If you enjoyed the last two posts about John Cundick and our museum, click on the video below to see John's interview with ITV West Country News - lots to see, the factory, the museum, and John himself taking us back over 60 years...

Recently we had a special presentation of long service awards. The event was held at Dents in Warminster.

There was an excellent attendance of staff and guests at the lunchtime event, including the Master of the Worshipful Company of Glovers, Roy Jennings, the Under Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Glovers and the Mayor of Warminster.

Staff receiving awards at the event included:

John Cundick – 60 years service

John joined Dents in 1949 as a post boy in the dispatch department and worked his way up to become Buying Director in 1972. John now works as a Quality Controller and looks after the Dents Museum.                                                       

Others included were Teresa Tryhorn with 40 years’ service, who joined Dents at the age of 16, Pat Smith, 37 years’ service, Dawn Mines, with 30 years’ service, who continues to this day to machine sew gloves at her home, and Martin Clayton, with 25 years’ service in the gloving industry. 

Dents has so many long service employees (including Hilary Drewitt  (54 years); Tony Foreman  (45 years);  Jim King  (45 years); Dennis Smith  (44 years); Lil Munday (43 years); Heather Ambrose (37 years); Des Smith (36 years); and Hilary Randall (31 years) that there was serious media interest in the event. When the awards were presented ITV's West Country Tonight covered the story, as did BBC Radio 5 Live. The Sun newspaper also included a small mention; and of course there was a lot of coverage in the local press.

I'm just back from New York, where the weather was a glovemaker's dream come true! We had a very successful first showing at the Accessorie Circuit trade show. Our Winter 2010 fashion glove collection created quite a stir - we'll be previewing it on this site soon, and next winter it may be found at Saks Fifth Avenue and fine stores all over the world.

Remember our blog on the Finding Glover exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum? Just scroll down if you need to refresh your memory. The Artist in Residence, Jo Lawrence, who created the exhibit, also wrote this wonderful piece on her visit to the Dents Glove Museum. An extract is reproduced below:

"My visit to the Dents Glove Museum in Warminster felt like a step back in time. John Cundick (Quality controller at Dents) showed me the glove collection, and presented me with lots of extraordinary curiosities, much of it stored in dark plans chests, and every glove had a story attached. There were the smallest gloves in the world, a bit larger than a stamp, the blue suede gloves belonging to the joker (Jack Nicholson) in the 1988 Batman film that were so popular that they were mass produced several times in numerous colours, gloves that fitted into a walnut shell, numerous photos of glovers at work, and glove moulds, hand measuring devices and glovers sewing machines. "