A dyer's lot

Splashes of spilt colour are quickly hosed away,
saving a bollocking on the expense of waste and carelessness,
the need for good house-keeping and Health and Safety.

For the dyer it might mean one extra show,
the pantomime of flicking lights,
tungsten, TL84, artificial daylight, UV,
the rigmarole of 'conditioning'
the smoothing of pile, nap,
the 'flaring', metamerism,
light/dark quickness to deceive the eye.

They still practise their mystique,
even with all the technical wizardry
of instrumental match prediction, digital scales,
automated weighing, enclosed mixing
and piped additions
giving a right-first-time clinicality.

 

But in the small dye-houses
where the art is paramount
a dyer, though worth his weight in salt,
still feels the guilt of unlevelness, dye-spots and off-shade
still lives with a life-time of verbal.

Jeremy Duffield
21st August 2001

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©2001 Jeremy Duffield (text & photos) and Helen Whitehead (design)