Decorative Weaving Techniques - International Textiles Archive ...

40
caused through competition from drawlooms. Large multiple-heddle
looms may well have presented a challenge to operate, even for a highly
skilled weaver, but such looms eliminated the need for the services of the
weaving assistant and allowed more rapid production [Hilts, 1990a,
pp.25-32]. A comprehensive explanation of the operation of various
drawlooms was given by Murphy [1837] and a more recent description
of historical developments in drawloom weaving was given by Becker
[1987] one hundred and fifty years later.
In 1805 Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) presented an automatic
selection mechanism which could be mounted on a raised horizontal
loom and operated by a treadle. This device was to revolutionise pattern
weaving. A series of perforated cards, connected in the form of an
endless chain, was presented one at a time to the selection mechanism.
Depending on the order of the perforations in each card, certain warp
threads were raised to form a shed and this shed corresponded to a stage
within the predetermined pattern. Schaefer pointed out that by the year
1812 an estimated 18,000 looms were fitted with the mechanism, and by
1834 this had risen to 30,000, data which clearly attest the success of the
innovation [Schaefer, 1938, p.564]. A comprehensive explanation of the
operation of the Jacquard mechanism was given by Watson [1954,
chapters 14 and 15].
4.8 Dobby loom
From the later stages of the Industrial Revolution until the late-twentieth
century, dobby (power) looms served in producing the vast bulk of basic
woven textiles world wide, in all industrialised countries. Hand-operated
dobby looms were popular with hand loom weavers throughout much of
the twentieth century. This class of loom had a series of wooden or
aluminium frames (known as shafts or heddles), each the width of the
warp. Each heddle held a series of vertical wires and each wire had one
or more eyelets. Each warp thread was drawn through one of these
eyelets on a selected heddle. The order in which the threads were drawn
through the eyelets in the series of heddles was known as the draft. The
loom was programmed so that prior to each weft insertion a particular
selection of heddles and thus a particular selection of warp threads was
lifted to form a shed. Typically each shed selection was determined by
presenting a row of metal pegs to a selection mechanism located between
a metre and a metre and a half above the warp. This selection mechanism