A Breath Between Cycles | News from the Mungo Mill
The slowing of summer has begun. Plett, once full with seasonal travellers from near and far, quietly settles into something stiller. It’s tangible in the change of temperature. You feel it on your skin. The air is cooler.
In the height of the season, there’s a reactiveness to the intensity. We move around a little faster, with a productive push. Buoyed by something energetic; a growing sense of excitement. The town feels alive – swelling with visitors. Our flagship store at Old Nick Village hums with voices. And sea swims book-end many a day. But the cooling off inevitably comes. A pause. A preparation for the next phrase. Not so much stopping or slowing down, but a breath between cycles.
Inside the Mungo Mill the march of the looms carries on. The Double Cloth comes to life. A reversible cotton throw that builds on a design from 14 years ago. On the weaving floor, Roderick and Mabel attend to one of the Dornier looms. Hands pass between threads. Thousands of them. Each attached to shimmery droppers. One breaks, and it takes the keenest eye to spot it. A careful hand to mend it. From the viewpoint, visitors look in. Watching the looms. Turning heads to the sound. If you’re ever in Plett, come and see it for yourself. Our doors are always open.
Autumn might speak of a stagnation. And yet in the same stream, there’s so much that rings of growth and expansion. New designs. New faces joining our over 100-strong family. In June we’ll receive four new Dorniers. State-of-the-art machines that will bring our cross-section of weaving through the ages full circle. They’ll carry on a legacy of textile making that spans right from neolithic times; from hand weaving and home cottage industries, to mid-century modernity and beyond. It threads together a story – from which ours is woven. The interplay of old and new. Traditional weaving and contemporary design. A sense of evolution in motion.
Through it all – the rotating cycles of stillness and action – there are some things that never change. The building blocks from which Mungo was born, 30 years ago. Quality. Transparency. Ethos and independence. These are unbending.
