Joseph Barlow Robinson was a prolific sculptor, designer and author. After the 1862 International Exhibition he collated this commemorative volume consisting of 40 pages of textile specimens, including a piece of Courtaulds mourning crêpe, ribbons, dress silks and heavy furnishing silks.

The silks in this book show the most fashionable dress and ribbon silk designs, as chosen for the 1862 exhibition. As a whole, the volume provides us with an invaluable record of the quality of design of British silks made by Britain's best silk manufacturers. It demonstrates the work of the silk weavers who successfully competed against the very high quality and fashionable silks produced in France, and gives precise datable evidence of the impact of design education, and new technology, as seen in the numbers of silk samples dyed with artificial, aniline dyes. The samples representing the London firm of Keith & Co show a range of boldly coloured furnishing silks, which are useful to compare to the smaller scale dress silks and ribbons. While some silk manufacturers are still based in London, for instance, Kemp, Stone & Co, of Spitalfields, and D. Walters & Sons, the book is dominated by samples of broad and decorative ribbons, which had become a specialism of the Coventry manufacturers including Cash & Co. Other silk manufacturers represented in the book are based in Manchester and the surrounding area, which had taken over from London as the centre of the British textile industry.