Authors: James Essinger
By
1566
, at a time when the total population of Lyons was about
120 000
, more than one-tenth of these people were silk-weavers. Over the next few decades, the proportion of the weaving population continued to grow relative to the entire population, so that by the end of the sixteenth century, an actual
majority
of people living in Lyons depended either directly or indirectly on the silk industry for their livelihoods. The decorated silk fabrics woven in Lyons were the envy of the world. Even fabrics woven in China, where silk production and silk-weaving had originated, did not compare in quality, beauty, and artistic detail to those produced in Lyons.
The most valuable and elaborate silk fabric of all was brocade. Many examples of brocades woven in Lyons during the sixteenth century have survived and can be viewed today at the Lyons Textiles Museum. Their colours have faded a little, but the artistry continues to amaze even
400
years later. The fabrics do indeed look more like woven oil paintings than cloth.
From the earliest days of the Lyons silk industry, the high price commanded by brocade meant that any improvement, however slight, in the speed of the drawloom could make a major contribution to the profits of a weaving studio. There was consequently every incentive for resourceful master-weavers, or the mechanics they employed, to try to do what they could in this direction.
A number of small but significant improvements to the drawloom were introduced. One of the most important was a sequence of levers allowing entire bundles of weighted warp thread controllers to be lifted in one go. The various refinements increased the speed with which the drawloom could be used. By the start of the eighteenth century, the drawlooms used in Lyons had become as good as they were ever going to get. The weaver and the manipulator of the cords could produce two picks of woven fabric each minute.
16
A better mousetrap
Yet the essential nature of the drawloom had not really improved at all. It still required two people to operate it, sometimes even more if the design was really complex. And even with the help of the levers, the warp threads still had to be lifted manually. At the maximum rate of two woven rows a minute, a mere inch of brocade fabric still required a
full working day
to complete. This is because silk fabric is extremely fine, and to create what was in effect a woven painting, the rows of thread had to be compacted extremely tightly together after every pick. At this slow-motion rate of production, a large order, such as a set of curtains for a large room, could take months to weave, even if the customer contracted several weaving studios to handle different parts of the order at the same time.
The real problem was that the drawloom was not a
machine
at all. Instead, it was really only a device for facilitating the
manual
weaving of patterns or images in fabric. Surely there was some other way, and ideally a much faster way, of weaving decorated silk fabric?
What was required was a method of ordering, with complete precision, the lifting of the warp threads that formed the shed in a better way than having a draw-boy doing the whole thing by hand. With enormous financial returns certain to be won by any master-weaver or master-manufacturer who brought in a revolutionary improvement to the drawloom, it is hardly surprising that there was money, and official encouragement, available for inventors whose ideas offered a chance of creating such a machine. By the middle of the eighteenth century, numerous weavers, master-weavers, and even French Government officials were working on the problem.
Before Jacquard made his great breakthrough, the most important pioneer of automated decorated silk-weaving was a civil servant called Jacques de Vaucanson. Appointed inspector of French silk factories in
1741
, it took him only four years to come up with a better idea than the drawloom.
The idea of a mechanism that controlled the raising of the 17
Jacquard’s Web
warp threads
mechanically
instead of manually had been put forward by others working on an improved version of the drawloom, but it was de Vaucanson who first made the idea seem feasible. His plan was for a special control box to be situated above the loom. There, it acted directly on hooks fastened to the cords that controlled the raising warp yarns. The hooks passed through needles and were raised by a strong metal bar. The needles were selected by a mechanism based around a metal cylinder with spokes in it, basically a large version of the spoked metal cylinder used in the music boxes that were very popular among the well-to-do during de Vaucanson’s time and can sometimes still be seen in antique shops today.
The idea behind the de Vaucanson loom was ingenious and technically sound. Prototypes of the de Vaucanson loom worked reasonably well. A big problem, though, was that the metal cylinders were expensive and difficult to make. Moreover, by their very nature they could only be used for making images that involved regularly repeated designs. True, by switching to new cylinders it would be possible to produce designs of open-ended variety, but in practice the constant switching over of cylinders proved too time-consuming and laborious. A few examples of the de Vaucanson loom did go into production, but it never really caught on and was soon discontinued.
By the late eighteenth century, the entire wealth and might of the Lyons silk-weaving industry—by far the largest silk-weaving industry in the world—was stymied by the fact that Lyons weavers did not have access to an efficient loom. They yearned for a machine that would allow a great deal more silk fabric to be woven in a day than the maximum one inch that could be produced by a weaver and draw-boy working flat out.
The enforced lethargy of the rate of production kept Lyons weavers poor. Even the master-weavers who headed weaving studios, and the merchants who sold the fabric to wealthy customers, suffered hard times. The world craved a flood of Lyons silk, and all Lyons could offer was a slow trickle.
18
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ❚ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ❚ 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
3 3 ❚ ❚ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 ❚ 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5 5 ❚ 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 ❚ 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 ❚ 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 ❚ 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ❚ 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ❚ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
The invention of Jacquard has produced a general and total revolution in the procedures for manufacturing; it has traced a great line between the past and the future; it has initiated a new era in general progress.
The Count of Fortis,
Éloge historique de Jacquard
,
1840
The wealth of Lyons today is founded on the city’s high-tech, banking, construction, chemicals, food, and printing industries.
Many of the major Lyons corporations in these industries are headquartered in the district known as Part-Dieu, which is located to the east of the Rhône. The head offices often occupy some of the boldest and most original modern architecture in France.
Part-Dieu even has its own skyscraper, the
165
-metre (
541
-feet) Credit Lyonnais tower. Light-brown in colour, the tower looks like a giant cigar, as if symbolizing the lifestyles of conspicuous consumption to which the bank’s customers might hope to aspire.
