jacquard of all trades

i have a thing for jacquard. sometimes it conjures up nostalgic feelings of being in my grandma clare's house; its texture is comforting; the patterns are intricate and interesting; and the technology invented for it back in the early 1800's is considered a pre-cursor to computer programming (which i find pretty fascinating).

(chicane velvet jacquards at osborne & little)

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(soft blue by old world weavers)

(criss-cross from pallas textiles)

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(les fleurs de morphee by old world weavers)


(4 subdued examples of jacquard, weaver unknown)


(the smooth & shimmer line from "jacquards by georgette")

and, for those with an interest in what exactly jacquard is, i'll post a little history lesson, mostly compiled from wikipedia:

the jacquard loom was invented by joseph marie jacquard in 1801. back in the day, it was the first machine ever to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations. it used the patterns of holes punched in pasteboard punched-cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric. the loom enabled even amateur weavers to weave complex designs. each punched card corresponded to one row of the design and the cards were strung together in certain orders to create the desired effect. although it did no computation based on the cards, this technology is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. the ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming. modern jacquard looms are computer controlled and can have thousands of hooks. unlike jacquard's original invention, there is now no need for the use of punched cards ~ instead the patterns are all controlled by computer programs.