For over 50 years Humphries Weaving have created bespoke fabric for traditional interiors. These designs have also been utilised for Historic costume fabric, and the inhabitants of these magnificent buildings.
These textiles often feature delicate floral motifs, multiple colours and complex weave constructions. The fabrics have been used for ladies, men’s and children’s costumes, with some of the most well known examples found at Fredericksborg Castle in Denmark. Here, each costume is made by hand, using fabrics closely replicating historical dress found within the historic evidence from their rich archive and collection. This spans nearly 600 years of Danish history.
For these garments we worked in close collaboration with the textiles conservators to create authentic Historic costume fabrics inspired by paintings. Within the paintings you can spot indications of the design found within the sumptuous dress fabrics, and we matched these to colours & designs found within our vast textiles collection.
An example can be found below. On the left is the silver, red & blue 18th Century Dress details, alongside the bespoke fabric on the right. This also features a shiny metallic silver thread.
(Above) Top Image – the newly restored garment featuring our Ashfield Tissue.
Second Image – origional fabric from the Doublet & Hose.
As well as multi coloured, decorative historic costume fabrics we also weave tonal damask. For a project in the United States we created a fabric inspired by a beautiful costume in a museum. We selected a similar design in our archive to that found on the origional garment, and also a newspaper article. We then wove colour trials in vibrant green shades. Finally, the customer selected the green cotton and silk combination, the finishing piece of the unique fabric recipe.
The final area of historic costume fabric are our plain cloths. As woven for the Sashes & knee Ties for the Company of Pikeman & Musketeers, we can create plain cloths in a variety of noble fibres. For this project we wove a custom dyed venetian red in a cotton & wool twill. We also frequently weave silk satins & sateen’s, wool tammys and intricate herringbone designs.
All of our fabrics are custom woven to order for a minimum order quantity of just 15 metres. If you have a project for which you require bespoke historic costume fabric, please do get in contact with a member of our specialist team today.