Jacquard weaving is weaving in which a Jacquard machine above the loom lifts warp ends individually instead of in heald shafts, so a figure can run across thousands of ends: damask, brocade, tapestry-style upholstery, woven labels. Each hook in the machine carries a neck cord, and the neck cord carries one harness cord for every repeat across the cloth, down through the comber board to the heddle eye holding one end. On every pick the machine selects the hooks that the rising knives (the griffe) will lift, once by punched cards pressing on needles, now by electromagnets reading a design file. A Jacquard design is made by drawing the figure to the size of one repeat, laying it on a grid in which each column is one end (one hook) and each row one pick, filling each part of the figure with a weave, and saving the grid as cards or as the file the machine reads. One repeat is as wide as the hooks used divided by the ends per cm: 2,400 hooks at 40 ends per cm repeat every 60 cm.
Last verified: 11 October 2026. The worked example follows one cloth from the hook count to the design grid. Sources are linked where they are used and listed at the end.
Jacquard weaving at a glance
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What it lifts | Single ends, each through a hook, neck cord, harness cord and heddle; one hook lifts one end in each repeat |
| What chooses the ends | Punched cards pressing on needles, from Jacquard’s machine of 1804 to 1805; electromagnets fed by a design file on electronic machines |
| Machine size | 100 to 1,200 hooks were common in 1887; one maker’s current range runs from 80 to 51,200 (two machines combined) |
| Widest repeat | hooks used for the figure ÷ ends per cm |
| Repeats across the cloth | reed width ÷ repeat width = harness cords on each neck cord |
| Picks in a repeat | repeat height (cm) × picks per cm; one card, or one file row, per pick |
| Against a dobby | A dobby lifts shafts: 16 to 24 on one maker’s rotary dobbies, up to 30 on its technical ones |
| Fabrics | Damask, brocade, lampas, matelassé, Jacquard tapestry, terry, labels, velvet, one-piece woven airbags |
| Invented | By Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804 to 1805, finished in Lyon, after Bouchon (1725), Falcon (1728) and Vaucanson (1745) |
How a Jacquard machine works
A Jacquard machine is a shedding motion: before each pick it raises the ends that must lie over the weft. H. William Nelson’s 1909 instruction paper (Jacquard Machines) lists its parts. Vertical wire hooks stand in rows, and a horizontal needle, pushed forward by a spring, passes round each hook. A neck cord hangs from the foot of each hook, and harness cords tied to it pass through the comber board. Below the board each cord carries a mail, the eye through which one end is drawn, and a lingo, a wire weight that pulls it down again. The griffe is a frame of knives, one to each row of hooks, that rises and falls once a pick.
Before each lift the cylinder, a square prism carrying the laced chain of cards, swings against the needle points. Where the card has a hole, the needle enters it, its hook stays over its knife and is lifted. Where the card is blank, the needle is pushed back and pushes its hook off the knife, so that hook and its ends stay down. A blank card lifts nothing; a card punched in every place lifts every end (E. A. Posselt, The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained, 1887). The Science Museum Group’s Jacquard hand loom, made in Bolton around 1910, shows the cards joined in a loop above the loom.
Single and double lift. In a single-lift machine one griffe lifts for every pick and must come down before the next shed forms; Nelson gives 90 to 130 picks per minute. A double-lift machine has two griffes working in turn, each end controlled by a pair of hooks, which gives an open shed; with two card cylinders as well, Nelson gives 170 to 180 picks per minute. Stäubli’s electronic LX PRO, for example, is a double-lift, open-shed machine.
