ONE of Britain’s best known textile artists will be bringing a remarkable new exhibition to the Lake District throughout July and August.

Heather Belcher's Hidden Threads exhibition has been inspired by a Holocaust survivor with connections to Manchester and the Cumbria, and will go on display at the Lake District Holocaust Project, in Windermere Library, from July 6 to August 27.

The exhibition centres around ‘The Overcoat’, which she has specially produced, using handmade felting processes. The inspiration for her creation comes from a man called Mayer Hersh.

Hersh, who died last year aged 90, came to the Lake District in 1945 when he was just 18 after spending 18 months in Auschwitz. He became known as one of the ‘Windermere Boys’, a group of 300 child Holocaust survivors who came from Eastern Europe in 1945 in order to begin their recovery from years of unimaginable suffering.

He later moved to Manchester where he set up a very successful tailoring business. The coat in Belcher’s exhibition is based on one of Hersh’s overcoats which he handmade in the 1960s. Belcher travelled to Manchester to work at close quarters with the overcoat and also a three-piece suit also made by Hersh. These items are currently held in the Platt Hall Costume Museum collection in Manchester.

Trevor Avery, director of Lake District Holocaust Project, explains some of the background to Hersh’s story: “When he arrived in Auschwitz in 1943 he was asked what his trade was and, as his father had been a tailor, he replied that he was a master tailor himself. Of course he was far too young to be a master tailor but this response undoubtedly saved his life. He was then chosen to go and work on clothing in the camp, even working on the guards’ uniforms.

“Hersh’s story is a remarkable story of survival. The pressure for him to work at the highest tailoring level, way beyond his ability at that young age, was immense. One mistake and he could have been murdered. It was skills learned in Auschwitz that he continued into his own tailoring business in Manchester after he came to Britain in 1945.”

London-based Heather Belcher’s work has all the ingredients to make a dramatic appearance at the Lake District Holocaust Project. It has a quality of contemplation that sits alongside a profound sense of history, both personal and much broader.

Describing the inspiration for the overcoat, she says: "Clothing can be a powerful marker for both the absence and the presence of the human form. Overcoats particularly, cover and protect us.

"My mother was a skilled dressmaker, making clothes for myself and all my siblings. She taught dressmaking and tailoring and passed her skill on to me.

"At various points in my life I have fallen back on those skills to earn my living.”