When Julie Kaminska pushes open Scalamandre’s scarred steel door, she cocks her head to hear the music played by the century-old looms. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, the silky smooth symphony serenades and soothes her. “I just love to hear it,” she says and smiles.

Kaminska, the company’s design director, watches the wooden shuttles flit back and forth like hummingbirds. She weaves her way through the 80-year-old red-brick mill in Long Island City, New York, where some of the world’s most rare and beautiful fabrics and trims are created, and runs her fingers across a piece of passementerie. “These are like little works of art,” she says.

In her heels and psychedelic Pucci dress, she walks past cord alley, where the silk threads are hand-wound together, and passes a woman, nimble as a spider spinning a web, is winding a skein of yarn onto a wooden spindle two times her height. “Silk is like pure luxury,” Kaminska says, cradling a sky-blue skein like a newborn. “See how the light bounces off it.”

In another room, women sit at small tables and hand-tie tassels, beads and embellishments onto trims and tiebacks. One intricate design, which Kaminska declares “feels like heaven,” features 432 teeny tassels per yard.

Scalamandre, whose history is as rich and intricate as a floral-shaped curtain tieback, it has been making luxury trims, fabrics and wallpapers for designers, preservationists and architects ever since its founder, Franco Scalamandre, set up shop in this block-long factory in 1929. The family-owned company, whose production is done in factories around the globe, also makes vintage reproductions for virtually every historic house in America, including the White House. Franco’s daughter, Adriana Scalamandre Bitter, and her husband, Edwin Bitter, remain co-chairs of the company, which is run by sons Mark and Robert.

“Mrs. Bitter is still our greatest design influence,” says Kaminska, adding that each trim is designed by a team. “She’s been my mentor since I came here a decade ago. She’s brilliant and has a great eye.”

The company calls upon eight decades of history when coming up with new designs. Every bit of bullion, scrap of wallpaper and fragment of fabric in the company’s vast vintage collection is stored in archival box waiting for Kaminska to bring it to life.

“I travel all over the world to get ideas,” says Kaminska, adding that a recent visit to Paris yielded an array of vintage fabric swatches. “Inspiration can come from something as simple as a piece of carved marble or the tunic of a medieval knight. Sometimes when museums ask us to make copies, all we have to go on are fragments of the original piece or old black-and-white photos.”

She unfurls a glorious piece of cornflower blue and white fabric. Its large-scale floral design was copied by Scalamandre from the wallcovering at summer palace of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg. “After we made the original, we reduced the scale and printed the design on linen,” Kaminska says. “Now, it has a contemporary French country look.”

For Kaminska, the excitement lies in the art of making history. “There’s always something new to learn,” she says, “and every project is challenging and unique. There’s also the satisfaction of knowing that there aren’t a lot of companies that do this any more.”

She sighs, letting the gentle clickety-click of the looms converse with the clack of her heels as she strolls back to her studio.

“It’s a beautiful world to be in,” she says as the mill door closes behind her, bringing her back to the 21st Century. “I feel very lucky to be here, and I wouldn’t even dream of doing anything else or being anywhere else.”