The Cotton Industry

Chris Aspin £3.50

978 0 85263 545 2 (Album 63) 32 pp, 43 ills. 

The book tells the story of the cotton industry from its spectacular growth during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to its devastating decline in recent years. The impact of the British cotton trade was enormous. Goods mass-produced in busy factories undercut all competition and the industry became the first to make the whole world its market. Using much previously unpublished material, the book traces cotton's birth, growth and downfall. The development of the processes used to transform raw cotton into finished goods is also well illustrated.

Flax and Linen

Patricia Baines £3.50

978 0 85263 727 2 (Album 133) 32 pp, 47 ills. 

Flax has been cultivated for thousands of years to produce the fibre to make linen. This book gives an account of the processes and tools involved in the production of linen from flax. The traditional methods, when the work was done by hand, are described, as well as some of the improvements and machines that have been developed.

Patricia Baines studied textile crafts at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design.

Framework Knitting

Marilyn Palmer £3.50

978 0 85263 668 8 (Album 119) 32 pp, 30 ills. 

The stocking frame was one of the first technological developments in the textile industries, dating from the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth. It was probably invented in the East Midlands, but certainly knitted garments became one of the main products of the region from the seventeenth century onwards. The frame was intended for use in the home and the whole family was involved, the men working the frame while their wives and children wound bobbins and seamed stockings. This book explains how the stocking frame worked, describes the lives of the knitters and illustrates the kinds of buildings in which knitting was done.

Marilyn Palmer has lived in the East Midlands since 1965. She has always had an absorbing interest in survivals from the industrial past and is now Professor of Industrial Archaeology at the University of Leicester.

The Identification of Lace

Pat Earnshaw £10.99

978 0 7478 0237 2 160 pp, 161 ills. 

This book guides the reader through the intricacies of identifying a piece of lace, listing and illustrating the points to look for in each lace. It covers the whole range of lace from all parts of the world, selecting for examination those major types which the collector or dealer is most likely to come across or hear about. The numerous photographs are arranged to assist comparison of diagnostic features and to put together laces which might be confused with each other so that their differences, sometimes subtle, can be appreciated.

Looms and Weaving

Anna Benson and Neil Warburton £3.50

978 0 85263 753 1 (Album 154), 32 pp, 39 ills. 

This book describes the development of the loom from a crude wooden frame to a sophisticated electronic weaving machine. It introduces common textile terms and techniques and there is a description of primitive looms, such as Greek Tapestry and Navaho blanket weaving. Medieval craft guilds, the domestic system and Yeoman Weavers are dealt with, while handloom weaving is contrasted with the powerloom and the mill system. The authors examine the decorative fabrics such as brocades produced on early Chinese drawlooms and the introduction of Jacquard and dobby weaving in the nineteenth century. The reaction against industrialisation and William Morris’s inauguration of the Arts and Crafts movement are discussed in relation to the craft revival of the twentieth century. This book continues the history of looms and weaving beyond the invention of the Northrop automatic to include special woven effects and twentieth-century technological development, including today’s computer-based weaving machines.

Anna Benson and Neil Warburton are weavers and textile historians, with an extensive collection of antique hand and power looms.

Textile Machines

Anna Benson £3.50

978 0 85263 647 3 (Album 103) 32 pp, 39 ills.

This book combines a description of about fifty important textile machines with an analysis of their evolution from the twelfth century to the present day. Each machine is dealt with in the context of its time, showing the impact that even a simple device like the fulling stocks had on textile production in Britain. The greater organisation of the domestic system in the eighteenth century gave impetus to the development of machines like the dandy loom and the spinning jenny. The author examines the revolutionary inventions of the late eighteenth century and how they led to the industrialisation of the textile industry. Detailed discussion is restricted to those machines which may be seen in the principal textile museums and collections of Europe and America, which are listed at the end of the book.

Anna Benson is a weaver and textile historian. She is a chartered textile technologist and has completed an MA specialising in the textiles of historic houses. Anna and her husband run a specialist weaving business reproducing fabrics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

The Woollen Industry

Chris Aspin £3.50

978 0 85263 598 8 (Album 81) 32 pp, 42 ills. 

Most places in Britain have had some connection with the woollen industry. For several hundred years it was Britain’s principal source of wealth and provided more jobs than all the other industries put together. The country’s fortunes were largely dependent on the wool trade, in which almost every family had a stake – from the spinster at her hand wheel to the merchant seeking foreign markets. The English language has been enriched by many phrases derived from the trade – ‘dyed in the wool’, ‘spinning a yarn’, ‘on tenterhooks’ – and many thousands of people owe their surnames to ancestors who were Websters, Weavers, Fullers, Tuckers, Walkers, Listers and so on. Mr Aspin traces the story of wool in Britain from prehistoric times to the present day and uses many previously unpublished illustrations to illuminate his story.