Jacquard Weaving and Designing

by T. F. Bell

As before stated, the draw loom is the first form of machine for figured weaving of which we have any record. It is not known where it was invented, but it probably passed from China to Western Asia with the silk manufacture. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans do not appear to have known it. The Chinese have still in use a draw loom in which the drawboy stands on the top and draws up the parcels of twines which have been previously arranged for him. After being established in Damascus (hence the name damask), the draw loom passed on to Europe, where the Chinese method of working was used till 1604, when M. Simblot, in France, connected to the neck a separate series of cords, called the ‘Simple’ (perhaps a corruption of his name), so that the drawboy could work when standing at the side of the loom. It is said to have been introduced into England in 1567. The next improvement was to dispense with the drawboy’s services, and for this purpose a patent was taken out in 1687, by Joseph Mason, for ‘a draw boy engine by which a weaver may performe the whole worke of weaving such stuffe as the greatest weaving trade in Norwich doth now depend upon without the help of a draught boy.’ In 1779 William Cheape patented a plan to dispense with the drawboy by having the ‘simple’ above his head, and drawing it down with knots which were held in notches, as described in [Fig. 2].

Before beginning to describe the draw loom it may be better first to describe what it is required to do.

Its principal use appears to have been for the weaving of damask, which is one of the simplest forms of figured weaving. Reduce a damask texture to its elementary form, and it consists of twilling, or, more correctly, turned or reversed twilling. If we take a common dice pattern woven with shafts, it will easily be seen that one dice is formed by a warp twill, and the next one by a weft twill, or that the dices are formed by warp and weft twills alternately.

Fig. 2

Now, what forms the pattern? The yarn may be all of one colour, the threads may be so closely set together as to make them individually invisible, or to appear as a plain surface, and yet the dices come out distinctly in two shades of colour. The play of light on the longitudinal and latitudinal threads produces this effect. The dices formed by the latitudinal or horizontal threads will always appear darker than the yarn in the cloth when the latter is placed between the observer and the light, whether these threads be warp or weft, as there is a certain amount of shade on each of them, and of shadow cast by them, whereas the longitudinal or vertical threads are illuminated, without any shade or shadow, and appear lighter than the yarn did before being woven; and this is the reason why a good side light is the best for showing up the pattern on damask, it developing the above to the utmost. In a good material the difference of shade between the ground and figure is very considerable, but in some thin, coarse goods it is hardly visible, requiring them to be held in a favourable light to show the distinction: the pattern will appear light on a darker ground, or the reverse of this, according as the surface threads forming it run across the light or in the direction of it.

This is the reason of the pattern appearing on the cloth; then it is the business of the designer to regulate what form it is to partake of, by preparing a suitable design; and according to instructions furnished to him by the design, it is the duty of the drawboy to raise the warp by regulating the cording of his harness, and drawing it so as to reverse the twill from a weft one to a warp one wherever the figure is to be formed on the cloth, and to do so in such order as to produce the pattern required.

The draw-loom mounting consists of two parts—the drawboy mounting, or the harness with its tail and simples, to be wrought by the drawboy; and the shaft mounting, which is required to form the texture of the cloth, or to interlace the warp and weft through both ground and figures; the harness only interlaces them at the edges of the pattern, or causes either warp or weft to be above, to form the figure en bloc, but without interlacing them together.