From punched cards to the electronic Jacquard
An electronic Jacquard keeps the hooks, knives and harness and replaces the cards, cylinder and needles with electromagnetic hook selection. Bonas says it launched its electronic Jacquard at ITMA Milan in 1983 and now builds machines with up to 31,104 hooks in a single Jacquard (Bonas). Stäubli’s LX PRO selects its hooks with electromagnets in MX PRO modules, takes the design from a separate controller synchronised with the loom, and comes in 4,608, 6,144 and 7,680-hook formats; Stäubli’s Jacquard range runs from 80 hooks to 51,200 with two machines combined. In the card era Posselt gave 100 to 1,200 hooks as the common sizes (1887) and Nelson 100 to 2,600 (1909). The Jacquard is only the shedding motion: it sits on rapier, air-jet and water-jet looms, which do the weft insertion (see shuttle loom vs shuttleless loom).
Digital hand Jacquards serve designers and artists. The TC2 from Digital Weaving Norway lifts every end individually; the maker gives 220 heddles to each module and 2 to 48 modules per loom: “a pixel is a thread”.
The harness: how one hook weaves several repeats
A Jacquard weaves a wide cloth by repeating the figure across it. Each neck cord carries one harness cord per repeat, so one hook lifts one end in every repeat. Posselt’s example is a 400-hook machine with the comber board in three divisions, “making in all three harness-cords to every neck-cord”: the 400-end figure appears three times across the cloth. Nelson states it the other way round: a 400-hook machine has “four hundred harness threads to one repeat of the maximum pattern”.
The comber board spreads the cords to the sett and width of the warp, and Posselt’s rule is that its holes per inch equal the ends per inch in the loom: 36 inches at 100 ends per inch needs 3,600 holes, or 300 across in a board 12 rows deep. Some hooks are held back; Nelson counts 16 to 26 extra hooks on most machines, for selvedges and extra harness.
The tie decides how the repeats sit. In a straight-through tie every division is threaded in the same order and the figure repeats side by side. In a point (centre) tie each division is threaded to its middle and back, so the figure is mirrored and the same hooks cover about twice the width: Posselt’s 200-hook point tie produces a design of 400 warp threads. A new sett on a solid comber board means re-tying the harness or casting out hooks.
Worked example: hooks, ends per cm and repeat width
Take a furnishing damask on a 2,688-hook electronic Jacquard, the largest format of Stäubli’s SX PRO, 180 cm wide in the reed at 40 ends and 30 picks per cm, in an 8-end satin. Say 2,400 hooks carry the figure and the rest are kept for selvedges and spares. The figures are assumed; the arithmetic holds for any cloth.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Ends in one repeat | one end per hook used | 2,400 |
| Repeat width | 2,400 ÷ 40 ends per cm | 60 cm |
| Repeats across the warp | 180 ÷ 60 | 3, so 3 harness cords on every neck cord |
| Total ends | 40 × 180 | 7,200 = 2,400 × 3 |
| Comber board | one hole per harness cord | 7,200 holes; 450 in each row if 16 rows deep |
| Hooks used | 2,400 ÷ 2,688 | 89.3%, 288 spare |
| Does the weave fit? | 2,400 ÷ 8 | 300 satin repeats exactly |
| Picks in a repeat 60 cm high | 60 × 30 | 1,800: 1,800 cards, or 1,800 file rows |
| Design grid | 2,400 × 1,800 | 4,320,000 points, each one end on one pick |
| Design paper | 40 : 30 ends to picks per cm | 4 : 3, for example 8 × 6 paper |
A weave that does not divide the hooks leaves a broken repeat at every join. Posselt’s case is a 12-end weave on a 400-hook machine: 400 ÷ 12 leaves 4 hooks over, so the designer uses 396 hooks or borrows 8 from the reserve to make 408.
Set the repeat first and the hooks follow: hooks needed = ends per cm × repeat width, and the repeat must divide the reed width. For the same cloth:
| Repeats across 180 cm | Repeat width | Hooks for the figure | On 2,688 hooks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (no repeat) | 180 cm | 7,200 | Too few; a 7,680-hook format |
| 2 | 90 cm | 3,600 | Too few; a 4,608-hook format |
| 3 | 60 cm | 2,400 | Fits, 288 spare |
| 4 | 45 cm | 1,800 | Fits, 888 spare |
| 6 | 30 cm | 1,200 | Fits, 1,488 spare |
| 3, point tie | 60 cm, mirrored | about 1,200 | Fits, if the figure is symmetrical |
Posselt did the same sum in inches in 1887: 400 harness cords in one division at 100 ends per inch give a 4-inch repeat. A wider figure needs more hooks, a coarser sett, or a point tie and a symmetrical figure.
