Date: 1967
Origin: Bradford, West Yorkshire. UK
The original point paper was drawn up at Bentley Walbank of Bingley for their customer E&S Smith. Mr Keith Wilkinson was the senior designer at the Bingley based design company and Mr Alan Stringer who supervised the weaving details was the head designer at the weaving Mill. In 1967 the design was woven for local fabric wholesaler who christened the design Denby.
When creating our large life size art print of the original design, it came in 4 panels for easier handling and possibly so more than one artist could complete the work. The 4 separate technical point paper drawings were never intended to be seen as an artwork.
In 1967, this technical art enabled the jacquard loom's perforated weaving cards to be created from the 4 sections and then the Jacquard loom would have followed each weft row on the loom cards to form the warp and weft threads in a patterned fabric. We know the Mill's loom for this design had 2 Jacquards mounted above it with 600 needles in each set at 90 ends per inch. Two sets of loom cards were cut from the point papers that were read in unison, one on jacquard engine 1 and the other on engine 2.
From the production logs we know the resulting fabric pattern was 12" wide and approx 16" high on a 48" width Northrop loom. The fabric woven in numerous colourways was a loose cover and curtain weight, sold to a local company called Denby under the design name Comway.
The art is a dramatic example of work in itself and also a celebration of weavers ingenuity in days when 'things' were made at a slower pace.
