A comprehensive 1808 Scottish treatise on hand-loom weaving by John Duncan, organised as seven essays. They cover plain cloth (winding, warping, beaming, drawing-in, loom parts, treadling, calculation tables), tweeled cloth with many numbered drafts, double cloth and draw looms, crossed-warp gauze and nets, spots, brocades and lappets, the economy and mechanisation of weaving, and cloth manufacturing with tables of warps and reeds. It includes numerous threading and treadling drafts, design-paper drawings, tables for weavers and engraved plates of looms and machinery.