History - the early cotton and denim industry in the USA

[Paul T]

That other post is sheer poetry!

THis isn't poetry - but it's music. It's the Amoskeag factory song. It's a poignant reminder how huge this industry was, a song about a factory "two miles long and half a mile wide, with 20,000 people working inside."

http://www.plainfolk.com/as_seen_on_tv.htm

[akuma no uta]

this is thread of the month, congrats paul, and my little bit on the subject, my town, waynesboro, pa had an old textile mill that my late grandmother used to work for, i think that was more with sweater fabrics and such, rather than heavy twills. ill try to go take pictures of the old building, the town over from me also has an old abandoned moller pipe organ factory, (not changing the subject) but both these factories died, the textile one very early and the organ factory only 15 years ago..

[pacioli]

The Harris Tweed story is indeed disenheartening. Haggas/Harris Tweed Scotland Ltd's decision to only use their production (of only 4 styles) solely for their own sport jackets may prove to be folly. Initial market reaction did not seem favorable. But Ian MacKenzie/Harris Tweed Hebrides may be the vanguard in preserving Harris tradition with an assortment that offers variety and heritage.

For anyone interested here are the 4 styles Haggas limited their workers to make.

PS, Harris Tweed are hand woven on shuttle looms but the selvage edge is not utilized during garment production.

[pacioli]

Anyone interested in Lowell can benefit greatly from this book. You should be able to find it with a web search.

Here are a few interesting, informative scans.

[pacioli]

Hi Paul- the 1904 text is a superb reference but later Draper publications offer a great deal of detailed drawings. You can find the full text of the various publications (they were updated throughout the years; here's one full text without pictures: http://www.archive.org/stream/laborsavinglooms1907drap/laborsavinglooms1907drap_djvu.txt) but I recommend seeking out a full copy. They can be supplemented with "Cotton Chats," Draper's industry/internal newsletter that offers insight into then new innovations and mill life/culture.

I think the 1906 or 1907 copy is leather bound, but the 1904 (first edition) is most beautiful. The next time you come to NY we can geek out over all the books.

They are by no means impossible to find or super expensive. Feel free to contact me separately if you need some assistance in your quest.

Here's a pic from the 1904 book: http://denimnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/american-shuttle-looms-this-scan-is.html#links

Cool. Interesting eBay auction too, thought I wonder if the buyer will follow through. He's either a timewaster or has a lot of money.

In the first book detailed, there's a good deal of information about the Draper, or Draper-Northrop loom. These became very popular in the south, while mills in the North found it too expensive to replace all their existing looms so, as I understnad it, they contributed to a general move south in denim production. Cone had Whitin looms at first, and moved to Drapers in the 1920s. There's apparently a famous 1904 Draper catalogue all textile nerds covet. (DO you have one, ringring? Can you find me one?).

Draper was apprently based in Hopedale, a town which was first settled in 1842 as a Utopian socialist commune!

Anyway, here's an interesting piece with info from the obituary of James Northrop, who invented the Draper automatic loom - then retired to Santa Ana at the age of 42:

http://www.geocities.com/daninhopedale/drapernorthroploom.html

And some Draper looms in use at Naumkeag, Salem and Interlaken Mills, Rhode Island, circa 1917:

http://www.geocities.com/daninhopedale/draperloomsinmills.html

Illustration from 1904 Draper catalog, downloadable from:

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/topic_loom.html

[Paul T]

Thanks Pacioli, that's great informaiton, next time I'm in NY i will definitely meet up for a geek-out session.

Listening to that documentary, having heard about Brian Haggas at Skye, was rather more heartening. His idea of controlling all production is deluded - he is carving a niche out of a niche, for there are plenty of people who like the fabric who, like me, are not interested in his undistinguished (Chinese-made?) jackets.

