron and Larcher. These two women owned a well known studio which produced hand printed textiles from the 1920s to the 1940s. Hull Traders is one example of a commercial company which hand dyed textiles.
Alastair Morton of Edinburgh Weavers learnt hand weaving from Ethel Mairet and adapted some of her techniques for commercial use by his firm.