Textile, woven

Description

This woven silk portrait was created on a loom with a Jacquard attachment, a machine able to weave complex designs by following instructions fed into the device on a series of punch cards. This portrait depicts the machine’s namesake and inventor, French weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard, who patented the device in 1804. This textile was designed and woven around 1839 by Michel-Marie Carquillat for the manufacturer Didier, Petit et Cie. in Lyon, France. Carquillat's design is a reproduction of an 1834 painting by Jean-Claude Bonnefond. Woven recreations of paintings were common in the 19th century both for their novelty and as a demonstration of the intricate detail Jacquard looms were able to produce. This particular weaving is only a cropped area of Carquillat’s full design; other examples woven by him fully recreate Bonnefond’s original painting. Text beneath the portrait reads “A La Mémoire De J.M. Jacquard,” or “In Memory of J.M. Jacquard.” This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.