Museum of Capet - spool setting

Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 5 Oct 2019

This is the device that prepares the spools for the spool Axminster loom that is now the only one in the UK. The spool is on the front of the machine to the right and winds in the threads from the creel table to the left. There are 20 separate colours and 189 threads across the 27" width. Each spool is one row in the 288 required for the pattern to repeat. Once the spool has been loaded with thread it goes to a separate machine for threading into the holder that presents the threads to be woven as pile onto the backing cloth formed by the warp and weft. There is a genuine concern that when the yarn on the loom is finally exhausted in some years that there will be a lack of yarn or expertise (or both) to set it up for another run. When the loom was running it would take a bit over a week to run through a full load of yarn but in the museum that is at least 5 years.

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