Stand beneath the bunting with your back to the union building and look up. Can you see it? Sitting proudly and high on the Clothworkers’ South building you will find Mitzi Cunliffe’s sculpture Man-Made Fibres; a celebration of the booming Textiles industry in Leeds during the 1950s. The sculpture shows two hands interlocked with woven material, a symbol of the strength and relationship between man and industry and ‘reflecting progress in the field of synthetic fibres’.

Positioned so high up on the building it’s easy to miss and especially easy to take for granted as something which blends so well into the façade of the building. Cunliffe originally expressed the desire for her work to be ‘used, rained on, leaned against and taken for granted,’ certainly at least two of those desires have been realised with the heavy Leeds showers and the assumption that the sculpture has always been part of the building. In 1995, Professor JB Speakman, Head of the Department of Textiles Industry at the University, commissioned Cunliffe to produce the work that would sit on the then-named ‘Man-Made Fibres’ building. The unveiling of the public sculpture took place in 1956 when the Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the new University building.

American-born Cunliffe settled in Manchester in the early 1950s and produced textiles, ceramic and jewellery in addition to her larger sculpture works. An inspirational woman, Cunliffe held her own in a field mostly dominated by men and went on to be extremely successful with regular television and radio appearances following her decoration of buildings in and around Manchester. The interviews she gave at the time centred around her work but also on certain aspects ‘being a woman’ with articles in the Evening Standard and Guardian on childcare.

Cunliffe’s catalogue of work is large and her influence on public sculpture, significant, yet despite this, very little research and critical work has been done when compared to her contemporaries such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. To counter this the University’s Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery -with Public Art Officer Ann Sumner at the helm- are working towards celebrating their synthetic roots, focusing on Man-Made Fibres, during 2016: the year of textiles. If you get the chance, take a moment today to look up at Cunliffe’s Man-Made Fibres high up on Clothworkers’ South building and think about the incredible woman behind the sculpture and its running history with the University of Leeds.

Hayley Reid

Image: Leeds University Library