Sylvia Currie on Ted Carson

Sylvia Currie on Ted Carson

Beginning of Spinning in the Guild

Sylvia Currie talks about Ted Carson and the incorporation of spinning in the guild.

Jung-Ah Kim

Sylvia Currie

Phone

It was partly through Ted's and Ted Carson's involvement that I learned about the Kingston Guild. I knew him through the Oakville Guild. He was a member. He had his own business, which he ran from home called Handcraft Wools. And he sold looms, he sold spinning wheels and other allied appliances, bits and pieces. And he was always willing to come and speak to groups, and to offer his suggestions. And it was through him that I learned about the Kingston guild so that when we came, he told me who to contact, how to get in touch with. There were six ladies that started in 1948 and gathered under Miss Ida Merriment. And they established the Kingston Handloom Weavers Guild. And I attended their first meeting in September 1969. And we happen to meet at the home of one of the members who lived just to the west of where the Tett center is on King Street. I believe her name was Mrs. Wilson, I don't remember her first name. And from there, it grew. I may be partly responsible for bringing the concept of spinning to the Guild and there was no spinning. Nobody was spinning, they were only weaving. And so I asked, there was a small wheel, a spinning wheel in the studio or a library in the home we met in. And I asked who uses this? Oh, we don't, it's just decorative. So I said, Oh, well, why not? So I spoke about my interest in spinning and others sounded interested. And I contacted Ted Carson to see if he could come to Kingston and to a group class. And that did happen a couple of years later, I guess. In 1971, he did come, Ted taught the first few spinning workshops because none of us in Kingston had done any spinning by the time when he first came. And from there then we began to have more specific workshops and different types of spinning. And at that time, our name, the name of the guild, was revised to the Kingston Handloom Weavers and Spinners Guild. I will go back to say in 1949, the guild had 22 members who paid an annual membership of $2