Art of the Loom

Art of the Loom works from Clitheroe in the Ribble Valley, and belongs to a family of Lancashire textile manufacturers going back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Benjamin Thornber began the family textile business from his farm at Rimington, and it is in recognition of that start that 1815 appears on the company coat of arms. His grandson James moved the weaving business over Pendle Hill to Holmes Mill in Clitheroe in 1906. The present company was incorporated in 2010.

The Art of the Loom brand is deliberately restricted to natural fibres: wool, linen, cotton and viscose, including no fewer than six British woven Shetland wool collections and Harris Tweed. Utopia, which is on our roster in its own right, is the sister brand the same company created to carry the velvets and polyester bases that fall outside that remit, and Benjamin Thornber Ltd is the third name in the group. One page here covers all of them because they are one business.

The company runs its own design studio and its own digital printing, capable of both direct to textile and dye sublimation printing.

Wool is the reason we go here. On a piece that is rebuilt properly, a British woven wool wears in rather than out, and it is one of the few cloths that still looks right on a chair thirty years later.