Summary

Alternative Name(s): Textile Rule, Lunometer

Densimeter glass, Type A, 100-170 denier, in box. It may have been made by K. Onishi & Co. (or less likely, Sodeyama).

The donor explains: 'I worked in the textile industry or more than 40 years and have a number of historical items that were in use by textile people around the middle of last century prior to the computer making them obsolete. All items were given to me in the early years of my textile career spanning from 1960 to 2000... The densimeters are used to determine how many threads per cm/inch in flat woven cloth, such as cotton bed sheeting and other plain wovens, in either the warp or weft direction. It saved having to use a pick counter glass which was quite tedious... The densimeter glasses [two of them] were given to me when I worked with H. Hanna & Co., who were importers of various textiles firstly from Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan and later from China.

'I started work in Flinders Lane for A.R. Darlington & Co, who were textile wholesalers to the garment industry. I worked for them for 7 years before moving to Bekaert Textiles who had a jacquard weaving mill at Blackburn South before relocating to Dandenong South where they are today.

'I worked for them for 10 years before moving to David Galt Industries in Coburg who amongst other products produced the very popular Tontine pillow range, as they were not true textile people I left after 2 years to work for Colortex Fabrics who were printers of textiles for a wide variety of end uses. They became part of the Tennyson Textile organisation and had many amalgamations which meant my position looked like becoming redundant, so I took up an offer to be a Textile Product Development Manager with H. Hanna & Co, which meant some time for me in Pakistan helping the emerging mills there to produce products for the Australian market. My background of weaving and printing was very beneficial.

'After about 4 years an offer was made to me by Bekaert to return to start up a new division to produce other household textiles than their basic line of mattress ticking. I stayed with them for about 15 years before I retired to my farm to raise beef cattle.'

Physical Description

Hinged rectangular box, covered with green paper and lined with black fabric. Contains a rectangular densimeter with thick glass body, printed in black with scales (in centimetres) along top and bottom, 100-170 (denier), and fine vertical lines between. A glass tab with a red vertical line, framed in metal, slides along the surface of the main body to facilitate the measurement.

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