Weaving Draft
and Sketches

These documents, often large in format, are kept in a chest of drawers named according to the technique used to make the fabrics: curvly velvets ("soprarizzi") in 400, soprarizzi in 800 and 1200, velvets, brocades ("spolinati"), damasks, lampases (brocatelles), American. The only exceptions are the specimens that have rightfully become part of the furnishings of the company headquarters, which are framed and hung on the walls. The sketches and the weaving drafts are the starting point for the creation of the fabric designs. A sketch is the freehand creation of the design that will make up the decorative apparatus of a fabric; the weaving draft is the representation of that design on graph paper made so that the punch cards that are used to operate the Jacquard machines installed on the handlooms can be configured and perforated from it. The colors represented on the weaving drafts do not coincide with the colors of the fabric that must be made, but are a further technical coding of the color of the threads to be used to make the fabric: the same color corresponds to the same quality of thread to be used. The large sheets of the weaving drafts and sketches often contain numerous other information on the fabrics too: from the date of creation to the client, from the name of the technician (often external) who produced them to the technical indications on the composition of the fabric.