Can Marfà: How Mataró Turned Knitted Loops into an Industry

A factory becomes a museum

Mataró sits on the Mediterranean coast, north-east of Barcelona. In the nineteenth century, steam-powered factories and the railway connection to Barcelona helped make it one of Catalonia’s major industrial cities. Can Marfà was part of that transformation. The surviving complex consists of two three-storey warehouses linked by bridges, with a chimney between them. The Catalan museum network dates the Manchester-style buildings to 1880–1881; today, the smaller warehouse houses the knitwear branch of the Museum of Mataró. [1][2]

The city’s audio guide describes Can Marfà as Spain’s leading knitwear factory of its period, particularly in the quantity and quality of its underwear production. It reports that around 1,500 people depended on the factory’s work and that the site held as many as 22 sets of looms. The same guide says the factory handled the chain from spinning through garment making, sold goods across Spain and exported to Europe and the Americas. Those are claims made by the municipal guide about Can Marfà; they should not be turned into a headcount for every knitter in Mataró or treated as a census of the entire city. [3]

The guide remembers the factory siren as a clock for the city. It is an evocative description, but it also points to something practical: industrial work organised time beyond the factory gates. Shifts, transport, deliveries and the daily routines of workers all had to meet the rhythm of production. Can Marfà’s importance was not only measured in garments. It was woven into the way Mataró lived and worked.

Today, the permanent exhibition Mataró, a textile capital presents more than a hundred objects from the Jaume Vilaseca collection: machinery, clothing, advertisements, tools and documents. The textile holdings at the Museum of Mataró span more than two centuries, from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twenty-first, and the Jaume Vilaseca Foundation collection contains more than 6,000 objects related to knitwear production and trade. The museum is therefore not simply a preserved factory floor. It is a researched collection assembled to make a dispersed industrial history legible. [1][4]

The people behind the machines

Factory histories often preserve the names of owners and machine makers more readily than the names of the people who operated the equipment. The museum’s collection helps recover the structure of the work even when an individual worker remains unnamed. Its exhibition describes a workforce divided by sex and age: women were concentrated in yarn and fabric production and finishing, while men more often operated or supervised large machinery and took on technical tasks; children performed auxiliary work. The museum also notes that women were paid less and that piece-rate work could make wages irregular. These are the exhibition’s account of historical labour patterns, not a description of every worker’s experience or a rule that went unchallenged. [5]

The surviving records make those patterns easier to question. A photograph of workers in the fabric section, dated 1910 and identified with the Hijos de Antonio Escubós factory, is held in the Jaume Vilaseca Foundation image archive. A 1950 cutting table carries the name of Géneros de Punto Agustí, a Mataró firm. An 1889 export book records prices and customer orders for the Sobrino de Antonio Regàs factory, including orders chiefly associated with colonial markets. None of these records alone tells a complete story of a worker’s life. Read together, however, they connect production, skill, gender, business and trade. [5]

That distinction matters when we look at the machines on display. Some records name the firms that made or supplied an object; that is not the same as naming the people who used it. A machine catalogue can tell us what a tool did and where it came from. Payroll books, photographs, oral histories and correspondence may be needed to identify its operators. The museum’s work of collecting and documenting is part of the history, but it does not fill every gap in the archive.

Five objects, five stages

1. A machine for berets. The museum catalogue dates a rectilinear weft-knitting machine to the first half of the twentieth century and identifies its maker as Machinery for Knit Fabric, S.A., in Olot. In weft knitting, a single yarn travels across the needle bed to form successive rows of loops. The museum says this machine specialised in berets—a reminder that industrial knitting did not mean one generic sweater machine. Product shape, scale and construction called for different equipment. The machine is now part of the Can Marfà collection; its catalogue does not say that it was originally installed in the Marfà factory. [6]

2. Fibre containers. These containers, dated 1900–1930, held fibre as it left the spinning machines and carried it to the next stage of yarn production. That may sound like a humble task, but reliable movement of material is what allows a production line to keep going. The museum singles out cotton as an especially useful fibre for hosiery and underwear: it is elastic, works well with machinery and readily takes dye. The container sits at the beginning of a chain whose later steps include knitting, finishing and sewing. [7]

