Art

One of the first paintings woven on a Jacquard loom, using the punch-card system, extremely rare. "Jacquard, born into a Lyonnese family of weavers, was inspired by Vaucanson's punched-card loom to invent the Jacquard attachment, which caused any loom that used it to be called a Jacquard loom. The attachment was an automatic device that for the first time allowed a single operator to control from the loom all the movements involved in the production of complex woven patterns Jacquard's invention made use of a punched-card system for storing and generating patterns. In the production of designs different cards were tied together by ribbons and hundreds of cards could be used in elaborate designs. Charles Babbage later incorporated punched-card technology as a method of data and program input in the design of the Analytical Engine. For use in the United States Census of 1890, Herman Hollerith developed electrical machines for tabulating data stored on punched cards. Hollerith's company eventually evolved into IBM. Punched-card tabulation remained a primary means of data processing until it was phased out around 1960" (Origins of Cyberspace p. 261-262). "As well as patterned textiles for ordinary use, the technique was used to produce elaborate and complex images as exhibition pieces. One well-known piece was a shaded portrait of Jacquard seated at table with a small model of his loom. The portrait was woven in 1839 in fine silk by a firm in Lyon using a Jacquard One of the first paintings woven on a Jacquard loom, using the punch-card system, extremely rare. "Jacquard, born into a Lyonnese family of weavers, was inspired by Vaucanson's punched-card loom to invent the Jacquard attachment, which caused any loom that used it to be called a Jacquard loom. The attachment was an automatic device that for the first time allowed a single operator to control from the loom all the movements involved in the production of complex woven patterns Jacquard's invention made use of a punched-card system for storing and generating patterns. In the production of designs different cards were tied together by ribbons and hundreds of cards could be used in elaborate designs. Charles Babbage later incorporated punched-card technology as a method of data and program input in the design of the Analytical Engine. For use in the United States Census of 1890, Herman Hollerith developed electrical machines for tabulating data stored on punched cards. Hollerith's company eventually evolved into IBM. Punched-card tabulation remained a primary means of data processing until it was phased out around 1960" (Origins of Cyberspace p. 261-262). "As well as patterned textiles for ordinary use, the technique was used to produce elaborate and complex images as exhibition pieces. One well-known piece was a shaded portrait of Jacquard seated at table with a small model of his loom. The portrait was woven in 1839 in fine silk by a firm in Lyon using a Jacquard punched-card loom. The image took 24,000 cards to produce, and each card had over 1,000 hole positions. Babbage was much taken with the portrait, which is so fine that it is difficult to tell with the naked eye that it is woven rather than engraved. He hung his own copy of the prized portrait in his drawing room and used it to explain his use of the punched cards in his Engine. The delicate shading, crafted shadows and fine resolution of the Jacquard portrait challenged existing notions that machines were incapable of subtlety. Gradations of shading were surely a matter of artistic taste rather than the province of machinery, and the portrait blurred the clear lines between industrial production and the arts. Just as the completed section of the Difference Engine played its role in reconciling science and religion through Babbage's theory of miracles, the portrait played its part in inviting acceptance for the products of industry in a culture in which aesthetics was regarded as the rightful domain of manual craft and art" (Swade, The Cogwheel Brain: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, pp. 107-8). The "Visite de Mgr le Duc D'Aumale" incorporates this portrait. Created after the painting by C. Bonnefond, drawn and card-punched by A. Manin, and woven by Carquillat in 1844, it demonstrates the same fineness of detail as the portrait. It shows the duke with entourage admiring the woven portrait of Jacquard, with the loom and the punched-card attachment towering over the visitors. These famous woven paintings are extremely rare in their original large format version, as here. READ MORE Woven image on silk (the whole 111 x 84 cm) using Jacquard's punch-card method of weaving. Vertical surface abrasion to the lower half of the sheet where sometime centrally folded, causing a pale white line, the odd spot or stain but a remarkable survival in a very good state of preservation. Mounted, framed and glazed.