Multi-million pound private jets could be decked out in fabrics made using techniques pioneered by Bradford's Sir Titus Salt.

The move follows a visit to Salts Mill in Saltaire by Joyce Dalton, technical director of Dalton Lucerne, a Macclesfield firm which makes mohair and cashmere fabrics used to line the interiors of luxury planes for the rich and famous,

Much of her work is highly specialised making curtains, cushions, carpets and wall linings, in accordance with the every whim and desire of her well-to-do clients.

A couple of months ago Mrs Dalton and her managing director Tim Owen visited Salts Mill in pursuit of some pearls of wisdom from the site of Sir Titus's empire.

In his time the milling giant was the world's leading producer of mohair and Alpaca fabrics and Mrs Dalton wanted to glean information from the master to help develop her own Alpaca range.

She drew a blank at the mills, but was put in touch with Bradford Industrial Museum which has the only two remaining Salts Mill Alpaca sample books in the world dating back to 1853.

After the dust had been blown off the ancient ledgers and several meetings later the museum agreed to help Mrs Dalton and make up some Alpaca samples.

The fabric fanatic told the Telegraph & Argus: "After having seen Sir Titus Salt's fabrics we were absolutely fired up to make some of our own using his techniques.

"The museum said they would do some weaving for us and it seemed like a good idea. It's really gripped us - we've got Salt fever."

Mrs Dalton said the more she looked in to the history of Titus Salt's rise from rags to riches the more parallels she could draw with her own experience, although she hadn't quite got to the 'riches' stage yet.

She said: "We get our Alpaca wool from Arequipa in Peru which is the same town where Sir Titus got his from. He started off by sub-contracting his weaving work out to mills throughout Bradford and that's what we're doing with mills in Lancashire."

And Mr Owen said the sample books were the equivalent of the Holy Grail in wool spinning.

Museum demonstrator and trained loom tuner Greg Kotovos, who has worked in textiles since he was 16, has been running up the Alpaca samples on the museum's original looms.

He said: "We have got almost the same technology, if you like, that Titus Salt had. We are literally using the same machines to weave the warps for the samples as his workers would have used, so the quality is almost identical."

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