Calculator: the satin on its own needs no Jacquard. The weave repeat and maximum sett calculator, set to this 8-end satin (7 up, 1 down, step 3, 40s cotton at 102 ends per inch, which is 40 per cm) gives a repeat of 8 ends and 8 shafts for a straight draft, within any dobby’s reach, and an Ashenhurst maximum sett of 141.67 ends per inch, of which this cloth uses 72%. The Jacquard is needed because the figure, not the weave, is 2,400 ends wide.
How a Jacquard design is made
A Jacquard design is the figure turned, end by end and pick by pick, into lifts. The steps are the same on paper and in Jacquard CAD.
- Fix the frame. Hooks, sett, picks per cm and tie set the size of one repeat, as in the worked example.
- Draw the sketch to the size of the repeat. Posselt advises sketching two repeats each way where possible, so that any streaking shows in the sketch before anything is woven.
- Put it on point paper. Each space between vertical lines is one end and each space between horizontal lines one pick, with heavier lines grouping them into blocks such as 8 by 8 or 8 by 12. The paper takes the cloth’s proportions, or a circle weaves as an oval: Posselt’s damask at 80 ends and 120 picks per inch goes on 8 × 12 paper. CAD stretches its pixels the same way.
- Outline and fill. The figure is outlined in squares, deciding which side of the line each end falls, and each area is coloured.
- Assign the weaves. Each colour stands for a weave. In a damask, figure and ground are the same threads in opposite faces, warp floats against weft floats, so the cloth is reversible. Posselt draws an 8-end satin damask on 8 × 8 paper so that the satin’s marks fall in the same place in every heavy square and an error shows at once.
- Add the extras. Selvedges and any extra harness use the reserve hooks.
- Output the lifts. Each pick’s row was once punched into a card, on a card-stamping machine such as the piano machine Posselt describes, and the cards laced into an endless chain. Today the CAD program exports a Jacquard design file, one column per hook and one row per pick, for the machine’s controller.
How weaves are drawn on point paper and how a weave repeat is counted are set out in woven design.
Jacquard, dobby and tappet shedding compared
Nelson defines Jacquard weaving as “all harness weaving that is above the range of harness shafts”. Tappet and dobby shedding move shafts, and every end on a shaft rises with it; a Jacquard moves ends.
| Tappet (cam) | Dobby | Jacquard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What moves | Heald shafts, each driven by a cam | Heald shafts, each selected pick by pick | Single ends, by hook and harness cord, one end per repeat |
| Current size (Stäubli) | 8 or 10 lifting units | 16 to 24 on rotary dobbies; up to 30 on technical dobbies, 56 with a double head | 80 to 51,200 hooks, two machines combined |
| Pattern held in | The cams; a new weave needs new cams | The dobby’s electronic control | Punched cards, now a design file |
| Widest pattern | A straight draft repeats on as many ends as there are shafts | The same, with more shafts; a pointed draft about doubles it | As many ends as the hooks used |
| Typical cloths | Plain weaves and heavy fabrics | Small geometric figures such as honeycomb | Damask, brocade, matelassé, tapestry, labels |
Current sizes are from Stäubli’s S1600 and S1700 cam motions (“ideally suited for weaving various plain weaves”), S3000 and S3200 rotary dobbies and S2688 and S4080 technical dobbies. Honeycomb shows the dobby’s reach: five shafts on a pointed draft give an eight-end repeat, while honeycomb quilts with large figures go to the Jacquard (honeycomb weave). The three systems are introduced in types of shedding mechanism; the dobby has its own page, dobby loom technology.
