Making a Jacquard Woven Silk Tie

Jacquard Woven Silk Ties

Chances are that you’re a gentleman of sophistication. You may enjoy a nice snifter of brandy in the evenings; surrounded by many leather bound books, in your study that smells of rich mahogany. If this is the case, then I know that you are also a wearer of woven silk neckwear. Now, to be honest, printed ties have their place. If you want something with a hula girl, or maybe a cartoon character, then printed is definitely the way to go. They’re also extremely durable, and good for hard everyday wear. But, if you’re looking for ties with class and elegance, then woven silk calls to you. There’s no substitute. The texture, the sheen, the drape; they’re all on display around your neck, and they look good. But, just how did that tie get from the silk worm to you? Maybe you’ve wondered this before. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, it turns out that it’s pretty much due to one man that your silk tie isn’t a one-of-a-kind treasure, and prohibitively expensive; Joseph-Marie Jacquard; weaver, inventor, French man.

Jacquard was born into a family of weavers, so he was intimately familiar with the process, and the industry at a young age. This was the late 1700’s, when strands of silk were woven into fabrics all right, but at excruciating slowness on looms of enormous size. Take a close look at the texture of your favorite silk tie, and all the individual strands of silk that can be seen. Now, imagine the amount of time it would take to painstakingly construct this fabric strand by strand; strand by strand, until you’re done. It wasn’t so much that the process took a long time, these looms were still machines after all, their automated process was among the best technology that the pre-industrial age could come up with. In fact, with these machines, the weaving industry was able to mass-produce high quality fabric at a faster rate of speed, and at a much lower cost than at any other time in previous history. It was that the finished products were so thoroughly mediocre. Silk is still silk, but these looms were only able to churn out fabric of a single color, or of extremely simple pattern. To make a fabric with an intricate pattern was so painstaking and complicated, as to leach almost all of the profit out of the endeavor. It required the use of a ‘drawboy’, who would literally work from within the machine; pulling, lifting, or moving a number of threads at the directions of the master weaver. Manipulating these threads, pulling the shuttle thread through, and then manipulating the threads again created the pattern. Jacquard, of course, was quite familiar with this information, and puzzled over a way to create complicated patterns at a quicker rate of speed.

Now, like many inventors, Jacquard noticed a detail that probably many others before him had also noticed. Weaving is an extremely repetitive process. Even the intricate patterns that he chased were not conceptually difficult to fabricate; just time consuming. Essentially, he might have reasoned, the human brain is wasted in such an endeavor, as it takes no great mental faculty to repeat a simple program. And, that’s what weaving is; a program. Whether or not Jacquard applied that term to his thinking is not known; but, he did see clear through to the heart of the matter. If the human brain could somehow be replaced with a device that could perform the same repetitive tasks at a faster rate of speed… Hence, the invention of the Jacquard loom in 1801.

The process behind his looms centered around a series of stiff pasteboard cards with various patterns of holes punched through them. After each pass of the shuttle thread, the cards were placed into the works of the machine; each hole in the cards corresponding with a thread that was to be raised, while the threads aligned with spots where there were no holes remained as they were. Repeat. In effect, the cards formed a program of sorts for the loom to follow. These ‘programs’ were also able to be stored and called on when needed, or you could right new ones for any pattern you desired. Suddenly, silk fabrics with an unlimited amount of patterns were flooding the textile market. Needless to say, this caused a stir with textile workers who, quite accurately, saw that their jobs were being threatened by this invention. And, in fact, there were riots in many cities over the adoption of the Jacquard looms replacing human jobs with machines. But, in the end, the increased profit margins won out, and the looms were here to stay.

But, not just the looms themselves, rather the revolutionary thinking behind their invention. It’s doubtful that Jacquard could have conceived of the world he helped set in motion, other than his contributions to the textile industry that is. In an interesting post script to this story, it turns out that many pioneers in the computing field saw Jacquard’s cards for what they really were; simple information storing mediums, that were able to carry instructions. Computer programs. What Jacquard had really done, was turn a textile loom into a simple automated computer. Again, it’s doubtful that Jacquard saw the full breadth of what he had done. But, the truth is that his basic approach to computing was instrumental in constructing the first computers of the 20th century. So, take another long look at your patterned silk tie, and try to imagine a world without the Jacquard loom.

Other Suggested Readings:
The History of the Tie
Popular Mens Tie Fabrics

Your Ties-Necktie.com Team