An encyclopedia article on costume by Russell Sturgis, defining costume as traditional or national dress as distinct from changing fashion. It surveys dress from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, covering garments such as the peplos, chiton, toga, bracae, hose, doublets and women's gowns. Illustrated with line engravings of Greek vase-paintings, Roman statues and medieval dress.

A two-page encyclopedia article on the cotton manufacturing industry. It surveys the history of cotton spinning and weaving, the 18th-century inventions (fly-shuttle, spinning jenny, water-frame, mule, power loom, cotton gin), and the successive machine processes from opening and carding to ring spinning. It closes with statistics on spindles, looms, output and employment in Britain and the United States, drawn from the 1890 census.

Encyclopedia article on cotton from the Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas (1902), covering the botany of the main Gossypium species, climate and cultivation, hand harvesting, and ginning with the roller-gin and Whitney's saw-gin. It also treats baling, uses of cottonseed oil and meal, pests and fungi, fertilizers, early history in India and the American South, and world production. It includes one engraved illustration of a cotton plant.

A one-page encyclopedia article on embroidery by Russell Sturgis. It defines embroidery as needlework on textile, leather and similar grounds, and surveys its use and fashions in the nineteenth century, including Kashmir shawls and machine embroidery. It also sketches its history, with the Middle Ages and English pictorial work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and briefly describes couching, appliqué, chain-stitch and crewel work.

A one-page encyclopedia entry defining felt as a stuff of wool, fur, or hair whose fibers are entangled and interlocked. It covers the ancient history of felt, the legend of St. Clement, how waste wool is felted by machine with heat, moisture, and beating, and its uses for carpets, hats, garments, boiler covering, and roofing. It also briefly describes making hat felt from fur such as nutria, raccoon, beaver, and rabbit.

Encyclopedia article on plant fibers from the Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas (pp. 317-320). It covers the chemical and physical properties of vegetable fibers, then describes individual fibers: cotton, bombax wool, vegetable silk, New Zealand flax, aloe, Manilla hemp, agave, coir, pineapple, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, esparto, paper mulberry and woody fibers. It gives cell dimensions, sources, uses and regional quality notes, with microscope figures of cotton, flax, hemp, jute, spruce and poplar fibers. It ends with chemical tests and microscopic criteria for telling fibers apart. Signed E. M. Schaeffer.

An encyclopedia article on flax (Linum usitatissimum) from the Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas. It describes the plant's botany, the structure of the fiber and seed, and the uses of linseed and oil-cake. It then covers cultivation (soil, sowing, weeding, pulling, threshing) and fiber preparation by retting, breaking, scutching and hatcheling. It closes with 1899 production statistics for the U.S., Europe and the world. Includes a botanical illustration of the plant.

An encyclopedia article on lace from the Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas (1902). It traces lace from its origins in netting and embroidery through the two main classes, needle-made point lace and bobbin-made pillow lace. It covers European centers such as Venice, Alençon, Brussels, Honiton, Valenciennes, and Chantilly, along with the rise of machine-made net and bobbinet at Nottingham. Five small figures show magnified stitches and the plaited and twisted grounds and woven gimp of pillow lace.

Encyclopedia article on linen, covering its ancient origins, the flax and hemp raw materials, and substitutes such as jute and ramie. It traces the history of linen manufacture in Egypt, England, Ireland, Scotland and continental Europe, and describes the development of hand and machine processing (heckling, spinning, wet- and dry-spun yarn, power looms). It closes with the main types of linen cloth (lawn, diaper, damask, dowlas, cambric and others), the centers that produce them, and the state of the linen trade in the U.S. around 1891.

An encyclopedia article defining the loom and explaining its construction and operation, with emphasis on the plain power-loom and its three basic movements: shedding, picking and beating up. It also covers the hand-loom, fancy (dobby-type) loom with pattern chain, box-motion, Jacquard machine, draw-loom, loom harness and reed. Brief historical notes cover Cartwright's power-loom, Jacquard and his predecessors, and the draw-boy. Three figures show a hand-loom, a power-loom end view and a Jacquard mechanism.

Encyclopedia entry on madder, the red dyestuff obtained from the roots of Rubia species, chiefly Rubia tinctorum. It covers sources of supply (Holland, Southern Europe, Asia Minor, the U.S.), Hindu madder (munjeet) used for East Indian chintzes, the origin of the term Turkey red, alizarin, and garancin. A second entry describes the madder family (Rubiaceae) and its other useful plants, and a botanical engraving of Rubia tinctorum is included.

An encyclopedia article defining weaving and outlining its basic loom movements (shedding, picking, beating up). It surveys the origins of the art in China, Egypt, India and the Bible, the westward spread of textile manufacture to Flanders, England and America, and the development of the fly-shuttle, power loom, ribbon loom and Jacquard machine. It also covers power-loom stop-motions and shuttle protectors, pile weaving, and brief notes on gauze, terry, glass-cloth, hair-cloth and wire-cloth weaving.

Encyclopedia article on wool and the woolen industry, from the Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas. It covers the nature of wool fiber and felting, sheep breeds (especially the merino), wool production and trade statistics for Britain, the U.S. and the world, and the history of woolen manufacture in Europe and the United States. It ends with a description of the processes from sorting and scouring through carding, spinning, weaving, fulling and finishing, and the differences between woolen and worsted goods.