ARTICLE - PICTURES IN SILK
All About Jack Jack joined a textile design studio after he left high school in 1944, just as the Second World War was drawing to a close. Most British mills were at that time weaving essential wartime goods or doing Government work, but they were soon to return to the manufacture of fashionable textile products as peace returned. Jack started work at a Jacquard designer’s studio in Yorkshire whilst Higher quality silks came from Lyons in France, such as this study of ‘Babes in the Wood’ and this happy elderly couple amusing their grand-daughter! Both these silks were of almost photographic quality. All about silk pictures The mechanical weaving of cloth depends upon raising chosen threads When Jacquard’s machine was set in operation, a set of cards would raise and lower the chosen warp threads for the weft-carrying shuttle to carry out the weaving. The cards would re-present their instructions over and over until the finished cloth was ready to be removed from the loom. The machine controlled the loom through a harness of individual threads that passed down instructions to the loom. That was how the Jacquard system initially worked, although later years saw improved modifications in which the laced cards were to make way for perforated paper rolls produced on electrically controlled machines that no longer needed foot pedalling. Computerised instructions also became possible. In fact, Jacquard’s work encouraged visits from scientists such as Babbage of Britain and Hollerith of the USA – and his invention of the punchcards would eventually be used in working out the design of the first calculators in technological history. Jacquard looms were used for producing lovely damask tablecloths, towels, ribbons, home furnishings, gentlemen’s ties, dressing gowns and even the quality trade labels sewn into items of clothing. His invention was patented in 1845; although records show that similar experiments were carried out as early as 1725 by another inventor, they apparently came to nothing. The Jacquard system also led to the control of musical instruments such as the giant fairground organs, in which perforated rolls of paper programmed the instruments. The rolls are still available to this very day for steam-organist preservers to purchase, and can even include the latest popular tunes of today besides the good old-timers! The collecting of early Jacquard material lies mainly in the realms of the industrial museums rather than individuals, although there are collectors of Jacquard-designed fabrics, with the most popular examples being the silk pictures which are obviously more suitable for home storage. There are very few British mills producing Jacquard material today, and the main products that are in manufacture are concerned with colourful Jacquard ribbons advertising the manufacturers of various items of clothing. The silk pictures to collect are the early coloured products of Grant’s, Thomas Stevens, and the popular black and white French masterpieces manufactured in the Lyons area. They occasionally turn up at auction sales and antique fairs, and from time to time some are reissued. One of the most proficient producers was the Brocklehurst-Whiston family mill, which was the largest silk mill in England and is now closed down. They published coloured Jacquard woven view scenes that are well collected. Another producer of Jacquard pictures was the Northern company of Brough, Nicholson & Hall, who took over from the old established Jacquard weaving company of Grant’s. Thomas Stevens produced small silk weavings that were ready-mounted in cardboard, so they could easily be framed as pictures. Subjects included portraits of historical figures, royalty and politicians; religious scenes; sporting scenes and historic buildings. The larger French silk pictures came from the Lyons area and were often woven images by noted artists. Generally these silks were in black and white, although some had faint touches of colour added after weaving; one of the major producers was Neyret Freres, who in the late 1990s began producing copies of a few of their original designs, using stocks of original silk thread. When the weaving of Jacquard materials was at its highest in the post-Second Many English colourful silk pictures came from the mill of Brocklehurst-Whiston in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, which closed down several years ago. Numerous scenes were local, such as this study of barge life on the town’s local canal. This information first appeared in Issue 35 of Antiques and Collectables for Pleasure & Profit.
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also studying textile
technology at the Bradford Technical College (now the University of Bradford), and he was soon working on the design of Queen Elizabeth’s wedding dress. ‘My job, naturally, was the simplest of all,’ he says, ‘just filling in sheets of
point-paper with red paint, preparing it for the firm’s skilled designers to add the stitching forming the necessary graded interlacing.’ Eventually Jack moved to Manchester and a few years he later took over a small, struggling
Lancashire firm using old-fashioned methods with old-fashioned machinery. ‘My most tedious jobs ever included designing ties,’ he says. ‘One pattern commemorated the British Industry Exhibition of the 1950s; another was a scene
featuring felled logs being floated down a Canadian river. Quite a difficult task altogether!’ The years that followed saw mills closing down around the country and many of the mill chimneys of the Yorkshire and Lancashire factories
are now long gone. ‘The mill buildings themselves remain,’ says Jack, who still lives in the area, ‘but most of them have been redesigned and redeveloped as office and residential properties.’
over the path of
the shuttle containing the weft, and carrying it backwards and forwards across the loom. Simple regular interlacings were possible using this method, but more complicated ornamental patterns required the attention of assistant
‘drawboys’ to hand raise the chosen threads. This was a necessary task that slowed down the speed of weaving. It was Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacquard who in 1801 invented a successful system of automating the process that
was welcomed in the silk-weaving area of Lyons. Unfortunately his invention led to the widespread unemployment of the ‘drawboys’, and several subsequent attempts on Jacquard’s life.
World War years, the mills using more modern machinery also imported sets of Jacquard cards from the Continent; these were of the more recent
endless-paper variety. I had a friend who was a Customs man on duty at Manchester Airport. He had a good knowledge of textiles and was familiar with the incoming packets of these perforated paper rolls. One day a young assistant
asked him what they were for, and he explained that some were intended for use in fairground organs, but the larger ones were to programme the music of the city’s famous Hallé Orchestra when it was appearing at the Free Trade Hall.
He was joking, of course!
