Thomas Wardle (industrialist)

He collaborated with the designer William Morris, who visited his dyeworks in Leek, Staffordshire to learn how to use natural dyes.

He was the eldest son of Joshua Wardle, who in 1830 had opened a silk dyeing business near Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands, south of Macclesfield.

Their aim was to produce a depth of colour with natural dyes, such as they found in Indian textiles.

[6] In 1885, Wardle accepted a Government invitation to visit Bengal Province (part of the then British Raj in India), to investigate the state there of sericulture; the quality of silk from there was not as good as silk from producers in other countries.

He found that a great proportion the silkworms were dying of preventible diseases, and that reeling from cocoons was not done well.

The Society's work was sold in 1880s in a Wardle shop in New Bond Street, London; it was also involved in a full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.

He had a collection of Carboniferous Limestone fossils, and wrote about geology, particularly of his local area.

[4] Oscar Wilde, in a lecture he gave in Leek in 1884, paid tribute to Thomas Wardle's work.

[2] In 1887 he helped to found the Silk Association of Great Britain and Ireland, of which he was president during his lifetime.