Wangen im Allgäu
Wangen im Allgäu is the cutest little town I have ever visited! And I am so lucky to have been there twice. There are narrow streets and alleys laid with cobblestones, beautiful old buildings, great food, especially cakes and very warm and friendly inhabitants.
My reason for being in Wangen was, however, not touristic. I was there because of Hermann. Hermann Wendlinger is a retired master of handweaving and he is specialized in handjaquardweaving. He teaches workshops and I absolutely wanted to learn about this specialized field of handweaving.
The Jacquardloom works by steering single threads with punch cards using a simple device called the Jacquardmachine. Extremely complex patterns and bindings like the ones in Elverum can be woven by a single weaver and this invention changed textile and industrial history forever. The punch card system is regarded to be the precursor of the modern computer because it is binary: hole = lifted thread, no hole = no lifting.
Joseph Marie Jacquard was a French book binder, weaver, merchant, and inventor, who lived from 1752 to 1834. All the complex fabrics before Jacquard’s invention, also the ones in Elverum, were largely woven on looms with two weavers, one weaver was doing the actual weaving, the other would pick the pattern. I do struggle to understand how this was even possible. Have a look at this article and photos, if you would like to know more about the French and English silk weaving industry between 1600 and 1800.
There had been numerous attempts on automatizing thread selection, but none of them were especially practical, successful, or managed to spread. But Joseph Marie Jacquard’s invention did, and together with the spinning jenny, the flying shuttle mechanism, and the power loom, it is a cornerstone of the textile part of the industrial revolution. The apprentices and master weavers, the dyers, and hot press owners became underpaid and unskilled workers in large factories, and the once busy and thriving textile industry of Norwich slowly came to a halt and then ceased to exist. Handweaving survived in places where people needed to weave their own cloth, because they could not afford to buy any or there was nothing to buy, and as part of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Have a look at Hermann weaving away at his Jacquardloom from 1901. Isn’t it amazing?
