Jacquard Loom: What is it?

Before explaining what a “Jacquard loom” is, for those who are not already aware of it, it is better to clarify what is meant in the textile field by the word loom.

By loom we mean the machinery that makes the fabric with various methods and mechanisms.

Practically all the fabrics that you find on the market either in finished form, such as clothes, or in “raw” form, i.e. still in the form of a piece and/or roll of fabric, are made using looms.

The looms, which are one of the many inventions of the human being, have existed for many hundreds of years, and even in ancient times there were the first rudimentary looms. Logically, before the birth of mechanical and electrical systems, the looms were moved by hand by one or more people.

Still today there are hand looms in many parts of the world, but generally in the most modern industry, for several decades now these machines are mechanical/electric.

Before explaining what a Jacquard loom is, it is useful to understand the principle behind every type of loom, both yesterday and today.

At this point we are ready to understand what a Jacquard loom is.

The jacquard loom, being a loom, is obviously a machine for making fabrics, but with a very particular methodology invented in France in 1801 by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, from which it takes its name.

The great innovation that Jacquard made, compared to the existing looms up to that moment, was as “simple” as it was truly revolutionary.
In practice, thanks to the Jacquard loom it is possible to have the total independence of each vertical thread in its movement, independence that practically allows you to weave fabrics with very large designs of all kinds.
To understand the big difference from the “normal” loom, called a heald or dobby loom, thanks to the jacquard loom it is technically possible to weave even a complex image like the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci the Mona Lisa, or any other kind of very nuanced image with very different shapes.

The jacquard loom is therefore still today, more than 200 years after its birth, the most important and innovative invention ever made by human beings in the textile field, since the birth of textile art, and the fabrics made with this type of loom can be among the most valuable in the world.

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