Mulberry silk originated in China. Because of China's long history of cultivating mulberry trees, breeding silkworms, and weaving silk from the resulting thread, the country has developed a distinct and endearing mulberry silk culture that displays the country's extensive and in-depth knowledge of farming. Because of China's prominence as a silk producer, the loom has had a considerable impact on the development of textile manufacturing technology. There are many different kinds of looms in China, each with a lengthy history. There is also a lot of traditional weaving machine in ancient China.

Seen in light of their evolutionary trajectory, the many kinds of silk fabric weaving machines may be classified as either waist, pedal, or jacquard weavers, for example. They can also be separated into silk, Luo, or other forms of silk fabric weaving machines, for example. It's because of the progress of old looms and weaving techniques in my nation that silk textiles continue to grow and evolve.

waist cinching machine

Primitive waist looms are the common name for the earliest Chinese looms. Waist-tied cloth-winding shafts are tied to healds, which are carried in front of the weaver's body and used as frames to propel the warp beam. The weft is then picked up and beat to create the fabric's weave. More than 7,000 years ago, archaeologists in Zhejiang Province discovered the first elements of the original waist machine in the Hemudu and Tianluoshan sites.

Primitive waist looms like this one may still be found in China's southwest, Hainan, Taiwan, and other regions, as well as across the globe. As far as we know, this is the first loom that a person has created and used. Basic wooden sticks are all that the original waist machine needs in order to weave modest textiles, despite its simple form. For the first time in history, looms of all kinds became possible because of this invention.

a pedal-powered weaving machine

It's common knowledge that a pedal-lifting and opening loom is known as a pedal loom. To operate, the early looms required the use of hand-held healds to open and close the apertures, whereas pedal looms were able to open and close by pressing on a foot pedal. When the heald is raised using a foot pedal, the warp yarn is separated into two layers, creating a triangle hole.

This allows the weaver to free his hand so that he may pick and beat the weft with the machine. Improved output and weaving quality may be achieved by replacing human bodies with frames. The pedal loom first existed during the Warring States Period and the Spring and Autumn Period, but it was not until the Eastern Han Dynasty that its true depiction could be seen on several Han painted stones.

By the time of the Qin and Han dynasties, it had spread over the huge Yellow and Yangtze River basins. In the world of pedal looms, there are a variety of models to choose from, such as the double-pitched one, the single-pitched one, and the double-pitched two.

Looms with twisted threads

One of the most distinctive features of the twill loom is the ability to manipulate a single heddle with two pedals. A vast number of them can be discovered on Han Dynasty stone portraits, indicating that it was commonly employed throughout the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The twill loom represents a significant leap forward in plain weave weaving technique as compared to the original loom.

vertical weaving

Unlike the diagonal loom, the vertical loom has pedals on the center axis. Because it is vertical, it is also known as a vertical loom because its warp plane is perpendicular to the ground. Dunhuang's Five Dynasty era caves depicted a vertical loom; the most thorough account is Xue Jingshi's "Ziren Relics" from the Yuan Dynasty.

contraption on the ground

In ancient China, horizontal looms were an essential form of pedal looms. The fuselage is slanted, the single harness is single-footed, and the tension is regulated by the waist with the help of a harness-tensioning device. The ladder frame loom was a precursor to the horizontal loom, which developed from the basic waist loom.

As far back as the Han Dynasty, it has been used, and it extended across China under the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, as well During the Han and Wei dynasties, the horizontal machine was also imported to East Asia, where it had a significant impact on the growth of the textile industry.

Loom Jacquard Pattern

The jacquard technique is the most difficult of the old Chinese weaving methods. Several different types of jacquard machines, including the multi-heddle type and numerous pattern types, have been developed in order to allow the loom to weave complicated patterns frequently and regularly using the jacquard device with the heald and the pattern.

In the textiles industry, Jacquard technology is a significant moment in time. Jacquard machines employ a pattern stored on the loom's heddle or a heald attached to the heddle eye to manage the jacquard program. This is the primary principle of jacquard machines. The recycling of information is a common occurrence. Ancient jacquard technique is today's equivalent of a computer program in terms of visual information storage. All procedures may be repeated without having to restart the program after it has been written.

weaving machine

Jacquard Machine with many heddles

It is a kind of jacquard loom that uses numerous heald frames to produce jacquard weaving. As a result, the multi-heddle jacquard machine is best suited for weaving jacquard textiles with short longitudinal patterns and infinite transverse designs owing to the limitations of the weaving process.

The loom's invention must have occurred during the Warring States Period, according to historical documents and the structural examination of recently discovered silk cultural relics.

Situated in the countryside near Shuangliu County in Sichuan Province, the Dingqiao weaver's loom is an example of the multi-heddle multi-trap jacquard weave.

"Dingqiao Loom" is the name given to the pedals, which are coated with bamboo nails, which look like riverbank stones. For this loom, there are as many pedals as there are flower healds, which may range from 2 to 8 ground healds and 40 to 60 in total. During the Three Kingdoms era, this loom was documented in historical records. The Dingqiao loom, which has been handed down from generation to generation, is still used to weave brocade and lace in accordance with ethnic traditions by the people of China.

Take use of the Jacquard Machine's capabilities.

Because the prior looms couldn't increase the weft pattern cycle, the number of pattern patterns that could be woven was previously restricted. Creating big designs with intricate cycles and order, such as floral and animal patterns, was very challenging. Around the Eastern Han Dynasty, individuals built on the original loom's design to create the bunched jacquard loom. The beam jacquard loom is a complicated weaving device. Cross-stitching and knotting are the loom's most important technologies. The jacquard program and the changing rules of the design are stored in the flower book. To manage warp thread movement, the top half of the loom is an important component in jacquard machines.

In the Hualou bunched jacquard machine, the warps are not controlled by the heddle, but rather by the wire heald, which means that there are as many warps as healds, and the wire heald with the same lifting motion is the end of the wire. This is the most important aspect of the machine. Hanging around on the floral structure. In order to weave, the weaver and the puller must work together. In order to open the heald, the puller stands on top of the floral structure and pulls the flower's horizontal thread. The two singers should follow a set of rules for their performance, and they should sing in time with one another.

Based on the pattern width and warp thread density, beam-healed jacquard looms are classified as either Xiaohualou or Dahualou. For small-width textiles with numerous flowers, flower floor looms are an excellent choice; Flower House Loom. They're known as the Sichuan Shu brocade loom and Suzhou Song brocade loom, respectively, since they were made during the Han and Song dynasties. Late Tang and Five Dynasties, the Dahualou loom arose and grew fast in the Ming dynasty.

The beam jacquard was at its peak at this time. With its huge and round flowers and pattern cycles up to more than ten meters long, it resembles a dragon's mantle in terms of scale. Dahualou looms are often used to weave the Nanjing Yunjin cosmetic flower cloth. There are as many designs and hues to choose from as there are clouds in the sky.

In addition to the broad range of fabric structure and random width of the flower, the beam-healed jacquard machine has the benefit of producing batches of high-quality silk textiles, and the continual updating of silk weaving types also helps to enhance the machine. New generation of jacquard was created in 1801, replacing the pattern with perforated pattern, which revolutionized silk-weaving jacquard technology, as well as electric jacquard in the future, as a result of this innovation. It's the handwoven jacquard that sets the stage for all of this to happen.