The art of weaving

The art of weaving is as old as civilization itself. Over a thousand years ago, our ancestors began creating warps with parallel threads and yarns.

The technique of interlacing warp and weft threads, or ‘weaving’, was mechanised in Lancashire at the end of the 19th century. The secret behind a good cloth is its construction – how many threads of what twist and thickness interlace to create the weave, and the ultimate handle and durability of the fabric.

In the late 1880s, John Moorby Reed designed and patented the cloth constructions which Reed Family still use today. Our ‘recipe’ books of fabric construction and making up details are held under lock and key, and in the head of the leader of today’s family – Mark Reed.

Reeds

The secret to producing a fine cloth in the loom is using fine combs, called reeds, which ‘beat in’ each weft thread into the fell of the cloth and enmesh the weft with the warp to create a fine high thread count fabric.

Since 1852, successive generations of the Reed family have been working and experimenting to produce the ultimate sheeting quality fabric. In the early 1900s, the family pioneered the manufacturing of ‘beetle finish linens’ and in 1936 the Reeds designed and patented ‘graduated reed’ sheeting cloths.

All of these ideas were precursors to the notion of ‘thread counts’ which were first quoted by Italian suppliers in the 1980s and which have since become ubiquitous throughout the bed linen industry.

Handcrafted in India

All our original Reed cloth constructions are currently manufactured in our spinning and weaving factory in Tamilnadu, Southern India – the ‘Manchester’ of Asia. All our manufacturing and embroidery is carried out using renewable energy sources, environmentally-friendly dyeing processes and in strictly non-child labour workshops.