3. A thistle-combing machine. Made by La Cooperació Fabril of Olot around 1905, this machine raised the surface fibres of knitted cloth to change its feel and appearance. The old method used the hooked tips of thistles, known locally as cardots; metal combs later took their place. The process made a soft, raised finish and helped Mataró develop a reputation for felted knit fabric. Here, “finishing” is not a final flourish. It changes the textile itself, and it adds another skilled stage between the knitted loop and the finished garment. [8]

4. A dye vat. The museum dates this vat to the last quarter of the nineteenth century and attributes it to Autotex, S.A., in Viladecavalls. It was used to dye tubular fabric before sewing. A roller allowed the fabric to circulate through the bath until the colour became even; after the dye set, the vat could be emptied and rinsed. The object makes colour part of industrial process rather than a design choice made only at the knitting machine. The catalogue identifies the vat’s function and provenance; it does not identify a particular garment that passed through it. [9]

5. A cutting table. This 1950 table came from Géneros de Punto Agustí, S.L., in Mataró. Garment pieces were arranged on knitted fabric according to graded patterns before cutting. The layout—known in Catalan as marcada—determined how efficiently the fabric was used and therefore affected the cost of the product. Knitting creates a flexible surface; turning that surface into a garment still requires decisions about pattern placement, waste, size and assembly. The table is a useful counterpoint to the knitting machine: loops make cloth, but planning and cutting make the cloth into clothing. [10]

These five records should be read as a regional sequence of processes, not as a single machine line from one factory. Their makers are listed in Olot, Viladecavalls and Mataró, and their dates span the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The museum brings them together because each answers a different question: how yarn was supplied, how loops were formed, how texture and colour changed, and how fabric was prepared for a person to wear.

A short chronology

• Mid-eighteenth century onward: the Museum of Mataró’s textile collections begin with objects that document an industry older than the surviving Can Marfà factory building. [1]
• Late nineteenth century: steam technology and the railway strengthen Mataró’s industrial position; Can Marfà’s Manchester-style warehouses are built in 1880–1881. [2][3]
• 1889: an export book from the Sobrino de Antonio Regàs factory records prices and customer orders, chiefly for colonial markets. [5]
• Early twentieth century: knitwear production expands through specialised machinery, material handling and finishing; the museum’s collection includes objects from multiple regional manufacturers. [5]
• 2015 onward: Can Marfà opens as a branch of the Museum of Mataró, preserving and interpreting the city’s knitwear heritage through the Jaume Vilaseca collection. [1]

Can Marfà’s story is not a simple march from handwork to machines, nor a tale in which one factory explains an entire city. It is a history of specialised skills, changing materials, regional manufacturers, workers whose names are unevenly preserved and a museum building that has taken on a new public life. The machines make the process visible; the catalogues and archives help us ask who made, operated, sold and kept the things that the machines produced.

Sources and image credits

1. Can Marfà. Mataró Museum, Mataró tourism service.
2. Museum of Mataró. Can Marfà Knit Fabric, Catalan Museum Network.
3. “13. Can Marfà,” Mataró Audio Guides, Mataró City Council.
4. “Mataró, capital del gènere de punt,” permanent exhibition, Cultura Mataró.
5. Museum of Mataró. Can Marfà Knit Fabric: Tour and Exhibitions, Catalan Museum Network.
6. “Knitting machine”, object record, Catalan Museum Network.
7. “Fibre containers”, object record, Catalan Museum Network.
8. “Thistle combing machine”, object record, Catalan Museum Network.
9. “Dye vat”, object record, Catalan Museum Network.
10. “Cutter”, object record, Catalan Museum Network.
11. “MataroMuseuGenereDePunt1.jpg”, Clemens Schmillen, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
12. “MataroMuseuGenereDePunt2.jpg”, Clemens Schmillen, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
13. “MataroMuseuGenereDePunt3.jpg”, Clemens Schmillen, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
14. “MataroMuseuGenereDePunt4.jpg”, Clemens Schmillen, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
15. “MataroMuseuGenereDePunt6.jpg”, Clemens Schmillen, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

All five photographs are contextual images of the museum’s display. Their individual Commons file pages provide the original, author and reuse terms. The photographs are not identified here as images of the five separately catalogued objects.