Spencer House is London’s most magnificent
eighteenth-century aristocratic palace
Built between 1756-1766 for John, first Earl Spencer, an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997) it is London’s finest surviving eighteenth-century town house.
How to Read Silk
As part of London Craft Week, we were delighted to welcome Natalie Jones and Alex Daniels from Humphries Weaving silk mill in Suffolk to talk us through the creation of the bespoke silk damask fabrics commissioned as part of the restoration of Spencer House in the early 1990s. A fragment of original eighteenth-century Pavia damask was used as the basis for the pattern, which was then translated into punch cards for weaving on a Jacquard loom. Although each fabric is woven using only one colour of silk thread, the background is woven vertically (using the warp) and the pattern is woven horizontally (using the weft). The difference in the way these contrasting surfaces reflect the light allows the eye to read the design.
Images: © Jarrold Publishing/Spencer House; A Jacquard loom showing information punchcards, National Museum of Scotland, Stephencdickson, released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
