Bone figure on a grey-green ground. Thirty years on the same pattern, redrawn four times; the repeat has come in from 32 cm to 26.
This pattern has been on the looms since 1994 and has been redrawn four times. The change that mattered was bringing the repeat in from 32 centimetres to 26. The larger repeat was handsome by the metre and made no sense at all once it was cut into garment pieces — the figure kept breaking in places nobody could explain.
Ground in eight-end satin; the figure is plain weave, which reflects far less, so the bone sits matt against the grey-green rather than glaring out of it. A customer asked for that in the nineties and we have not touched it since.
Warp one colour, weft another. Tilt it and the colour moves. Nothing is printed: the shift is two coloured yarns taking turns on the face.
Gilt thread on an olive ground, drawn from a seventeenth-century fragment. A 48 cm repeat, and 2,400 cards to weave one of them.
Figure and ground are the same thread. The pattern exists only as a difference in how two structures reflect. Flat light hides it; raking light brings it up.
Bring a swatch, a drawing, or just a sentence — "it should drape without going soft" is enough to start. We work backwards from yarn count. Minimum run 30 metres.