No. 01
Beam linen, undyed
A plain weave with nothing hidden in it. The flax is left the colour it came out of the field.
- Fibre
- Line linen, wet-spun
- Sett
- 24 ends per inch
- Finish
- Washed, pressed
- Price
- On request
No. 01—The beam
Cloth, and the six weeks it takes.
A weaving atelier working in linen, hemp and undyed wool. We sell the finished bolt and we sell the record of how it came off the beam — sett, fibre, loom width, every metre accounted for.
No. 02—The record
We weave slowly, and we write it all down.
Every bolt leaves the studio with its own page: the sett, the fibre, the width on the reed, the date it came off the beam. Cloth is a record of the hours inside it, so we hand you the record along with the cloth.
- Loom
- 8-shaft countermarch
- Fibre
- Linen · hemp · undyed wool
- Width on the reed
- TBD
- Lead time
- TBD
Touch, read as texture
No. 03—The cloth
Three cloths, on the beam now.
No. 02
Hemp twill, oxidised
A 2/2 twill heavy enough to hold a fold. The copper in the name is the heddle, not a dye.
- Fibre
- Hemp, singles
- Sett
- 18 ends per inch
- Finish
- Off the beam, unwashed
- Price
- On request
No. 03
Wool, six weeks
The slowest cloth in the studio and the reason the lead time is what it is.
- Fibre
- Undyed wool, worsted
- Sett
- 12 ends per inch
- Finish
- Fulled, air-dried
- Price
- On request
No. 04—The process
Six weeks, in three movements.
Step 01
Dressing the loom
Four hundred ends wound onto the beam under even tension, then threaded through the heddles one at a time. Days pass before a single pick of weft is thrown. Most of the six weeks is here, in the part nobody photographs.
Step 02
The rhythm
Treadle, shuttle, beater, and again. The cloth advances off the beam at a rate you cannot watch happening but can measure at the end of the day. A loom has no moment — things do not appear on it, they pass through it.
Step 03
Off the beam
Cut, washed, pressed, measured, and written down. The page that leaves with the bolt is filled in at this bench: sett, fibre, width on the reed, the date. Then the beam is dressed again.
No. 05—In the room
One room, two looms, and a lot of waiting.
The studio is a single north-facing room with a timber floor that flexes when the beater comes back. Two looms, a warping mill, a bench for measuring, and a wall of cones sorted by fibre rather than by colour, because colour is the last thing that happens here and often it never happens at all.
Nothing about the work rewards hurry. A warp wound in a rush is a warp that breaks in week three, and a broken end costs an afternoon to repair. So the pace is set by the material and not by the calendar, and the six weeks in the headline is not a promise about speed — it is a description of what the cloth takes.
Maker’s note · the loom decides the schedule
No. 06—Commission
Commission a cloth.
Tell us what the cloth is for and we will tell you what it wants to be woven from. Nothing is quoted until the fibre is settled, so there is no price on this page and no date on the calendar.
- Lead time
- TBD
- Minimum run
- TBD
- Price
- On request
No. 07—Visit
Come and put your hands on it.
Cloth is not a photograph. If you are choosing between the linen and the hemp, the only useful thing is to hold both.
- Studio
- TBD
- Open
- By appointment · TBD
- Telephone
- TBD
- TBD
Every value above reads TBD because COPPER LOOM is a fictional studio built as a template demonstration. There is no address to print and no number to call, and inventing plausible ones would make this page a nicer lie.