Tilburg Textile museum

On my third day in Tilburg (actually the village of Riel) I bicycled into town and checked out the Textile musem. This was really fun, I really enjoyed it and can recommend it. It had this interesting combination of new and old. Tilburg was originally one of the textile centers of the Netherlands and the museum was built in an old factory. They had many old machines there and they would demonstrate them in action.

First was the wool carding. The machine would take the raw wool and through several steps would organize the fibers so they were straight and ready to spin.

After the fibers were spun they were woven into blankets. This automatic loom was 'programmed' to follow punchcard patterns. The warp threads (those that the wool was 'woven' through) were raised and lowered to allow the shuttle to pass depending on the pattern of the punchcard. In the old machine there was a limit on the size of the pattern and the pattern had to be repeated the width of the material. However, in the newer (and working) section of the musem they had a machine where each warp thread was individually controlled and so they could weave large patterns into the material.

Here is the back of the material being created (no weft, only warp threads). The yellow strands coming down are reading the punchcards at the top. At the bottom you can just make out the wires (attached to the ends of the yellow strands). The wires have a hole and through each hole is passed a single warp strand. Pulling on the yellow string raises the weft strand and the shuttle will pass below those strands.

A detail of the punch cards.

And here is the front of the weaving. The red wool (weft) is being passed above and below the warp threads and making the fabric.


The second half of the museum was a working textile ... studio. Students from different design schools, or artists etc could use this space. Below are two students working on the weaving machines. The computer program lets you draw out each individual loop for the knitting machine which then knits at an incredible rate. There were embroidery machines, crocheting machines and a laser cutting machine for material. As an example they cut out a necklace from a piece of paper and I have the video of it to upload in the future. Here are two students working on the knitting computer.

Also at the museum they had a man making rugs. He was working on a large one and said it would take 16 months complete! It was an art piece where the artist painted this swirly coloured painting with different depths of paint and he was recreating it in carpet form. It looked much better as a carpet. He was using a gun with a needle. He would look at the painting, combine threads to make the right colour and then use the gun to punch through the yarn into the carpet. It was very beautiful.

Finally I bought my first souvenir of Europe from the textile museum. It is a fox scarf and was made on the knitting machine. It looks like a cartoon version of a dead fox and you thread his tale through the hole and it stays nice and tight around your neck. I've seen patterns of something similar to this before. However, with the knitting machine the knitting follows the curve of the body. So it drops and adds stitches to make the piece curve. You probably can't see that in the picture.

It is good that I have bought a scarf because it is getting cooler in Europe, especially now that I am in Holland. I expect that by the end of the trip I will be pretty cold.