Date: May 1966
Origin: Bradford, UK
The original point paper (ref ESS 1147) is from E&S Smith of Stadium Mills, Odsal, Bradford. This family weaving firm was founded in 1935 and ceased trading in 2005.
The company were Jacquard weavers and worked with numerous well-known furnishing fabric wholesalers and suppliers of flame retardant fabrics in hotels, hospitals and ships.
The original artwork was drawn up from a sketch by E&S Smith head designer Alan Stringer. The end customer was called Haslam and required the 8 x 6" wide patterns across a 48” wide curtain fabric. Alan chose a mixture of 6 compatible weaves to develop a textured fabric. The darker red areas were raised warp thread satin and the surround of the shield was a plainer sateen weft.
The Stadium Mill was weaving with Northrop looms which had two Bradford made Samuel Dracup Jacquards above the loom. Each machine had 300 hooks in each. The harness, which links the needles in the Jacquard that press into the perforated loom card, with the warp threads arranged in the loom below, had a set of 90 ends per inch (wide).
For this design, each of the two jacquard engines ran a set of punched cards that had 260 weft thread picks corresponding to the 260 rows on the design paper. Great care had to be taken to make sure that upon startup the punched cards position on one Jacquard was aligned with the second Jacquard machine. Quite a lot of synchronisations of working parts and skilled workers were required to weave this style of fabric.
