Textile Training in the Late 19th Century: English Influence on The Philadelphia Textile School

by Anastatia Spicer   

With the assistance of a Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant, I conducted object-based and archival research for my MA thesis on looms used in textiles manufacturing schools at the end of the 19th century. My thesis focuses on the founding of the Philadelphia Textile School (PTS). The first textile design and manufacturing school in the United States started in 1884 as a department within the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, the precursor to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Thanks to the Trust’s support, I traveled to the archives of two British textiles schools that were models for the Philadelphia enterprise: Bradford Technical College (now Bradford College in Bradford, England) and Yorkshire College (now the University of Leeds in Leeds, England).

My research examines the dobby handloom, a type of loom imported from the British textile schools to Philadelphia in 1885 that served as the central teaching tool at the PTS (figure 1). The school instructed white men in textile design and mill management through simulated factory environments. The dobby handlooms were part of the first-year course and were used to teach students weave structure and textile design. My thesis situates these educational looms within the broader context of the rise of middle management positions at the end of the 19th century, exploring how practical experience influenced the development of industrial design as a profession.

My time in England allowed me to access student notebooks, architectural plans, curricula, and correspondence from Yorkshire College and Bradford Technical College (figure 2). My first days were spent with Helen Farar, the archivist for Bradford College, who has been working at the school for nearly two decades and generously shared her deep institutional knowledge. Bradford College continues to have a thriving weaving program, and Mrs. Farar has thoughtfully situated the archive in a room adjacent to the active textile department. As I poured over student notebooks, I could look out into the present-day classroom, where early-20th-century looms are still in use.

The Bradford Technical College archive is split between two local institutions, so I followed up with several days of research at Bradford University, which holds a comprehensive selection of early circulars and curriculum notes for Bradford Technical College (figure 3).

After my visit to Bradford, I spent several days researching the Yorkshire College archives at the University of Leeds. Originally founded as a college of science in the 1870s, Yorkshire College’s textile department was one of the best in the country during the late 19th century. The archive held architectural plans for the building (figure 4), as well as extensive photographs of the classrooms during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (figure 5).

On one of my final days in England, I visited a weaving school at Sunny Bank Mills outside of Leeds, which still uses original Yorkshire College dobby handlooms. Much to my delight, Agnis Smallwood, the weaving instructor, generously allowed me to have a go at weaving on one of these historic looms (figure 6). I sat at the small wooden bench and tugged the fly shuttle, and heard the familiar woosh as the thread sped across the web.

It was a moment of tangible connection. I had spent days and weeks imagining this motion, envisioning how this style of loom first arrived in Philadelphia in the 1880s, and now I was, in a sense, joining the lineage of weavers who had learned on these same looms.

Anastatia Spicer just completed her time as Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, University of Delaware. She presented the John A.H. Sweeney Emerging Scholar Lecture, Looms for Technical Education at the Philadelphia Textile School, 1880–1900, at the Decorative Arts Trust’s Spring 2025 Symposium, which you can watch on our YouTube channel.