A particular highlight was a visit to the Wilton Carpet factory in Wilton, near Salisbury, where they make woven carpets (Axminster and Wilton).
Since there were just the four of us, we got a full tour of the entire factory including the design studio.
The shop floor with the looms is one of the loudest places I've ever been (not excluding standing in front of Deep Purple's speaker stack at Wembley many years ago). Some of the looms are almost 100 years old - beautiful pieces of cast iron and steel, with oilers, springs and all manner of properly built stuff :-)
Some photos:
12,000+ threads...
1923 vintage Wilton loom
Modern Axminster loom (computerised - no more Jacqard cards, unlike the older looms)
Hand-stitching any flaws, 8 hours a day, every day
My favorite machine - a carpet lawn mower with helical blades to trim all the pile to the same height after drying and fluffing
--
simon
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