American Textile History Museum
From QuiltIndex
The American Textile History Museum houses one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. Its collections contain thousands of books, trade catalogs, business records and personal papers, prints and photographs, a growing costume collection, millions of textiles samples, and hundreds of machines used in textile manufacture. The Museum is an unparalleled resource for the study of textile history in the United States. You will find a wealth of information about textile art, factory architecture, textile production, technological invention, labor history, industrial organization and the everyday life of mill towns.
- source: The American Textile Museum, http://www.athm.org/collection.htm
Textile Sample Book Collection: Mill samples constitute one of the largest and most extraordinary parts of the Museum's textile collection. The samples were kept originally either as a record of production or were developed as a selling tool for the mill or its selling agent. The samples, which number in the millions, include cotton, woolen, worsted, silk, and synthetic fabrics produced by hundreds of American manufacturers. These small swatches of fabric are invaluable because they were never used, and so retain the original colors and finishes of the fabric so often lost through years of exposure to light, air, wear, and cleaning processes. No other institution has such a breadth or depth of American mass produced textiles.
The Museum's collection of cotton prints is particularly strong in the period from 1870 to 1940 and includes samples manufactured by Cocheco, Arnold, Hamilton, and Merrimack Print Works, among others. Most are as crisp and vibrant as the day they were printed. Woolen and worsted samples from some of the United States' smallest and largest manufacturers show the wide variety of different colors and weaves that can be used to create splendid apparel fabrics.
- source: http://www.athm.org/textiles.htm
