Hardcover book or brochure containing samples of coloured rayon and rayon blended threads, produced by Cotton and Rayon Spinners Ltd of Royton in the early 1950s. The front cover of the book promotes the company’s ‘Re-equipped mills with the most modern spinning, winding and beaming machinery.’

The sample volume also includes nylon/rayon blended threads and lists several other synthetic fibre threads that the company was manufacturing. The front cover mentions ‘Ardil’, a fibre developed in the mid-1940s using peanuts as a cheap alternative to wool; acetate; cuprama; and fibrolane, a casein-derived textile fibre.

The story of Cotton and Rayon Spinners’ creation is one prompted by the need to consolidate and adopt new technology in order to stay competitive in the increasingly international world of the post-war textiles industry. This sample book illustrates some of the measures Lancashire textiles firms took to try to counter the decline of industry, as cotton businesses adapted their working practices to avoid being undercut.

Cotton and Rayon Spinners Ltd was formed out of a merger, the timing of which was significant. The business owners wanted to take advantage of a government subsidy available for modernising machinery: ‘the Cripps scheme’. The front cover of the book promotes the company’s ‘Re-equipped mills with the most modern spinning, winding and beaming machinery’, dating the book to the early 1950s when the Cripps scheme funded this investment. The cover presents the firm as progressive and dynamic.

The fact that the firm put the production of rayon as well as cotton thread at the heart of its operations demonstrates the expanding production of new textile materials in the 20th century, and how Manchester businesses adapted to supply innovative products. The sample volume also includes nylon/rayon blended threads and lists several other synthetic fibre threads that the company was manufacturing. Nylon was developed by Dupont, and was only licensed for external production in 1951, demonstrating that Cotton and Rayon Spinners were adopting new materials and embracing technological change. The front cover of this item mentions ‘Ardil’, a fibre developed by ICIl; acetate; cuprama, a copper-based cellulose fabric patented in Germany in 1934; and fibrolane, developed in the 1940s by Courthauld’s. These synthetics had been developed by scientists mostly in the 1930s and 1940s. The sample book shows how these innovations became commercial and how they were taken up by textile firms in Lancashire.

Amalgamation of textiles businesses was common from the 1920s onwards, as a way of limiting local competition and managing costs. The story of Cotton & Rayon Spinners illustrates the complexity of the waning of the Lancashire textiles industry. The process was not immediate or continuous, rather there were ongoing changes to business practices that tried but, in the end, failed to save British textile manufacturing from decline.

This item tells a story of a Manchester businesses adapting to supply households with greater disposable income with a wider range of desirable, modern goods. Consumers in the post-war years had access to ‘modern’ fabrics with distinctive characteristics that impacted on their experiences of wearing and caring for clothes. The sample book is a sales tool, and therefore documents Manchester’s role as a locus for the exchange of goods.

There is only one other thread sample book in the SMG collections: ref YMS0447 Binder of textile and sewing thread samples from Nottingham Handcraft Company. Surviving thread sample books are much rarer than fabric sample volumes, reinforcing the value of this example to document the work of spinning companies and the ways in which they marketed their products.