The Warner Textile Archive is the largest publicly owned collection from a luxury textile manufacturer in the UK. The Archive is housed in the original Warner & Sons mill in Braintree that was refurbished in 2004 to hold the significant collection.
The collection comprises over 100,000 items, including designs on paper, hand woven textiles, printed textiles, business records, photographs and manufacturing equipment. At its height, Warner & Sons were producing fabric for royal weddings and funerals, and decorating palaces. The family business pioneered several textile manufacturing techniques that have never again been replicated.