When I was in Skye in September, they weren't sure when the Shawbost mill would be up and running, it's great to see they are in operation now and, according to that documentary, they claim to have sold £1m of fabric since then. Their website is still a little basic, though.

http://www.harristweedhebrides.com/range.php

I'm interested in what the mills actually do - presumably just wash and finish the fabric. Does anyone know?

The other weaver mentioned in the programme is Callum MacLean - his website, with a video of the loom in operation, is here:

http://buttoflewistextiles.co.uk/

You can custom-order patterns from him... and here's the direct link for the video:

duNliF_NQZs

[ringring]

I'm interested in what the mills actually do - presumably just wash and finish the fabric. Does anyone know?

Presumably, they just weave and finish the fabric. The spinning and dyeing would be done elsewhere, locally.

I wonder if they are still Crottle dyeing any Tweed yarns?

As a bit of fun for anyone going up to Skye or the surrounding areas, you could try your hand a dyeing with Crottles (what a delicious mouthful of a word), the leafy, seaweedy, lichens that grow on coastal rocks.

There's a gaelic proverb from Skye that goes something like "better a rough stone produces something, than a smooth stone that produces nothing"

Contact dyeing is one of the easiest ways to colour wool using a vegetable dye. You just need a pot, wool (pick clumps off barbed wire fences), some soft water (rain water or even day old urine) and your crottles.

Layer the crottles and and wool in the pot like a Lancashire Hot Pot or Lasagne if you like

Bring to boil and simmer for an hour or a few hours, depending on the shade desired. If you leave the wool in the pot until cool, then the colours will be even darker.

Nice find with that Amoskeag factory song. Music & mills

[Paul T]

I don't think they are crottle-dyeing any yarns at the moment for Harris tweed -but there was an exhibit at Kilmuir showing crottle-dyed yarns, plus photos of the process in the 60s or 70s & I think some locals were still doing it as a craft process.

It is absolutely incredible to be in Skye, see all the colours in the landscape, then the same colours captured in that amazing fabric.

i think the Harris Tweed mills now do the dyeing and spinning - then it's sent out for weaving at home. (The definition of Harris Tweed used to be that dyeing spinning and weaving was done at home, now I think it's just the weaving). Then presumably the mills finish and wash the fabric - and, most importantly, sell it, which is why Haggas had a temporary monopoly.

Thanks for the recipe and the proverb ringring, I can't wait to try some crottle-dyeing. So the wool is dyed before it's carded?

Does make me think also that it would be great to see some James Ravilious or Magnum-style documentary photography of those weaving & dyeing processes.

The sound has gone on my MacBook, but I shall be learning & singing that Amoskeag song soon... especially if I buy a Draper loom & ship it to my front room for use with my crottle-dyed yarn...

[ringring]

Thanks for the recipe and the proverb ringring, I can't wait to try some crottle-dyeing. So the wool is dyed before it's carded?

Traditionally, yes. Dyed and then carded. The recipe I listed is very much a home-brew, lo-fi version, but nevertheless a traditional method used for lichen dyes. You can also do it by boiling up the crottles separately for a few hours and then dyeing the wool in the strained liquid.

Across the pond, the Navajo were using lichens to dye wools for rug making. A kind of Native American Tweed

You're right about the home-weaving. I always associate the word 'mills' with weaving.

I agree about Skye - a haunting place, whose colours (and smell - if you do the crottle dyeing you'll see), are reproduced uncannily in the fabric.

[ringring]

Talking of carding and Scotland, I'm sure I've seen carding machines composed of racks of Scotch Thistles heads (which explains their genus - Cardus)....

[Paul T]

I've updated my website with a story on my recent visit to Cone Mills.

Thanks to all the wonderful people at Cone who were so helpful. I've added this in a bit of a hurry and not all the photos seem to have loaded as yet, but this does include a fantastic Q&A with lots of new informaiton from Ralph Tharpe, Cone's Technical Director.

