I’m from Bradford, and have worked in textiles since I was sixteen. It’s been forty years now, but it feels like four!

I’m a technical dyer of textiles. Basically, I match colours for our customers, but that involves everything: from the start of the process, doing some of the technical work, right through to physically dyeing the yarn we do here. Me, Richard and Katie, that’s our profession.

For over a hundred years, this building has been home to dyeing and bleaching.

I’ve actually moved back into a physical colour matching role. I did move into a higher management role, but I lost touch with day to day colour – and I like that! I’ve got to an age where I’ve chosen to be in that framework and really enjoy myself. That’s what I do!

We have a joke, that every colour that exists has already been matched, but designers always want something new – they always want a new colour. They send something in: it might be a piece of paper or a bit of metal, anything, and that’s what they want. The colour is something that we have to interpret and match on a woollen yarn, a polyester or whatever type of yarn the customer wants.

People have been trying to bring computers in to decide if one colour is a good match to another colour, but nothing beats the human eye. Designers always want to have a physical sample and look at it themselves – which is great for us. That’s what I still like doing.

Here, you’re not just punching numbers, or sat at a keyboard. You are actually interacting with things, colour, people and designers, so you can get something matched and correct for the customer. They might say things like, “We want that colour warmer” or “more fiery”, that’s the artistic side of it. It’s then up to us to interpret what that actually means in technical terms – what additions or grams of dyestuff are needed to achieve the desired colour.

A lot of the worsted men’s suitings that we do, especially the superfine suitings, are for design houses and things like that. We also work with new flame-retardant fibres, and everyone wants colour, nobody buys plain white anymore. The challenge is making it both safe and look good, and that’s what we try to do on all sorts of fibres. Everyone buys on colour. And if it’s not the right colour people, don’t want it.

When we get shades in from customers that need matching, it’s my job to do the lab work. I’ll get the shade right in the lab and then it goes out into the dye house for bulk dying. We then get a standard yarn from the customer, and use a software programme to get the right colour.  But, you have to do a bit by eye and that’s where you need the experience, to change the dyes for yourself.

I’ve been here since I left school and now I’m thirty. Everyone’s been here quite a long time. It’s a nice place to work, it’s hard work but I enjoy it. My dad’s been here 25 years, and my mum 20ish. With everyone being here as long as they have, everyone knows each other that well, that it’s like a little work family. 

It’s nice knowing that I start the process, then it goes out in bulk, gets approved by the customer, and makes the company money. I like knowing it all begins here with me, using the skills that I’m still learning.

Atkinson Dyeing is a package dye house, where we dye the yarn on a cone. We’re now one of five or so left in the UK, when some thirty years ago there would have been fifty.   

Bradford has been the centre of textiles, thanks to our very soft water. The wool trade originally came here because you could scour your wool, get all the oils and lanolin out and get a really good product.

Back in the old days, it had more millionaires than London did. But in the last thirty years, it’s gradually disappeared and what’s left is a niche market of people doing high value, technical advanced products – like high quality suitings and specialist fabrics for fire brigades, rather than the pile it high and sell it cheap market.

It’s not a race to the bottom anymore, it’s can we produce the best quality stuff? Because “Made in England”, especially “Made in Huddersfield” and “Made in Bradford”, are seen as the creme de la creme. If you have a suit that’s “Made in England”, it’s extra kudos if you’re in Japan or China.

At our parent company ‘Hainsworth’s’, their pool and snooker table cloths are at the best in the Far East. Everyone in the UK is going for the high end now. We’ve got to keep hot here, because the history of Bradford and Keighley is what we’re trying to continue – it’s still going and we’re investing in the future now.  

The skills base in this area really came from Bradford College in the 1980s and ‘90s, when there were still a lot of chemical dye makers in Yorkshire. Bradford College had a very good training scheme, so that skill base is what is left and what we are passing on to the next generation. It’s not something you can learn in six months, it might take you five to six years to learn all the tricks of the trade, on how to colour match and dyeing different fibres.

Most of what we produce is woven in the Yorkshire area. Those companies will then use our yarns to manufacture things that go worldwide. For example, the protective yarns we produce for firemen, they will end up in Australia for firefighters doing first fires. It’s a global thing, and the UK is seen as the best! This area has the skills and local companies that can work together, everyone is within 20 miles of each other.

Wool is better than a manmade fibre, it can be recycled, and the sheep are there anyway, so we’re doing good for the world.