Visit to Warner & Sons Archive

October 2024

A coach party of members and friends enjoyed a private visit to the Warner Textile Archive in Braintree. 

Warner & Sons, founded in 1870, was one of the most respected furnishing silk manufacturers in the UK.   In 2004 Braintree District Museum Trust raised £2.6 million to save their complete archive for the nation.  It is the largest publicly owned collection of furnishing fabrics from a luxury textile manufacturer in the country, now housed in the original Warner & Sons mill which was refurbished to hold this significant collection of fabrics and records dating from the 18th century to the end of the 20th. 

The Archive contains hundreds of thousands of fabric samples: handwoven silks, velvets, printed fabrics; paper designs, jacquard loom punchcards, print papers, print blocks, pattern books, production and marketing records.  There is a huge amount still to be catalogued but the collection gives an extraordinary record of textile manufacturing across the centuries from production methods and trends to design development and changing fashions, marketing, sales and distribution.

Key designers represented in the Warner Textile Archive include Dora Batty, Edward Bawden, Frank Davies, Marion Dorn, Alec Hunter, Owen Jones, Theo Moorman, William Morris, Arthur Silver, Eddie Squires, Marianne Straub, Bruce Talbert, Bertrand Whittaker and Herbert Woodman.

Warner & Sons have a long tradition of supplying textiles for royal events and palaces. Queen Victoria was one of their  high-profile customers. She initiated a longstanding relationship, which was continued by many subsequent monarchs. Warner & Sons provided silks, and cloth of gold, for the coronations of Edward VII, George V, George VI, and Elizabeth II, some of which were re-used in the coronation of King Charles III. Their fabrics can still be seen in many royal palaces and residences, and thanks to the archive, unique decorative schemes and upholstery can be refurbished and conserved with exact copies.  

The archive is open to researchers and booked parties, a unique collection of extraordinary value anyone studying textile manufacture.

 https://warnertextilearchive.co.uk/