Manufacture des Flandres.
The history of Roubaix and our museum.
In the middle-ages Roubaix was not much of a city(830 inhabitants). This will change by the arrival of the "Charte Manufacturière". This carta was given to Pierre de Roubaix by Charles the Bold, allowing to weave wool in Roubaix. This document will start the homedone weaving in the village.
It is only in the 19th century that Roubaix will grow in a spectacular way. The steamengine, the jacquardloom, the thousands of cheminees, the gigantic manufactures and lots of workers houses will build a totaly new town. Roubaix becomes a textile giant, and it will stay it untill the last economical crisis in the late 1980's, that will force to close most of the dying-,spinning- and weavingmills. After 1980, the industrial patrimony will be revalued by restauring and reusing industrial and religious buildings, and recently even the ancient "courées" (poor workers houses).
The history of our museum.
The museum of jacquard is situated in the buildings of the "Craye" mills in Roubaix. Hendrik persyn, our president today, initiated the project. This museum is a private eenterprise of the "Flemish Tapestries" group. It wants to preserve and show to the public the jacquard patrimony of Flanders.
In the early 90's, the Craye mills were endangered by the worldwide crisis in textile. That's when they joined "Flemish Tapestries". One of the mill's halls was then transformed into the museum we know now. After 3 years of preparation, a living workshop was opened for the public. On a surface of 1400m², 15 looms are on exhibition in a historic order. During every single (always guided) visit, every single loom is explained and put to work. The guide also narrates details on social and technical backgrounds of the several looms and ages. In this way, one untherstands the evolution of the weaving loom since the 11th century and the jacquardloom since 1803.
The oldest loom is a wooden handloom from 1750, the kind of looms Europe knew since the 11th century.
Other remarquabel looms:
A sequential warping mill, early 20th century.
A Nuyts loom: first powered by steamengine, 6 mecanisms, 10688 warp yarns. (1860)
Punchmachine Lehembre (1860) perforating cards. Worked for somme 100 years.
A loom Léon Ollivier (1900 Roubaix). Shaftloom.
Some shuttleless looms. (From 1951 on).
Computer assisted loom (from 1992 on).
And the queen of them all: A wooden jacquard ribbonweaving loom (1884).
These looms were found all over Europe (France, Belgium,Switserland, Italy, Spain ...). Some of them were gifts, some were bought, we found them in collections, museums or in hidden corners in some mills. We still are completing our collection.
We are, of course, also showing our fabrics and products in our Boutique; middle-age, renaissance, Aubusson and Art-Nouveau style. Every tapestry is carrying on teh back-side a ticket, explaining history, origin and yarn-description. Some are telling the history of Flanders, other talk about "Horse back hunting" or "The lady with the unicorn". After the tour, you can visit our exposition-hall and the "Boutique", containing all our marvellous products (tapestries, cushions, plaids and much more...). These decoratif products are known world-wide and exported to Japan, USA,GB, Italy and many other countries.
This whole realisation is the result of the work of a group of passionated men, wanting to conserve the knowhow of our ancesters, and pass it true to the coming generations. We want more people to know what these ancient looms were all about, and learn them to appreciate the industrial patrimony of this region.