What is woven on a Jacquard
- Damask: a reversible figured cloth whose figure and ground are the contrast of warp floats and weft floats in the same threads (SILKNOW, damask), used for upholstery, tablecloths, napkins and drapery (CAMEO, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
- Brocade: a rich figured cloth with raised figures set off by contrasting surfaces or colours (SILKNOW, brocade); strictly, to brocade is to add supplementary pattern wefts (brocade, technique). For furnishing use see brocade fabric for upholstery.
- Lampas: a compound figured weave in which weft floats, bound by a binding warp, are added to a ground of main warp and main weft (SILKNOW, lampas).
- Matelassé: a double cloth with a quilted face, thick wadding picks lying between the layers and the figuring threads holding them together (SILKNOW, matelassé).
- Tapestry: properly hand-woven, the coloured wefts worked in by hand, a term “often loosely applied to imitative textile fabrics” (SILKNOW, tapestry). Stäubli lists tapestry among the fabrics its Jacquards weave; in those terms a Jacquard tapestry is the imitation.
- Others in Stäubli’s range: terry, silk and apparel fabrics; velvet (up to 14,336 hooks); carpet (up to 8,448); ribbons and labels (up to 896); names in selvedges (up to 128); one-piece woven airbags (up to 14,336).
History: from the draw boy to Babbage
Figured silks were woven on the drawloom, where a draw boy pulled the cords that raised the ends for each pick. Jacquard did not invent the punched card: perforated paper, cards and an automatic loom had all been tried before him. Posselt credits him with combining the best of them into the first arrangement “sufficiently practical to be generally employed”, and it did away with the draw boy.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1725 | Basile Bouchon controls a loom with perforated paper rolls | Science Museum Group |
| 1728 | Jean-Baptiste Falcon uses punched cards in an endless chain, the first machine of any kind controlled by punch cards; a draw boy still presents them | Science Museum Group |
| 1745 | Jacques de Vaucanson designs a loom made “completely self-acting” by a pierced cylinder | Fondation Napoléon; Posselt |
| 23 December 1801 | Jacquard, born in Lyon in 1752, is granted a patent for, in translation, “a machine intended to replace the draw boy in the making of brocaded and figured cloths” | Fondation Napoléon |
| 1803 | At the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris, he reassembles Vaucanson’s loom | Fondation Napoléon |
| 1804 to 1805 | The card-controlled Jacquard machine is developed; Jacquard finishes it after returning to Lyon in 1804 | Science Museum Group; Computer History Museum; Posselt |
| 15 April 1805 | An imperial decree signed at Lyon pays him 50 francs for every machine delivered, for six years; a 3,000-franc pension from Lyon follows in 1806 | Fondation Napoléon |
| 1806 and 1811 | 41 machines delivered to Lyon in 1806, 57 in 1811 | Fondation Napoléon |
| Before 1810 | Lyon’s silk weavers, fearing for their work, turn on him, and machines are broken up in public | Fondation Napoléon; Posselt |
| 7 August 1834 | Jacquard dies at Oullins, near Lyon | Fondation Napoléon |
| About 1839 | Michel-Marie Carquillat weaves a silk portrait of Jacquard for Didier Petit et Cie from about 24,000 cards | Computer History Museum; Science History Institute |
| 1843 | Ada Lovelace: the Analytical Engine “weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves” | Lovelace’s Note A to Menabrea’s Sketch of the Analytical Engine, in Scientific Memoirs, vol. III (London, 1843); transcription |
| 1983 | Bonas launches its electronic Jacquard at ITMA Milan | Bonas |
Charles Babbage took the card principle for the Analytical Engine, which he designed from the 1830s to be controlled by loops of punched cards (Computer History Museum). In December 1839 he wrote to François Arago about the woven portrait, newly arrived in London, and wanted a copy for his house (Science History Institute).
