Educational Silk Exhibit. For Textile Schools, Colleges, Universities and Department Store Personnel Work

South Manchester, CT: Cheney Brothers, 1906. Good. First edition presumed, n. d. (ca 1906); 17 x 12 1/2; large, heavy, card stock portfolio (the two boards separated), printed in black; eight wall charts on heavy card stock, illustrated with photographs, drawings, and silk samples; seven of them with a string to upper margin for hanging; boards with scuffing to edges and some age-toning and spotting; charts with a bit of rubbing and wear to edges and corners; two of the charts missing two swatches of fabric each; overall in good to very good condition.The Cheney brothers of Manchester - Ward, Frank, and Rush - began their career by investing in cultivating the notoriously-difficult to grow mulberry trees, the food source of the silkworm, in 1833. Quickly realizing that the project would be a failure and that the money lay in processing, rather than in raw production, the brothers partnered with their other brother Ralph and another investor and opened the Mt. Nebo Silk Mills in 1838, which would be renamed the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company in 1854. By the time the second Industrial Revolution rolled in in the 1860s, the Cheney business was well on its way to becoming the largest silk manufacturer in the United States and the only company to manage all phases of silk production, but the actual raising of silkworms. Instead, they imported silk cocoons from Asia. The Cheney brothers were not only businessmen, but also inventors (their patented Rixford Roller would revolutionize the silk manufacturing process), investors (an employee of theirs and an ex-Colt firearms employee, Christopher Spencer, would invent and patent his revolutionary Spencer Gun in 1860, with the Cheneys' backing, in their own factory), philanthropists (they would build numerous community centers, schools, hospitals, a railroad, etc.), and generous employers (providing free, on-site, modern accomodations for the workers and their families). Unfortunately, the Great Depression and later, during WWII, the ushering of synthetic fabrics, would spell the demise of the company, which would ultimately be bought and dismantled by the J.P. Stevens and Co. of New York in 1955.The current educational charts, lavish and well-executed, showed the cultivated stages of silk, including actual cocoons and frisons, and provided numerous samples ( over 30 ) of silk ropes and raw-silk threads, and pile, gown, necktie, upholstery, and decorative silk fabrics.