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Subject: Re: [HWE] The Huguenot/Velvet Connection
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 15:58:50 -0800 (PST)
Hello Listers,
I didn't have to go far to find my first reference to
Huguenots and Velvet.
This mention in in the Scoiety Proceedings vol4 I
believe ?
And an interesting yarn if you are related to this
family.
Isaac LeFevre, the founder (Shaw-LeFevre) being a silk
weaver here Type of houses Bishopsgate escaped the
fire of 1666. General style was timber, filled in with
plaster with wide latticed windows upstairs (maximum
light). Master weavers house large and well-built
houses with the top floor specially designed for the
admittance of light and to contain the handlooms, which
manufactured the famous Spitalfields Brocades and
velvet.
They generally were 4 floors with basement. The walls
panelled and the floor boards are secretly fixed to the
joists and dovetailed to each other by stout oak pins,
silk waste being uses a packing, probably to deaden the
sound of the looms overhead. Early weavers worked at
house of their master but later took their work home
and used the upper rooms of their houses. Also free to
grow their own flowers and train their own birds. In
the very early days, the weavers used their roofs no
only for flower growing but also for the trapping of
birds.
They supplied London with singing birds in October and
March. Taken as a class the weavers were very studious.
They studied while working on their looms. p.336
Description of a Weaver's Family (1837)
A weaver generally has 2 looms, one for his wife and
another for himself and as his family increases, the
children are set to work at 6 or 7 years of age to
quill silk, at 9 or 10 to pick silk and at the age of
12 or 13 (according to the size of the child) he is put
to the loom to weave. A child may very soon weave a
plain silk fabric, so as to become proficient in that
branch; a weaver has these four looms on which members
of his own family are employed. Proceeding Vol 12
1917-23
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