Date: 1953
Origin: Bradford, UK
Sea Kelp design (ref ESS 560) was drawn up at public designers A.L. Wilkinson & Co, Springfield Works, Bradford. E&S Smith used a 1/5 weft sateen ground weave with a plain weave in the green fern area to tighten up the construction to reduce the number of weft picks. The red areas were long warp floats and provided a contrast of texture and shade.
This method of design and production reduced the price of the fabric by increasing the number of yards/meters per hour from the shuttle looms. The Northrop loom had a single, Bradford made Samuel Dracup Jacquard with 288 pattern hooks above it. The harness had a set of 60 ends per inch with 10 repeats across the 48-inch width. The weft repeat was 15-inch as there were 420 pattern weft cards with an 28 pick per inch gear. With a (slow) weft pick insertion speed of 90 picks per minute the Mill would expect their 4 weft colour shuttle loom to yield approx. 4 1/2 yards of fabric an hour. Typically at this time the Mill would require a minimum order of 12 x 60 yard 'cuts' per colourway by design. It did not need a lot to keep the factories 40 looms busy!