CONE STORY

[fardin]

i know we are not dicussing tweed here anymore but just wanted to ad a german link of ARTE channel, about a great docu they made a year ago on the family campbell in harris who still hand weave tweed the old way. it was really fascinating to see them work on their products, i wonder if it also exists in english,

here is the german link

http://www.arte.tv/de/Gesichter-Europas/Programm/1562752,CmC=1562742.html

and here the link to their work

http://www.harristweedandknitwear.co.uk/family.html

[Mr Black]

Bit late to the party, but a fascinating thread.

In response to Fardin, there was a series of programmes here a short while back focussing on Saville row and included a piece on modern/current tweed manufacture. Think it was called British Style Genius. on the BBC.

Check out this place. Really like their modern take on a traditional fabric, especially the reflective coat.

http://www.dashingtweeds.co.uk/dt/about/

i know we are not dicussing tweed here anymore but just wanted to ad a german link of ARTE channel, about a great docu they made a year ago on the family campbell in harris who still hand weave tweed the old way. it was really fascinating to see them work on their products, i wonder if it also exists in english,

here is the german link

http://www.arte.tv/de/Gesichter-Europas/Programm/1562752,CmC=1562742.html

and here the link to their work

http://www.harristweedandknitwear.co.uk/family.html

[fardin]

thanks Mr. for the link, looks good yes.

paul and fresco were dicussing tweed a while back thats why i posted my links. and yes the thread is great

[blm14]

hahah my parents live in Lowell, MA. Is there any place I should go check out for production next time I'm there or is it all gone by now?

[ringring]

Talking of Lowell, there's an interesting tale about how rubber soled shoes were invented.

It comes from an Irish immigrant calico printer working at Lowell. Apparently the looms vibrated the floor on which he worked and he had taken to standing on a rubber mat in order to dampen the vibrations.

The problem was that his idea was so good that his rubber mat kept getting stolen. So in order to foil the thieves, he cut up the mat and nailed the rubber to his shoe.

For this little flash of genius, 3 years later, in 1899, Humprey O'Sullivan was granted a US patent for rubber heels and started the O'Sullivan Rubber Company - which should be still active today.

Another little Lowell story, which you could perhaps verify with your parents, is that the mill was a product of industrial espionage. Francis Cabot Lowell had visited mills in Lancashire, England and tried to license their technology. He was refused. But Lowell had a photographic memory and managed to reproduce the water mills and all their machine on his return! - he also sneaked out some sketches of the machinery.

Paul - thanks for the Cone write up. Fascinating, all of it, particularly the period of modernisation, with the introduction of sulphur dyes and open end. The open end wash look is also known as 'salt & pepper' in addition to 'marbled' & 'orange peel'.

This thread prompted me to think back to your book. The passage where you described the origins of denim..

"Quite possibly the missing link came from the textile mills in Lancashire, England, which by 1800 were producing a fabric named denim, made out of cotton and probably designed to echo the look of French wool/silk twills."

I remember thinking at the time that this was a very important fact you were tantalising us with - that denim is english!

I know that the English had been selling cotton twills named as 'De Nime" to give their product a fancier sounding name, like calling a custard pudding 'Creme Caramel'. The breakthrough that transformed the original wool mix Serge De Nime and Fustian (Fustagno) fabrics into denim, was English.

These fabrics had been mixed with cotton - Fustian was wool warp and cotton weft, because up until Arkwright's invention of the Water Frame, no one in Europe had been able to figure out a way of mass producing a cotton thread strong enough to be the warp.

So, with Richard Arkwright's invention, English mills were finally able to produce all cotton twills - and with their access of indigo from US and Indian plantations, denim weaving was made possible.

I wonder if it was Arkwright's hairdressing background that led him to the eureka moment of first stretching the cotton before twisting it, in order to produce a warp strength yarn.

.

[Paul T]

I'm glad you found something new in there! That fact came from a French exhibition catalogue (it's June Marsh's, I will have to borrow it for the source) which had a photo of a Brit sample book from 1800 or earlier. It was a cotton twill... but ironically that particular sample was not blue. So why they had contracted De Nime to the word 'denim' is a mystery.

