Kenwood Wool Products Pink Vintage Wool Blanket 88” x 74”

Measures 88” x 74” 100% wool vintage pink blanket by Kenwood Wool Products. Excellent vintage condition, no stains or flaws History: The Kenwood Mills of Arnprior (famous for Kenwood blankets) began in 1918 when the US company F.C. Huyck & Sons took over a factory building of Griffith & McNaughton [Griffith-McNaughton] on William Street in Arnprior. Griffith & McNaughton, founded in 1915, had originally made shirts and then, during World War I, switched to socks and blankets. Huyck named the Arnprior factory “Kenwood Mills” after a village near Albany, New York where the American owners had operated their mill for years. In the 1960s/70s, Kenwood in Arnprior, which had originally made wool blankets, switched to the production of paper machine clothing ( large continuous felts used by paper manufacturers). For a time, Kenwood was the largest employer in town, with 300 employees. In 1962, the Kenwood operation was amalgamated with another Canadian Huyck subsidiary to become Huyck Canada Ltd. In 1980, a huge British conglomerate, BTR Paper Groups, bought the entire Huyck Corporation with all its divisions, including Arnprior. Weavexx was a wholly-owned subsidiary of BTR created in 1992 through a merger of Huyck Canada and Niagara Lockport Industries Canada Ltd.The Arnprior plant was later taken over by Weavexx, which closed its Arnprior operations in 1996.