A rare and beautiful image woven on silk using the programmable loom which made its subject, Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), famous. An early forerunner to the computer, whose card system was adopted by Charles Babbage, this machine allowed for the production of both finer fabrics and much more complex designs.
The original image was created at Didier Petit et cie after the portrait by the French artist, Claude Bonnefond (1796-1860) in 1839. It depicts Jacquard in his workshop with the punch cards at his desk, his loom behind, and a broken window. This smaller, later version reproduces a detail of the original. Examples at Duke University show that woven images of Jacquard continued to be produced after the original. The company remained active until 1881.
Jacquard’s machine, “invented in Napoleonic France and first used in England in about 1822, was increasingly adopted. Jacquard, which used a system of cards to select the appropriate threads for figured work, saved the weaver time and produced complicated patterns far more expeditiously and economically than hitherto. Applicable to the ‘engine loom’ employed in the ribbon trade and the single hand loom used for broad silks, the system could be easily and inexpensively attached to either. The simplicity of Jacquard, which required neither new looms nor extra power, skill, or maintenance, meant that its introduction had little effect upon the organizational structure of the silk industry” (Jones).
The ramifications of the Jacquard loom were immediate and wide-ranging. None other than Ada Lovelace commented on her work with Charles Babbage, who used Jacquard’s cards in his Analytical Engine: “We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
We locate a single other example at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Jones, S.R.H., “Technology, Transaction Costs, and the Transition to Factory Production in the British Silk Industry, 1700-1870” in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 47, No.1 (Mar., 1987), p.81; Lovelace, A., [translator] Menabrea, L.F., Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq. (London, 1843), p.696.
