This is the title page of Louis Crommelin's seminal ‘Essay towards the Improving of the Hempen and Flaxen Manufactories in the Kingdom of Ireland,’ in 1705. Crommelin (1652-1727), a Huguenot, established a model linen factory in Lisburn in the late 1690s, and was once identified as the father of the Irish linen industry. Modern scholarship has amended this view, and the arrival of settlers from northern England in the mid-17th century is now seen as much more significant.