Ostfriesland
It was summer, the landscape was flat, cows were grazing between the ditches and there were lots of windmills. We were driving a rental van in in the German region of Ostfriesland, some miles from the sea. We were there to collect a handjacquardloom that Hermann Wendlinger had tipped me off about. It was stored in huge barn full of looms, weaving equipment and yarn outside a small village.
It was not the first time we moved a loom, but this was the most complicated one. It was 3.20 meters tall and very heavy. The seller had asked two kind and very strong neighbours to assist, and they lifted the Jacquardmachine and the weights down and moved the very heavy punch card machine into the van. We had rented the moving van in northern Germany and were now driving the equipment back to Switzerland.
The loom had been built in the fifties by the company Arm AG, in the village of Biglen in Switzerland. Arm AG was widely known for its high-quality looms. It had everything I could wish for: a Jacquardmachine with 400 hooks, a regulator, a brake, and a flying shuttle mechanism with the possibility for weaving with three alternating shuttles. Arm AG had built a few Jacquardlooms, but they had been non profitable to produce. There were no assembly plans or user instructions left. It seemed like the loom had travelled a bit before it arrived in the barn by the North Sea. On one of the beams there is writing in Italian, something like «secondo fuori, … dentro». On another beam there is maybe written the name “Erica Brugger”.
It is impossible to tell how old the punchcard machine is. The text on the sign reads: «Oskar Schleicher Greiz i V. Maschinenfabrik und Eisengiesserei». According to Wikipedia the city Greiz in the county of Sachsen was a center for the textile industry and it’s suppliers. In 1890 there were more than 11’000 mechanical looms in Greiz. Oskar Schleicher was founded in 1892, the plant manufactured looms for damask and Jacquard weaving and had an iron casting and turning business as well. Searching on Google for the company, I find old catalogues. After WWII, the business was confiscated without compensation to the owners.
But why buy a jacquard loom?
First, there are not many of them left. It is not possible to order buy them from a supplier, there are no spare parts and if you find one, it’s just luck. The knowledge about Jacquard technology in handweaving is therefore disappearing, although it is industrial standard. And with the single thread control mechanism there are almost limitless patterning options.
Second, in spring 2020 I received the Norwegian folk-art grant in order to try to reconstruct some of the patterns which came from Norwich to Norway. The weaving masters of Norwich worked on large looms with two weavers. Since those looms do not exist anymore and I am only one person, this was not a realistic option. To pick those complicated patterns with a stick did not tempt either and thus Jacquard was the only sensible solution.
The loom had not been used at all by the last owner and it had been stored for at least twenty years. The barn was quite humid, and the wooden beams had a mouldy smell and were covered with a layer of dirt. All metal parts were red with rust, the harness cords were brittle.
We were short of eight hooks, but luckily, we found spare ones in a box. But other parts were lacking, which was worse:
- a Jacquard needle
- Stiff 1 mm cord, preferably made of natural materials , for the neck-cords
- cord for the harness
- comber boards for the for the fabric density I was going to use
- comber board frame
