About
The Warner Textile Archive is one of the most important and extensive textile archives in the United Kingdom, housing the historic design and production archive of Warner & Sons — one of Britain's most distinguished silk and furnishing fabric manufacturers. Based at Silks Way in Braintree, Essex, the archive preserves over 130,000 samples, design drawings, pattern books, weave structures, and related documentation spanning some 150 years of luxury textile production from the 1870s to the 1990s.
Warner & Sons was founded in Spitalfields in 1870 and quickly established itself as one of the premier producers of woven silk and furnishing fabrics for the luxury market. The company attracted commissions from royal palaces, aristocratic country houses, London clubs, ocean liners, theatres, and the great public buildings of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Among the most celebrated commissions were fabrics for the refurbishment of Windsor Castle, the Houses of Parliament, the Savoy Hotel, and numerous other prestige interiors. The archive preserves the design record of all of these commissions alongside thousands of standard production patterns.
The collection's depth and diversity is extraordinary. Design drawings in watercolour, gouache, and pencil reveal the creative processes of Warner's designers — many of them trained at the Royal College of Art or continental design schools — as they developed patterns inspired by historical textiles, natural forms, the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, and twentieth-century modernism. Pattern books record every fabric produced, with woven or printed samples attached, creating a comprehensive visual and material record of changing taste across a century and a half.
Moving to Braintree in 1895, Warner & Sons benefited from the town's established position in the English textile industry and the availability of skilled weavers. The company continued producing high-quality woven silks and decorative fabrics until the late twentieth century, when changing markets led to the eventual closure of manufacturing operations. The archive was subsequently secured for public benefit and established in Braintree as a research and educational resource.
The Warner Textile Archive welcomes researchers, designers, students, and interested visitors. Access to the collection is by appointment for detailed research visits, while the archive also runs a programme of public exhibitions, events, and educational workshops that make this remarkable resource accessible to wider audiences. The archive collaborates with textile designers, historians, and institutions worldwide.
Categories:
Highlights
The Pattern Book Collection
At the heart of the Warner Archive is the extraordinary collection of pattern books — bound volumes containing woven fabric samples attached to pages recording weave structures, colourways, and production details for every fabric produced by Warner & Sons. Spanning from the 1870s to the 1990s, these pattern books constitute an unbroken visual and material record of the company's output across 120 years of manufacture.
Running to thousands of volumes, the pattern book collection is a primary source of immeasurable value for textile historians, designers, and researchers interested in the evolution of taste and production in British luxury textiles.
Royal and Prestige Commission Records
Warner & Sons supplied woven silk and decorative fabrics to some of the most prestigious interiors in Britain, and the archive preserves the full design and production record of these remarkable commissions. Documents, correspondence, design drawings, and fabric samples relating to commissions for Windsor Castle, the Houses of Parliament, the Savoy Hotel, ocean liners, and major country houses illustrate the company's position at the pinnacle of British luxury manufacturing.
The commission records reveal the collaborative process between Warner's designers, clients, and architects, and the extraordinary care taken to match fabrics to specific architectural and decorative requirements.
Design Drawings and Watercolours
The archive holds thousands of original design drawings — in watercolour, gouache, pencil, and mixed media — created by Warner's in-house and freelance designers across the full span of the company's history. These drawings reveal the creative process behind each pattern: sketches, revisions, colour experiments, and finished designs ready for translation into woven fabric.
Many drawings show the influence of historical textiles, natural forms, the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, and the various modernist currents that shaped British decorative art throughout the twentieth century.
The drawings are works of art in their own right, of considerable beauty and historical significance.
Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau Fabrics
Warner & Sons played a central role in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian era, producing woven silks designed by leading figures of the movement including Owen Jones, Christopher Dresser, and designers closely associated with Morris & Co. and the broader aesthetic reform movement. The archive holds extensive material relating to this period, including original designs and fabric samples that document Warner's contribution to the revival of traditional weaving techniques and the development of a distinctively British approach to pattern design.
The Art Nouveau period is similarly well represented, with sinuous, organic designs that reflect the continental influences absorbed by Warner's designers.
Collections
Warner & Sons: A Legacy in Silk
A permanent introductory display telling the story of Warner & Sons from its Spitalfields origins in 1870 through to the closure of manufacturing in the 1990s. Features highlights from the pattern book collection, original design drawings, photographs of the Braintree factory, and examples of prestigious commission fabrics.
The Art of Weave: Design and Craft
An educational display exploring the technical and artistic aspects of silk weaving, using samples from the archive to illustrate different weave structures, the Jacquard loom mechanism, and the journey from design drawing to finished fabric.
Current Exhibitions
An exhibition drawing on the archive's extraordinary wealth of nature-inspired designs, from Victorian naturalistic florals to stylised Art Nouveau botanicals and mid-century abstract plant forms, exploring how British textile designers have interpreted the natural world across 150 years.