Warner Textile Archive celebrates the ancient and deep entanglement between textiles, people, and our world with the Fashion and Textile Museum exhibition Textiles: The Art of Mankind
The Warner Textile Archive is pleased to collaborate with the Fashion & Textile Museum, and the Jo Ann C. Stabb Collection at University of California, Davis to loan rule paper ‘Cecil Border’ for the exhibition Textiles: The Art of Mankind (28 Mar 2025 – 7 Sep 2025).
Our collection includes a large number of rule papers. These are enlarged patterns drawn in a grid, mapping out the design for weaving. They are used by card cutters to plan how to produce the Jacquard cards, which form the code made through punched holes on cards, that are fed through the loom for the woven pattern to be created. In order to make it easier for the card cutters to clearly see the detail in the design, rule papers usually depict a design in a much larger scale than the finished fabric. Bright colours are used on the rule papers to show the card cutters the order in which threads should be passed through the loom.
‘Cecil Border’ is a rule paper for a design manufactured by Daniel Walters & Sons. Throughout the nineteenth century, Daniel Walters & Sons had been the dominant firm in furniture silk manufacture. By 1875, Daniel Walters & Sons had built one of the first, and largest, factories in the UK for the weaving of silks, known as New Mills, Braintree. In 1894, a deal was made between Daniel Walters & Sons and Warner & Sons, whereby the latter would acquire the factory buildings, equipment, textile samples and artwork of the former. Warner & Sons paid £77,653 in 1894 to acquire Daniel Walters & Sons, the equivalent of approximately £8.5 million in 2025. Warner & Sons moved the majority of their business to New Mills. Today, the Warner Textile Archive preserves and makes accessible the collection of Warner & Sons and Daniel Walters & Sons, still housed at New Mills.
‘Cecil Border’, a rule paper for a design manufactured by Daniel Walters & Sons.
The rule paper features in a part of the exhibition dedicated to the connection between mathematics, science and textile manufacture.
The loom inspired the computer, and the exhibition showcases the connection between the Jacquard loom from 1801 and the development of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in 1837, and the binary programming systems he developed with Ada Lovelace which led to the computer.
Textiles: The Art of Mankind celebrates the ancient and deep entanglement between textiles, people and our world. Through the beauty of textiles, you encounter human ingenuity that can be traced from pre-history to our digital age. Textiles reveal the human desire to engage with texture and colour, record histories, thoughts and feelings, and preserve skills to hand down generations. Across the globe, they carry sacred significance, express our cultural regard for animals, while other’s symbolise life’s mysteries.
Told through themes spanning materials, identity, collaboration, and sustainability, Textiles: The Art Mankind explores how craft and creativity connects society.
Textiles: The Art of Mankind is curated by Mary Schoeser MA FRSA, who has authored 280 publications, including ‘World Textiles: A Concise History’ (Thames & Hudson 2023).
Formerly Archivist for Warner & Sons, since 1991 she has been consultant archivist to firms such as Liberty London, as well as advising museums in Britain and the USA, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art
