Grant silk reel; Cheney Brothers, ca. 1882. Machine for reeling silk, invented by James Munroe Grant, while employed at the Cheney Brothers silk mill in Hartford, CT. The Grant reel wound the silk in a crisscross pattern, rather than in parallel lines or spirals. This reduced snarling and increased efficiency and productivity. The Grant reel was an important innovation for silk manufacturing and was used around the world.
Sample length (selvage width, more than a yard in length) of Wilton carpet; cut pile, quality F, Jacquard-woven pattern: Very large all-over stylized foliage and floral design in browns, turquoise blue, and yellow-beige (browns predominating) on a cream ground. Made and donated by Bigelow Carpet, Co., Sales Office, Boston, MA; Mill, Clinton, MA; in 1884.
The pile warp is wool; gray ground warp, fiber not known; weft is linen. The name "Bigelow" is woven into the center back in a strip parallel to the selvages.
This sample is the field, which would be joined to a border, See T7406.
Sample cut of open weave fabric with printed black floral design around edges and 2 wreath designs inside of border. Folded & sewn onto lavender, deteriorating paper. Marked on paper: "Head coverings for women far (?) 1 (?) r (?) 10 (/) Pergan and Adramity (/) Price 2 piastres 9 cents." Part of group of textiles from parts of the Ottoman Empire, collected in 1885.
Tapestry Brussels Carpet process sample; from the Roxbury Carpet Co., Boston, MA; Donated October 8, 1884.
The sample is 25 1/8" in total length, and a selvage width of approx. 27". Of the length, 18 3/4" is woven, and the remainder shows a band of unwoven pile warp and ground warp, and a flat woven narrow band at the bottom to keep the pile warp band intact off the loom. The pattern is printed, before weaving, on the pile warp yarns in an elongated manner to allow for the take-up of the threads in forming the looped pile over wires inserted as the carpet is woven. This method allows for a great variety of Color and more elaborate design in the carpets. Each loop of the face is made up of 3 strands of 2-ply, S-twist worsted wool yarn. The warp chain forming the body or ground is of jute with a second ground warp of cotton; and the filling or ground weft is linen, which also forms the selvage. In weaving, the worsted is kept on the surface, not showing on the back, and is held in place by the upper filling yarn. The ground is off-white, with floral and geometric forms in maroon, red, and red-orange (maroon outlines on some of the leaves); stylized floral and geometric elements in shades of yellow-orange, yellow, and yellow-green. The pattern repeat is incomplete.. The number 2215 is stamped on the reverse (pattern #?)
