The rhythmic clickety-clack of 19th-century hand looms will soon be silenced when what is thought to be the last Jacquard workshop in Europe closes in a few weeks and another traditional art disappears.
Film makers, theaters and interior designers have been keeping the LAD Jacquard fabric workshop in Warsaw alive but the economic crisis has hit all of them very hard.
“We’re in a very difficult economic situation and in a few weeks this, the oldest working Jacquard manufacturer in Europe, will become history,” said Dariusz Makowski, owner of the workshop.
PHOTO: AFP
Makowski is pessimistic that public subsidies can be found.
Invented by Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard in the French city of Lyon around 1800, the Jacquard loom was the first to weave complicated patterns. It revolutionized textile manufacturing and paved the way for the mechanized modern textile industry.
“It allowed fabrics with beautiful, intricate designs to be produced much faster and at a much lower cost,” Makowski said.
PHOTO: AFP
“In fact in the 1820s it sparked a labor movement by weavers in Lyon, a great social revolution and the rise of the weavers’ Solidarity union in 1823 to 1825 — much, much sooner than in Poland,” he remarked of the rise of Poland’s historic Solidarity union led by Nobel Prize winner Lech Walesa in 1980.
The Jacquard technique spread across Europe in the 1800s and by the 1840s large manufacturing facilities weaving Jacquard fabrics and rare laces were set up in Poland. But soon machine-operated Jacquard looms replaced their hand-operated ancestors.
“In 1926 they [the hand looms] became the property of the Warsaw Fine Arts academy and later the LAD artists’ co-operative was created. We are their successors,” Makowski said.
PHOTO: AFP
“This is the only remaining working cooperative of the famous ones such as Bauhaus in Germany or the Arts and Crafts Society in London,” he said.
Fifteen years ago he bought 12 19th-century wooden Jacquard looms and an inventory of 509 antique Jacquard patterns from the LAD cooperative which folded in post-communist Poland’s difficult adaptation to the market economy.
Today, the workshop is located in a ramshackle greenhouse in Warsaw’s sprawling Royal Lazienki park.
The revolutionary Jacquard loom was the first to use special punch-hole cards using a binary code to make fabric patterns using a steering mechanism on the top of the loom.
“The machine on top of the loom can be likened to a computer while the punch-card is like a kind of primitive computer program or disc,” said veteran weaver Mariola Nowakowska, 54, who has been working on looms for 30 years.
“The machine reads the punch-card and really you could say it’s a kind of a proto-computer,” she said.
A weaver on a Jacquard hand loom must be physically fit to pump its heavy wooden pedal day in, day out and have the patience of a saint to make sure each of several thousand fine threads is in its rightful place, Nowakowska said.
But the effort is rewarded by the special quality of the product.
“On hand looms fabrics are naturally more supple and light than mechanically made ones as we compact the weave by hand and we don’t have as much strength as the motor running a machine,” Nowakowska said.
An experienced weaver can produce up to 2m of Jacquard cloth per day, but Nowakowska is one of the last possessing the skill to deftly operate a Jacquard loom.
“Essentially, this craft has disappeared. We are just two weavers here and young people just aren’t interested in learning. It’s hard, complicated work. Perhaps there will be someone willing to learn, if not, it will become a museum,” Nowakowska said with a hint of sadness.
‘REGRETTABLE’: TPP lawmaker Vivian Huang said that ‘we will continue to support Chairman Ko and defend his innocence’ as he was transferred to a detention facility The Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) be detained and held incommunicado over alleged corruption dating to his time as mayor of Taipei. The ruling reversed a decision by the court on Monday morning that Ko be released without bail. After prosecutors on Wednesday appealed the Monday decision, the High Court said that Ko had potentially been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Ko did not speak to reporters upon his arrival at the district court at about 9:10am yesterday to attend a procedural
Thirty Taiwanese firms, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), yesterday launched a silicon photonics industry alliance, aiming to accelerate the medium’s development and address the energy efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) devices like data centers. As the world is ushering in a new AI era with tremendous demand for computing power and algorithms, energy consumption is emerging as a critical issue, TSMC vice president of integrated interconnect and packaging business C.K. Hsu (徐國晉) told a media briefing in Taipei. To solve this issue, it is essential to introduce silicon photonics and copackaged optics (CPO)
The High Court yesterday overturned a Taipei District Court decision to release Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and sent the case back to the lower court. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Saturday questioned Ko amid a probe into alleged corruption involving the Core Pacific City development project during his time as Taipei mayor. Core Pacific City, also known as Living Mall (京華城購物中心), was a shopping mall in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) that has since been demolished. On Monday, the Taipei District Court granted a second motion by Ko’s attorney to release him without bail, a decision the prosecutors’ office appealed
GRAFT PROBE: Critics questioned Ko claiming he did not know about the Core Pacific floor area ratio issue until this year, citing a 2021 video in which he was asked about it Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was released without bail early yesterday, while his deputy during his tenure as Taipei mayor was detained and held incommunicado after being questioned since Friday over graft allegations related to a shopping center redevelopment project. Prosecutors on Saturday filed a request with the Taipei District Court to officially detain Ko and former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲) over allegations surrounding the redevelopment of Core Pacific City, also known as Living Mall (京華城購物中心). The court yesterday determined that the evidence provided by prosecutors was insufficient to justify the detention of Ko and ordered his