Questions
How does a Jacquard loom work?
The Jacquard machine above the loom raises each warp end by its own hook, neck cord and harness cord. For every pick a card, or a row of the design file, selects the hooks the griffe lifts; the raised ends form the shed, the loom inserts and beats up the weft, and the next card selects the next shed.
What is the difference between a dobby and a Jacquard loom?
A dobby lifts heald shafts, 16 to 24 on Stäubli’s rotary dobbies and up to 30 on its technical ones, so all the ends on a shaft move together and the pattern stays small. A Jacquard lifts ends individually through hooks, from 80 to tens of thousands, so the figure can be as wide as the hooks allow. Tappet shedding is simpler still: cams for 8 or 10 shafts, for plain and simple weaves.
What is a Jacquard design file?
The digital form of the card set: a grid with one column per hook and one row per pick, marking which hooks lift on each pick, exported from Jacquard CAD in the form the machine’s controller reads. The worked example above is a file of 2,400 columns by 1,800 rows.
How many hooks does a Jacquard machine have?
Posselt gives 100 to 1,200 hooks as the common sizes in 1887 and Nelson 100 to 2,600 in 1909. Stäubli’s current range runs from 80 hooks, for names in selvedges, to 51,200 with two machines combined, and Bonas builds single machines with up to 31,104. At 40 ends per cm, every 40 hooks give one centimetre of repeat.
When was the Jacquard loom invented?
Joseph Marie Jacquard developed his card-controlled machine in 1804 and 1805, finishing it in Lyon, building on Bouchon’s perforated paper (1725), Falcon’s cards (1728) and Vaucanson’s loom (1745). His patent of 23 December 1801 was for an earlier machine to replace the draw boy.
What is the Jacquard loom used for?
Any cloth whose figure is too large for shafts: damask table linen, brocade and lampas for furnishing, matelassé, Jacquard tapestry, bordered terry towels, woven labels and ribbons, velvets and carpets, and technical fabrics such as one-piece woven airbags.
How this page is kept
Last verified: 11 October 2026. Every source was read on that date.
- Mechanism, harness, ties, design paper and cards: E. A. Posselt, The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained (Philadelphia, 1887); H. William Nelson, Jacquard Machines: Instruction Paper (American School of Correspondence, 1909).
- Current machines: Stäubli’s Jacquard and frame-weaving product pages, read from archived copies because the live pages refuse automated requests; Bonas; Digital Weaving Norway.
- History: Science Museum Group records for the model of Falcon’s loom and a Jacquard hand loom; Marc Allégret’s biography of Jacquard (Revue du Souvenir Napoléonien no. 433, 2001), published by the Fondation Napoléon; the Computer History Museum; the Science History Institute; Lovelace’s notes to her translation of Menabrea’s paper on the Analytical Engine, Scientific Memoirs, vol. III (London, 1843), and a transcription.
- Fabric terms: the SILKNOW thesaurus, which draws on the vocabulary of CIETA, the textile-history centre in Lyon; CAMEO, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- The worked example’s cloth is assumed; its arithmetic follows Posselt’s rules, and the satin check uses the site’s weave repeat calculator as it stood on 11 October 2026.
Change log. 11 October 2026: rewritten in full around how the machine works, how the harness repeats a figure, how a design is made, and a worked repeat calculation. Removed: three unsourced “case studies” (an Italian mill, a French factory and a multinational, with gains of 20% and 25%) that appear word for word in the site’s dobby article; unsourced claims about customs clearance, return on investment and energy saving; a line promoting this site. Corrected: Jacquard did not introduce punched cards, which Falcon used in 1728; his patent dates from 1801 and the card mechanism from 1804 to 1805; and a Jacquard does not control every thread across the cloth separately, since in a repeating harness one hook lifts one end in each repeat. An image carrying another publisher’s watermark was removed, and each caption now names its image’s source.
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