Explore the origins of Warner & Sons, and furnishing fabrics design development more broadly, at our Warner & Sons Gallery at Braintree Museum.
Our Warner & Sons Gallery at Braintree Museum offers visitors a glimpse into the vast collection held by the Warner Textile Archive. The Warner & Sons Gallery at Braintree Museum captures the essence of design growth and change in furnishing fabrics over more than 150 years. Delve into the silk manufacturing heritage of Braintree, learn about key industrial designers of the twentieth century including Marianne Straub, Eddie Squires and Marion Dorn, and see intricate woven silks and ground-breaking textile inventions up-close.
Highlights of the gallery include:
- French toile du Jouy from c.1810 collected by Warner & Sons in the 1930s.
- Fine silks from c.1870s designed by Owen Jones.
- Warner & Sons printed patterns purchased by former prime ministers Winston Churchill c.1918, and Margaret Thatcher c.1980s.
- Experimental powerwoven designs by Theo Moorman c.1930s.
- Developmental woven fabrics in vibrant colours which emerged as early examples of Art Deco in the 1920s.
- Innovative woven fabrics c.1950s, including one of the earliest cloths mass-produced using lurex, and patterns produced for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
- Fabrics produced for the royal household, such as a piece of ivory silk woven with silver threads for Princess May (Queen Mary) for her wedding in 1893, and ‘Queensway’ manufactured by Warner & Sons for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.


