In the Museum many extraordinary documents are preserved of the evolution in the textile industry in Chieri, significant for the variety of types and technologies. Spinning machines, mill and beam warpers, hand looms, sample books, measurement and other instruments, coming from private collections and from the donations of manufacturers, peculiar documents of the operation in one of the most ancient and uninterruptedly active places in Piedmont. Several hand looms, with two or four heddles, and parts of looms are exhibited, with coeval accessories, including reed combs, fly and hand shuttles, and parts of Jacquard looms, whose use was introduced in Chieri in the first half of the XIX cent., that is quite early. The mill warper, from the Brunetti collection, is surely the most valuable example of the advanced type, with its ancillary equipment: winding reel, warping creel and stool, as are described in the major XIX cent. treatises. Bossi (1874) mentions that "... warping is one of the most important operations in weaving. And the resulting quality of a fabric much depends on the way the warping has been carried out ...". The most ancient looms preserved in the Museo del Tessile date back to the XVI cent.: these are obviously without shuttle, rather with a stick-shuttle, substantially unchanged through the centuries, to the extent that one could say that on such machines the Romans wove their fabrics at the times of Jesus. The first fundamental step forward in weaving technique dates back to the XVIII cent., with the shuttle loom: the shuttle, a piece of wood, sharpened to be capable to make its way through the threads, with a container inside, where a spool is fitted which leaves back the thread on the way. The spool is flung by a hand operated cudgel and runs on small wheels , thus reducing the weaver's effort.
With this loom, typical in the history of the Chieri textile, weavers live together from the second half of the XVIII to the second half of the XIX cent.  The time between 1830 and 1910 is of great interest, in whose course the textile machines grew largely in number and underwent an accelerated technological modernization , mainly due to the application of new types of motor power: from manual to electrical power. But in the course of the centuries also the construction techniques were deeply changed, and so were the materials employed: the first beam and hand looms were of wood, later of cast and forged iron and finally entirely of steel. Only in the early years of the XX cent., with a semi-mechanization, and chiefly with power operation, with the shuttle still in the main role, but now without wheels and flung by an over-or an under-pick, the looms change from a wooden to a cast iron structure. A new development takes place in about 1950, with shuttleless looms. Even more marked is the technological change after 1960, with gripper looms, capable of 500 strokes per minute; then (up to 1000 strokes) and finally, at the end of the Eighties, the first computerized models. This modern equipment, now being reconditioned to make it operative, will be placed in the future in the Museum's new location.