Woven portrait of Jacquard
A silk portrait of the loom’s inventor, woven with 24,000 punched cards – it looks like an engraving.
The Jacquard loom of 1804 was controlled by chains of punched cards and was a model for Charles Babbage’s calculating engine; Babbage owned one of the portraits. Examples are in the Science Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum.
Materials: Silk
Manufacture: Woven on a Jacquard loom in which every pick was controlled by a punched card; the pattern took months to program.
The fine grey tones created solely by which threads lie on top.
The workshop, the loom and the punched cards visible in the picture.