Name/Title
TableclothEntry/Object ID
2022.2.85.106Description
This small jacquard tablecloth was donated by Jerry and Marilyn Payn. The tablecloth is fringed with a pale peach and cream floral pattern. It was presented to Jerry's parents as a going away gift from the Bromfields in August of 1943. Jerry's father worked on the farm.
The jacquard weaving process was created to make patterned woven fabrics safer and cheaper to produce. Prior to Joseph Marie-Jacquard's patent in 1804, the process for creating patterns via weaving was manual and relied on child labor. To create the woven pattern, threads would have to be manually lifted. The children tasked with this often ended up injured by the heavy equipment. However, Jacquard used punched cards to do much of the work children had done. The cards "programmed" the loom to lift the strands that the children would have manually lifted. It was partially Jacquard's process that helped inspire early computers in the 19th century.
