Stansborough were the people who created material for Ngila Dickson's fantastic elven cloaks that the fellowship receives from Galadriel when they depart Loth-lorien. I think they also provided the beautiful cloaks that Gandalf wears.
Apart from LOTR, Stansborough did work for the first two Narnia movies, the movie Waterhorse, the TV Series Kidnapped, the awesome vampire flick 30 Days Of Night, and Avatar, as well as a slew of others that they're not allowed to talk about yet.
They were also picked to be used for The Hobbit - let's hope that's still going ahead!
I have been to visit them several times, sometimes with paying guests, sometimes with family - it was always a great experience, and it was easy to see they truly loved what they were doing.
Barry Eldridge with one of the 100 year old looms, creating elven cloak. The looms were incredibly noisy. (click on photo for larger image)
A closeup of the Elven textile as it comes off the loom. Already you can see the incredible detail woven into the material. Although it looks quite coarse, it's actually very soft, but quite hardwearing. (click on photo for larger image)
The newspaper article also reports that the will be a "massive garage sale of fabrics", this Saturday the 11th of September, at 100 Hutt Park Rd (Seaview), from 8am till 3pm.
Incidentally, the movie's cloaks are still available from them, online.
I've got my fingers itching to get the Hobbit scarf from them (by way of Weta) for Christmas. Still, that's sad to hear that they're closing down. I was hoping to go visit them on vacation sometime. But I can completely understand their reasoning for shutting down. The times are hard for everyone right now.
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