Lopham Looms: Colby Cobb’s Loom
“In a low, dark shed, green with damp and crumbling with age, there still stands the very last of the old Lopham looms…”
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Huckaback / Piggyback
Notes about the history of this ancient cloth and the origins of its curious name.
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Hand Loom Weaving (1894)
‘Truly an old craft standing by itself, alone in this England of ours.’
Transcript of an article about the Lopham linen industry, first published in the East Anglian Daily Times on 23rd January 1894.
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Farming in Scotland
Illustrations and extracts from a rare eighteenth century treatise about flax and hemp cultivation, processing and weaving.
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Lopham Looms: the Bankfield Loom
About the magnificent old handloom from North Lopham, Norfolk, now in the collection of Bankfield Museum in Halifax.
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From Lopham With Love
About two postcards from the Rita & Percy Beales Archive showing the village of North Lopham during the last days of ‘Lopham Linen’ c.1913…
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Fly-Shuttle Springs: the Stick, the Rope and the Coil
Last year I converted my loom into a ‘spring-loom’ by building a new fly-shuttle mechanism. Doing some background research I found old looms with three different types of spring: the stick, the rope and the coil…
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The Weaver’s Guide: Linen Designs by Ralph Watson of Aiskew
Late last year I finally made it to the North Yorkshire County Records Office to look at the manuscript known as The Weaver’s Guide: Linen Designs by Ralph Watson of Aiskew. In this post I share some photographs of the manuscript, along with some background about Ralph Watson and my speculations on the techniques he may have used…
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Lopham Linen
This is a post about my trip in July to view the collection of Lopham linen in Norfolk Museums, with photographs and descriptions of rare examples of handwoven huckaback cloth made around 1900.
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The Linen Manufacture of North Yorkshire, Once upon a Time.
Concering the locations of Ralph Watson and Thomas Jackson, and the distribution of linen manufacture in North Yorkshire…
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In Memory of Jane, Wife of Thomas Jackson
In the churchyard of St. Cuthbert’s, in the hamlet of Wilton, near Lazenby in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is a gravestone bearing the following inscription: …
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Hemp Weaving at the Ecomusée du Clos Parchet
The star exhibit of the Ecomusée du Clos Parchet is the building itself, situated on a mountainside in the Haute Savoie, built in 1815 and now preserved as a typical example of a traditional Savoyard farmhouse…
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Rural Linen Weaving in Germany
Part 4: Weaving the Cloth
Translation and transcription of the documentary film Bäuerliche Leinenweberei 4: Herstellen von Leinwand.
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Rural Linen Weaving in Germany
Part 3: Beaming, Tying and Dressing the Warp
Translation and transcription of the documentary film Bäuerliche Leinenweberei 3: Aufbäumen, Anknüpfen und Schlichten der Kette
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Rural Linen Weaving in Germany
Part 2: Building The Loom
Translation and transcription of the documentary film Bäuerliche Leinenweberei: 2: Aufschlagen des Webstuhls
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Rural Linen Weaving in Germany
Part 1: Winding the Warp
Translation and transcription of the film Bäuerliche Leinenweberei: 1: Schären der Kette
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Rural Linen Weaving in Germany:
An Introduction
An introduction to Bäuerliche Leinenweberei, a series of documentary films recording the re-enactment of traditional linen weaving in rural Germany, made by Landschaftsverband Rheinland in the 1970’s.
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Weavers’ Thesis Book: the Thomas Jackson Record
This is an update to my post From Thomas Jackson to Ralph Watson where I describe how I came across a manuscript written between about 1711 and 1769 by four generations of North Yorkshire weavers all called Thomas Jackson, and how that lead me to another manuscript by a weaver called Ralph Watson, also from North Yorkshire…
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From Thomas Jackson to Ralph Watson
Back in the early days of coronavirus lockdown, stuck at home and spending too much time browsing the internet, I came across a beautiful collection of linen cloths on the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s website. The rather enigmatic caption under the forty-one photographs read: Woven Example After Jackson (USA)...
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Following Ralph Watson
A guest post for the North Yorkshire County Records Office’s blog, about the process of making linen cloth from a pattern in The Weaver’s Guide: Linen Designs by Ralph Watson of Aiskew.
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Linen Landscapes
The Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael (1629-1682) made at least eighteen paintings of the linen bleaching fields around Haarlem. The landscapes are seen from an elevated vantage point, with the church of Sant Bavo on the horizon, and the bleaching fields in the middle distance…
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Machines in Disguise
I recently bought a second-hand copy of ‘Mechanics for Textile Students’ by W.A. Hanton (1954). When it arrived through the letterbox I found some of the pages stamped by a previous owner: HOWARD & BULLOUGH SCHOOL – ACCRINGTON…
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