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Welcome to the Willow Knits blog.

I'm Anne and I'll be using this blog to let you know what is happening with Willow Knits during the year.

I'll include which Farmers' Markets and shows I'm going to be at, what I'm working on and general news and events plus a little about myself.

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Thursday 16 August 2018

A visit to the Warner Textile Archive

Just recently, I was fortunate to enjoy a visit to the Warner Textile Archive in Braintree, Essex. The archive is held in the original nineteenth century mill buildings, now restored and adapted for use as a museum and store. A representative selection of the archive is on display, along with the history of the site.



The visit started with a talk about the history of the company, the site and how the archive came to be. I had wondered how Essex and East Anglia had become silk textile centres and it was fascinating to learn that it was a result of companies based on the original Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields, East London needing more space for their growing businesses and moving out. Weaving had continued on the site until the 1970's and after that the company had continued trading, weaving off site, until 1990.

The archive came about and grew as the Warner company, who specialised in furnishing fabrics, documented and sampled their own fabrics, as well as acquiring archives of companies they took over. They encouraged their employees to source inspirational pieces of textile that they saw on travels that could be used to develop their products. These items are known in the archive as "documents" and with swatches of woven and printed fabrics plus notes going back nearly two hundred years, it is now second only to the Victoria and Albert museum as a collection. When the company closed, it was transferred around different purchasers, fortunately never being split up, and eventually being bought and brought home to Braintree in 2004 as a wonderful heritage resource for academic study.      

After the talk and a break for coffee and some cake, we moved into the archive itself. We were not allowed to look through the many racks of boxes at random, which was so tempting, as some of the fabrics are of course very fragile, but we were shown, over a couple of hours, a selection of the different textiles held in the huge collection and found out how they were made. It covered most periods, methods (woven, velvets, printing) and budgets - from fabric used on the royal yacht "Britannia" to war time "utility".

After the tour was over, which seemed to go incredibly quickly, there was the opportunity to look around the public gallery and purchase some very nice quality souvenirs featuring designs from the archive.

What came across to me was that the company had done everything right over their two hundred years, putting quality, innovation and design at the forefront, establishing royal connections as well as mass appeal and keeping ahead of technical developments, but changes in demand as well as competition from cheaper overseas manufacturers put too much pressure on them in the end.

However, we do have this wonderful archive as a resource for posterity and some of the designs are still manufactured under license.   

Usually the tour is only for groups, but as an individual I joined a tour through the "Invitation to View" organisation. Invitation to View site - click here 

Find our more about the archive: Warner Textile Archive