A sawtooth shed on Waters Green, Macclesfield. Twenty-four hand jacquards, eight electronic, nineteen people.
WEFT works out of a shed on Waters Green in Macclesfield, put up in 1927. The roof is a sawtooth: north-facing glazing the length of the building, designed for passing cloth, and unaltered in ninety-nine years.
Twenty-four hand jacquards, eight electronic jacquards, four rapier looms. A hand loom gives three to four metres a day; an electronic one gives seventy to ninety. That is not a story about old and new replacing each other. Large repeats, brocading and anything that needs a shuttle thrown by hand can only be done on the hand looms; plain colours and standard figuring run more consistently on the electronics.
Nineteen on the books. Three in design, eight weaving, three passing cloth, two on dye liaison, the rest management and maintenance. The youngest weaver is thirty-one; the most senior has been here twenty-seven years.
All mulberry silk, from two filatures we have bought from for decades, mostly 6A with some 5A. Every delivery is tested on arrival for denier, tenacity, elongation and cleanness, and the records are kept for three years.
Weekday mornings by appointment, six people maximum. The weaving floor runs at around 85 dB and we will give you plugs. Flat shoes please, and nothing that sheds fibre.
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.