Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

320 BRITAIN AT WORK. CROMPTON AXMINSTER LOOM (MESSRS. RICHARD SMITH AND SONS, KIDDERMINSTER). THIS LOOM IS CAPABLE OF WEAVING THE FINEST AXMINSTER CLOTH KNOWN AND OF PRODUCING UP TO FORTY YARDS PER DAY AND ANY NUMBER OF COLOUR SHADES. chief designers the sketches are taken to the copyists, who paint them on to pointed paper for the use of the colourists and weavers. This brings to view an important limitation of the carpet-maker’s art. He works with a thick thread, and no line of colour, no diversity of shade, can be smaller than the square of the thickness of the worsted. I he pointed paper is ruled in squares equal in size to the thick- ness of the doubled thread. While the designs have been prepared the wool has been, undergoing treatment. From the stores on the ground floor the worsted yarn, yellowish and oily, is taken to the scouring room and plunged through a series of baths ranged in long succession—first a bath of alkaline solution, next soapsuds, next clear cold water. Swished round and round by long forks, the wool is borne automatically from one bath to the other, then passed between two heavy press rollers. Dried in steam-heated stoves, the yarn is prepared for the dyer, who has already mixed the dye in the troughs. He hangs the hanks on the churning frames in the troughs, and leaves them till the worsted is permeated with the colour. Again the yarn is dried, and next it goes to the winders, whose machines are very similar to those we saw winding the spools for the weavers’ shuttles. Wound on to spools, the yarn is stored in the colourists* department. Hither comes the colourist with the design in his hand, and he carefully selects the colours suited to the pattern from his stock of yarns. The yarns selected are sent to the frame- setting room. Girls receive the spools, and lay them thread by thread across long frames, stretching the yarns from end to end of the frames. Every colour appearing in the Brussels carpet must be represented by at least one thread the full length of the warp, for the whole carpet is of one thickness, and it is the warp that gives it body. The threads of the warp appearing on the surface were formerly selected by a draw-boy, taught to pull certain strings looped round each thread ; but the Jacquard apparatus has superseded the draw-boy, and given to the operation an accuracy and facility very wonderful. By a special process the Jacquard cards are prepared for their function, being perforated in curious fashion. The frames are laid behind the loom—two frames, four frames, or six frames, according to the size and weight of carpet to be woven. From above the loom depend many wires, and attached to them are loops which are passed round the threads on the frames. The cards are hung beside the upper ends of the wires. Linen warp, beam, and