But not all districts of Lyons denote conspicuous consumption. If you leave the prosperity of the modern business area of 19
Jacquard’s Web
Part-Dieu behind you, cross the Rhône by bridge or ferry, and head for the district of Croix Rousse, you will encounter a very different atmosphere.
The name Croix Rousse means ‘russet cross’ and derives from a large cross of local russet-coloured stone that could indeed be found at the very highest point of the district from the Middle Ages to the time of the French Revolution. For many centuries a mere backwater in Lyons, Croix Rousse rose to prominence in the early years of the nineteenth century, when the abundance of space it offered close to the city centre encouraged Lyons’s burgeoning weaving industry to move to the district. By the
1830
s, Croix Rousse was the heart of the world’s silk-weaving business.
But the days when Croix Rousse was a riot of bustle, haste, and activity are no more. Today, the pavements no longer rever-berate with the endless noisy rattle of hand-looms being operated by the more than
30 000
weavers who worked in Croix Rousse in its heyday. No brawny workmen load heavy wrapped silk fabrics into the carefully cleaned backs of horse-drawn carts. No fat, prosperous merchants linger over their glasses of absinthe at roadside cafés, boasting to their friends of the latest deal they made with some wealthy customer. Instead, today, there is mostly silence, the occasional bark of a dog, sometimes a Renault or Citroën dawdling along, and here and there vaguely dis-contented couples walking arm-in-arm, out for an evening in picturesque Croix Rousse before heading back to their modern apartments on the other side of the river. They look rather demoralized, as if they find the district a little too quiet for their liking.
After its glorious nineteenth century, Croix Rousse has long sunk into obscurity. Yet despite this, silk-weaving has not entirely vanished from the district, for a faithful band of about two dozen expert weavers still weave silk there by hand. I visited one of them, Georges Mattelon, in his studio. Cluttered with three Jacquard hand-looms and a myriad bobbins of coloured silk thread, the studio smelt of old wood and oil and was as 20
The son of a master-weaver
comfortable as a hobbit-hole. Georges, a weaver in Croix Rousse for six decades, showed me the very loom on which he wove much of Queen Elizabeth’s dress for her wedding in
1947
. Later, he took me for lunch at a nearby
bouchon
—the local name for a bistro—where six or seven other hand-loom weavers were gathered. Over steak,
frites
, and red wine, this band of silk-weaving old-timers spoke with enormous enthusiasm of the glory days of the Lyons weaving industry in the nineteenth century. It was as if they might have been working as weavers then, too.
Strolling around Croix Rousse today, you cannot escape the feeling of walking through a ghost town. There are restaurants and bars, but none of them is very busy. The general impression is of a rundown, fairly shabby district which does at least have considerable picturesque charm. Its narrow alleys wind among pretty, robust-looking buildings whose plaster walls are painted in light pastel hues. All the main streets lead to
La Place de la Croix
Rousse
—the district’s main square. The square’s bars and bistros, well off the usual tourist route, are patronized almost entirely by locals and serve excellent wines and delicious, modestly priced meals: Lyons delicacies such as eel stew, salted capon,
quenelles
of pike, and the rich onion soup for which the city is especially famous.
On the far side of
La Place de la Croix Rousse,
near the steep steps that lead down to the river a couple of hundred feet below, there is a large and prominent grey stone statue. The statue depicts a man in a greatcoat, with shoulder-length hair. As a work of art, it is a disappointment. Its bland, expressionless face is, indeed, the face of a statue, not a man. Its pose—the left arm vertical, clutching a rolled parchment, the right hand held rigidly across the chest—seems artificial, and the left arm is too long and out of proportion with the body.
Inscriptions on the four sides of the cubic plinth reveal some information about the man whom the statue depicts. ‘
To J.M.
Jacquard, the benefactor of silk-workers, from a grateful city of Lyons’
, reads one. Jacquard himself, remembering an enforced swim he 21
Jacquard’s Web
is believed to have had in one of Lyons’s waterways courtesy of irate draw-boys who had been rendered unemployed by his remarkable invention, would probably have considered this inscription more than a little ironic. ‘
Inventor of the loom for the
manufacture of luxury fabrics
’, says the inscription on the next side of the plinth. The other inscriptions give the dates and places of Jacquard’s birth and death.
While mediocre as art, the statue does at least furnish a lasting memorial to a man whose inventive labours led not only to a revolution in weaving, but also in how mankind handles information.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard was born on
7
July
1752
, in the Lyons parish of St Nizier. This parish is in La Presqu’île, a few hundred yards south of Croix Rousse. Jacquard was the fifth of nine children of Jean-Charles Jacquard and his wife Antoinette. Jean-Charles was a master-weaver of brocaded fabrics. He was initially fairly prosperous.
The family lived in La Presqu’île, in a succession of apartments that had workshops attached where Jean-Charles supervised several silk-weavers. Like the sons of many Lyons weavers, young Joseph-Marie (known familiarly as Joseph) did not go to school; his father needed him to perform odd jobs in the workshop. Joseph and his sister Clémence, who was five years older than him, were the only Jacquard children to survive into adult-hood. Their mother Antoinette died on
15
July
1762
, when Joseph was ten years old. After her death, the family gradually slid into poverty.
Joseph worked most days in his father’s workshop, growing up in an atmosphere saturated with the craft of silk-weaving. He lived surrounded by the tools of the trade: the big bobbins of dyed silk fabric, the smaller, precious bobbins of gold and silver thread and the great heavy wooden drawlooms. These, with their hundreds of warp threads and their jungle of elaborately contrived 22