A Jacquard Weaving Depicting the Jacquard Weaving Process

In 1841 Lyon weaver Michel-Marie Carquillat produced a Jacquard weaving depicting the duc d'Aumale (son of the French king Louis-Philippe) visiting Carquillat's Jacquard loom atelier during a demonstration in which a copy of the woven silk portrait of Jacquard after the painting by Claude Bonnefond was reproduced. This weaving, which was approximately three times the surface area of the 1839 portrait, was "dessiné et mis en carte" by A. Manin. If the 1839 weaving had required approximately 24,000 punched cards, this much larger and much more complex image probably required roughly three times as many. The time involved in punching this many cards would probably have been several months.

"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."