Loom 1 — the card loom
- Head
- Fine-pitch card Jacquard, 1,344 hooks, rebuilt
- Reads
- Laced card chains, one card per pick
- Speed
- About 48 picks a minute
- Weaves
- Lovelace, Carte 1804, re-weaves from the archive
The studio · Croix-Rousse, Lyon 4e
Two looms,
one street.
TRAME weaves in a former canut workshop on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse, in rooms built nearly four metres high so that a Jacquard head would fit under the ceiling. Three of us, two looms, and an archive of every card we have cut.
The hill
1801 — today
A neighbourhood
built around
a machine.
When Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom arrived, Lyon's silk weavers — the canuts — moved up the Croix-Rousse into new buildings with tall windows and taller ceilings. By the 1830s the hill rang with looms, and twice, in 1831 and 1834, the weavers rose against the merchants who set their rates.
- 1801Jacquard shows his loom at the national industrial exhibition in Paris.Invention
- 1804The improved loom reads its pattern from a chain of punched cards — one card per pick.Cards
- 1831The first revolt of the canuts: the weavers of the Croix-Rousse take the city for several days.The hill
- 1834The second revolt, in April, is put down after a week of fighting.The hill
- 1839A portrait of Jacquard is woven in silk from about 24,000 cards.The portrait
- 1843Ada Lovelace compares Babbage's Analytical Engine to the Jacquard loom.The idea
- 2009TRAME sets up its first loom in a canut workshop on the hill.TRAME
- 2019An electronic head joins the card loom; both read the same drafts.TRAME
The looms.
// Equipment
Loom 2 — the electronic head
- Head
- Electronic Jacquard, 2,688 hooks
- Reads
- The same draft, as a file
- Width
- Up to 140 cm finished
- Weaves
- Bombyx, Fourvière, long runs
Who weaves.
// Three of us
Camille Rostaing
Founder · weaver
Trained on the hill's last card looms; sets every warp and signs off every cloth.
Idris Benali
Card cutter · mechanic
Keeps a century-old head running, laces the chains, and knows the archive by number.
Maëlle Voisin
Draughtswoman
Squares every drawing onto point paper — the step where a picture becomes a program.
Come and
hear the looms.
- Open studio
- First Saturday of every month, 10:00 – 17:00
- By appointment
- Tuesday to Friday, for commissions and sample books
- Where
- Croix-Rousse, Lyon 4e — the address comes with your booking
- Bring
- Drawings, fragments, a room's measurements, good shoes for the stairs