Kirby at The Hanger Project told me last week he received a new shipment of accessories from Talarico and Robert Keyte. Talarico I’m familiar with. That’s a small umbrella workshop in Naples, somewhat hidden away in the Spanish Quarter of the city, where loud children and louder scooters zip through narrow alleyways. I’m a big fan of their single stick umbrellas and bought one of the army green canopy ones when Kirby got them in.
Robert Keyte I’m less familiar with. Kirby tells me they’re one of the last Macclesfield printers for real ancient madder, although what’s considered “real” nowadays is not the same as what was considered “real” a few decades ago. The old process was found to be environmentally unsafe and thus made illegal. And, in any case, it’s not considered particularly desirable to customers anymore, as the dyes vary too easily. That is, if you printed a long roll of ancient madder, the red dye in some paisley print might vary ever-so-slightly every 12.5 yards, and modern customers want consistency.
Anyway, upon looking for more information about the company, I found this fun video, which I thought was enjoyable enough to share. Robert Keyte got his start in the business in 1969 as a salesperson for David Evans (the last English printer to do hand block printing before discontinuing the practice in the 1980s, and then shutting down completely in 2002). Although Keyte didn’t start his business until the late-90s, he has some amazing archival prints from old, by-gone businesses — prints that stretch back to the 1930s and ‘40s. These include the books from famous English companies (now defunct) such as Brocklehurst Fabrics and Welch Margetson, as well as some Austrian and German firms that went out of business after WWII.
Some of these remind me of the patterns I’ve seen at Cilento, Naples’ oldest menswear store. The designs are so much bolder, brasher, and brighter than the usual foulards we see today. Robert tells me that he doesn’t have any of the old books from David Evans, although I did spot a unicorn design – derived from La Dame a la licorne – at The Hanger Project, which was once originally printed by David Evans for Holland & Holland. I have the original brown and orange version pictured here, actually.
What’s offered at The Hanger Project and Robert Keyte’s online store is a bit more “modern” and conservative than these old archival prints, but they’re still very tasteful. I really like these diamond motifs in navy and buff, for example, and had to hold myself back from buying this paisley ancient madder. I do wish that someone would one day make a book from all these archives though. Even if we can’t have the wilder patterns on our necks, I’d like to have them on my shelf.
(Incidentally, should anyone think this post is connected to The Hanger Project’s paid sponsorship at Put This On, rest assured, it’s not. I paid for my umbrella and am not being secretly compensated by The Hanger Project for this post. Kirby doesn’t even know it’s going up).
