Every plate on this site, and where it came from.

Nothing here is generated. Each image is a photograph or a museum object, reproduced under the licence stated.

Pl. I
Cotton textile mill
Cotton mill interior, Central Asia, 1911. Three-colour photograph by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii.
Author
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii
Date
1911
Holding
Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. II
Salesman's Sample Book (England)
Salesman's sample book, England, 1784. Woven wools, numbered by hand for order reference.
Author
Unknown
Date
1784
Holding
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. III
Salesman's Sample Book (England)
Salesman's sample book, England, 1784. The commercial range, bound for the road.
Author
Unknown
Date
1784
Holding
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. IV
Pattern Book (Germany)
Pattern book, Germany, 1760. A weaving draft — the specification, drawn square by square.
Author
Unknown
Date
1760
Holding
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. V
Pattern Book (Germany)
Pattern book, Germany, 1760. Bands of draft, worked out before a single thread was warped.
Author
Unknown
Date
1760
Holding
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. VI
Sample book, France
Fabric sample book, France, 1850. Printed cottons in madder red and aubergine.
Author
Unknown
Date
1850
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. VII
Sample book, France
Fabric sample book, France, 1850. Ten colourways to a page, each with its own run.
Author
Unknown
Date
1850
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. VIII
Sample book, France
Fabric sample book, France, 1850. The dark end of the card — aubergine, oxblood, near-black.
Author
Unknown
Date
1850
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. IX
Queen Street Mill — reeds
Warp through the reed, Queen Street Mill, Lancashire. Photograph by Clem Rutter.
Author
Clem Rutter
Date
2014
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Source ↗
Pl. X
Queen Street Mill — pirns
Pirns, Queen Street Mill, Lancashire. One still carries its origin stamp.
Author
Clem Rutter
Date
2014
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Source ↗
Pl. XI
Queen Street Mill — weaving shed
Weaving shed, Queen Street Mill, Lancashire. Photograph by Clem Rutter.
Author
Clem Rutter
Date
2011
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Source ↗
Pl. XII
Finlayson & Co. — Plevna weaving hall
Weaving hall, Finlayson & Co., 1877. Six hundred looms under one roof.
Author
Unknown photographer
Date
1877
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
Public domain
Source ↗
Pl. XIII
Punched cards
Punched jacquard cards, laced in sequence. The pattern, made machine-readable.
Author
Jamain
Date
2017
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Source ↗
Pl. XIV
Hand-loom for silk weaving, Kanchipuram
Silk handloom, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Photograph by McKay Savage.
Author
McKay Savage
Date
2008
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Source ↗
Pl. XV
Container Terminal Tollerort
Container terminal at night. Where a season either lands or does not.
Author
Huhu Uet
Date
2015
Holding
Wikimedia Commons
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Source ↗

Colophon

How this site is made.

Typefaces: Newsreader for the editorial voice, set with its optical-size axis. Inter Tight for every shelfmark label, table and figure. Both self-hosted.
Palette: Sampled from the plates themselves: parchment #F2EDE3, ink #1B1714, oxblood #5C2A2C, olive #52462F and gold #A6906D.
Film: Film I — undyed linen from swatch through spreading and seam to finished garment. Produced for QTMBG.
Images: Fifteen plates from public collections, chiefly Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and Wikimedia Commons. Licences are recorded above, plate by plate.
Build: Next.js with the App Router, React server components, no analytics and no third-party trackers. Typography and layout in hand-written CSS.
Accessibility: Semantic landmarks, a visible skip link, keyboard focus rings, captions on every plate, and full respect for prefers-reduced-motion — which also suppresses the hero film.

Quantum Branding LLC · Wyoming, United States · me@qtmbg.com

Cotton textile mill

Salesman's Sample Book (England)

Salesman's Sample Book (England)

Pattern Book (Germany)

Pattern Book (Germany)

Sample book, France

Sample book, France

Sample book, France

Queen Street Mill — reeds

Queen Street Mill — pirns

Queen Street Mill — weaving shed

Finlayson & Co. — Plevna weaving hall

Punched cards

Hand-loom for silk weaving, Kanchipuram

Container Terminal Tollerort

How this site is made.