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Designer searching for woman who inspired her work

DCSDC Heritage & Museum Service collection A woman works a sewing machine in a factory. A number of other women are behind her sitting at machines. She is wearing a wristwatch and pearl necklace and a light coloured jumper.DCSDC Heritage & Museum Service collection
The image was found in a scrapbook in Derry's Tower Museum

A jewellery maker is appealing for help in identifying the mystery woman from an old photograph who she says has inspired her latest work.

Una Carlin found the photograph in an old scrapbook in Londonderry's Tower Museum while carrying out research for a collection honouring the city's factory workers.

The image shows the woman working a sewing machine with a number of colleagues behind her, who are all busy at their machines.

"I want to find out more about her…would love to get to know the details of who she is and a bit more about her story at the time and since," Ms Carlin said.

For much of the 20th Century Derry was a world leader in shirt production and the city's factory girls were the driving force.

Right up to the early 2000s there were still hundreds of people employed in clothing manufacturing.

Una Carlin A lady with short blond hair smiles. She is wearing a green cardigan and green and red blouse. She has silver earrings an a silver necklaceUna Carlin
Una Carlin says she was taken by the photo's modern feel

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme, Ms Carlin said the image of the woman had "stayed with her" as she looked through the museum's "brilliant scrapbooks" of factory life.

"I wanted a kind of modern picture. There's lots of really old ones, but I wanted one that the women who worked in the factories could relate to," she said.

Getty Images Workers seen leaving Tillie and Henderson's shirt factory in November 1955Getty Images
Derry was renowned for its once-thriving shirt industry and its "factory girls"

Ms Carlin has spoken to former factory workers about the photograph, including at the unveiling of a long-awaited piece of public art honouring them earlier in March.

That has allowed her to piece together some information about the woman in the photograph.

"Her family is here and as far as I know she is still alive. It would be really lovely to get her story, and a bit more about her and to hear what she was thinking at the time when the photograph was taken," Ms Carlin said.

Ultimately, Ms Carlin added, she would "love to hear more about her, preferably even hear from the woman herself".

DCSDC A group of people stand in front of a piece of public art. The majority are women, dressed in winter coats. A town hall is behind them.DCSDC
A public artwork was unveiled in Derry remembering the city's factory girls in March

What was the significance of Derry's factory girls?

Workers seen at sewing machines
A female workforce powered much of the industrial development of Derry

Derry was a globally-renowned centre for shirt-making, with the industry developing from the late 19th Century.

By the 1920s, there were more than 40 shirt factories employing thousands of workers, with thousands more servicing the industry from their homes.

The Tillie and Henderson factory, near Craigavon Bridge, was even mentioned in Karl Marx's famous book, Capital.

The vast majority of those who did the job were women.

They were immortalised by the songwriter Phil Coulter in The Town I Loved So Well.

The industry has now been all but wiped out in the face of global competition, with one of the last traditional handmade shirt makers in Britain and Ireland closing in May 2019.