Weaving Futures is an exhibition at London Transport Museum highlighting the importance of woven textile design to the London Transport system. The exhibition explores the process and making of digital woven textiles, as part of the Museums’, Designology season.

Each week, visitors will be able to see invited designers/artists in residence in the Designology studio, who will be working on a project brief and interacting with a weaver in their residency dates. The weavers will be interpreting the residents work live into digital woven textile prototypes and final works on a state-of-the-art TC2 digital jacquard loom. 

 Week  4 features: Gainsborough

Gainsborough is a Jacquard weaving mill and dye house based in Suffolk, producing the highest quality of cloth from both modern and traditional punch card looms. Established in 1903 by an enterprising weaver, Reginald Warner, the business moved to its present location in 1924.Offering a truly bespoke design service, Gainsborough runs an in-house operation from design and dying through to weaving.  With a wonderful archive of over 7,000 designs built up through Warner’s Grand Tours and successive generations of weaving, Gainsborough is by nature a very special and unfortunately rare example of British craftsmanship and artisanal manufacture.

Awarded the Royal Warrant in 1981, the company has produced fabrics for royal palaces, state buildings and grand residences the world over, and the tradition of creating fabrics of enduring quality carries on today. Gainsborough’s reputation was built on innovation and design, and you are as likely to find our products in a luxury vehicle or on a Parisian catwalk as on the walls of a stately home. Their designs span the full breadth of creative expression, from the very traditional to the thoroughly avant-garde. Continue reading →

An exciting new project has begun at the German Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum) in Berlin, focused on the repair and restoration of their star Jacquard. The photograph of the loom (above) is prior to restoration

The project is being undertaken by Berlin-based British weaver Emma Wood, along with Birgit Zehlike & Nael Alkhteb of Oranienburg, and will run until November 2016. The restoration is taking place in the main hall of the museum, and is open for all visitors to watch.

Emma Wood will be reporting for The Weave Shed on the restoration of a jacquard loom in Berlin in a series of posts during her residency.

This particular Jacquard was built in the 1920s in Germany, and it arrived at the museum in around 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The loom is designed for weaving ribbons, and it has two Jacquard mechanisms, each one being capable of producing 9 ribbons simultaneously. Sadly the loom has fallen into a state of disrepair after roughly a decade of non-use, but this restoration project provides a rare opportunity to get up-close and personal with such a specialised loom.

First Days
The first days of the restoration involved doing an overall analysis of the loom, and getting to grips with how it works.  The Jacquard mechanisms are operated by punchcards, and the warp threads are spread across individual spools, instead of warp beams.  These spools are then weighted to set the tension.

Beginning the analysis at the top of the loom, it became clear to the team that a piece from the left Jacquard mechanism was missing, which would help rotate the punchcards evenly.  It was also obvious that a large number of the punchcards were damaged, most likely from water damage and humidity.  The damaged punchcards offer an exciting opportunity to experiment with new techniques and materials, and to use some of the latest technology to create cards that are both precise and long-lasting.

The remaining bulk of the work over the first days has been focused on thoroughly cleaning the entire loom.  Given that it was last operated over 10 years, the team have found themselves faced with a fair amount of mechanical grease and dirt, all of which needs to be cleaned away.  The results are already rewarding, as they have begun to unearth stunning steel and brass metalwork, along with uncovering the original deep green of the loom’s mainframe. Continue reading →