I still wonder if there are any English 'denims' of that period that look like, well, denim. TO confuse me further, I noticed that in the Montpelier archives there's a blue 'nim' - which carries an old caption saying "facon d'angleterre."

But I didn't have enough knowledge to link those English cotton twills with the technical breakthrough of the Water Frame and cotton warp. Amazing. Thank you.

(and, thanks for that terrific LOwell fact, too, you should write a book!

.

[ringring]

I remember thinking that your english denim statement was quite a bombshell - very subtly dropped, like a velvet cosh.

Then you starting this thread about mills led to pieces being put together....

I'd also love to see a period piece of english denim. Perhaps an enquiry to the V&A is in order....

I'd be interested to see that French catalogue too.

Nice mention of 'nim'. Great work Paul.

[ringring]

PS - I think there are plenty of books on Lowell - I read!

[Mr Black]

I have a friend who works at the V&A. I'll see if she has access to any of the clothing archives.

Although she is french so may purposely try to scupper your claims;)

[salaami]

when ringxring and paul t come together, good things happen.

[Paul T]

it's been good week, bad week for Harris tweed.

A show tonight, with vivien Westwood designs etc.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article5853913.ece

And the news that Brian Haggas's mill has closed down.

[dandandan]

it's been good week, bad week for Harris tweed.

A show tonight, with vivien Westwood designs etc.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article5853913.ece

And the news that Brian Haggas's mill has closed down.

closing of the mill doesn't surprise me since it seemed as though he's producing the tweed only to push his jackets. limiting yourself when you have such a great fabric can only lead to failure.

[pacioli]

For anyone interested my blog is following Lynn Downey's endeavor to recreate part of the voyage Levi Strauss took to reach San Francisco. The intro post is below.

The Adventures of Lynn Downey: The Isthmus

Who knew Panama had anything to do with Levi Strauss? Apparently, Levi Strauss & Co. Historian Lynn Downey did. She is about to undertake an epic journey worthy of a Jules Verne novel to recreate part of Strauss's journey to Gold Rush San Francisco via the isthmus of Panama.

In the 1840s a young Levi Strauss emigrated from Bavaria to New York. When the California Gold Rush hit the news he and his family decided to open a west coast branch of their dry goods wholesale firm. Going through Panama was the shortest route but it posed dangers ranging from yellow fever to murderous bandits. Strauss made it out alive and arrived in San Francisco in March of 1853.

Denim News will be tracking Downey's progress as she rides a historic railroad, maneuvers the Chagres River and hikes an ancient mule trail. Watch for live updates and thoughts from the Historian herself.

When asked about the timing of this trip Downey replied, "It is actually my spring vacation. I am undertaking this trek as part of the research for my next book, a biography of Levi Strauss."

The adventure begins on March 25. Stay tuned!

Levi Strauss & Co Website

Written with contributions from Lynn Downey.

[andewhall]

Amazing. Lyn Downey has possibly the best job in the world, she is like Mrs. Indiana Jones of the denim world.

[pacioli]

And knowing she's a legitimate scholar helps me sleep at night.

[Hendodo]

^^^ wow thats pretty cool. ill be sure to keep up with this. how long will she be on the journey??

[pacioli]

Here's what Lynn had to say: "I am on the isthmus for 3 days, a few days shorter than Levi would have spent.

The isthmus itself is about 50 miles wide."

[Hendodo]

Here's what Lynn had to say: "I am on the isthmus for 3 days, a few days shorter than Levi would have spent.

The isthmus itself is about 50 miles wide."

ok, thanks! i didnt know if she was gonna stay as long as Levi or not..

[Paul T]

thanks for your updates on the site, pacioli, they're wonderful. Good on lynn - how typcial though, a working vacation!

Here's another historic site I came upon recently: Lano Manetta Mills, not sure what they produced, but they look to be one of the earlier mills in the south:

http://landomanettamillshistorycenter.com/services