Part 13

Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his favourite occupation was the construction of little models of houses, towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman, he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to sell the house his father had left him,--the last remnant of his little heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving, type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for his life on the reduction of the city, and with his son--a lad of sixteen--joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had, before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze medal and a ten years' patent.

During the peace of Amiens, Jacquard happened to take up a newspaper in a _cabaret_ which he frequented, and his eye fell on a translated extract from an English journal, stating that a prize was offered by a society in London for the construction of a machine for weaving nets. As a mere amusement he turned his thoughts to the subject, contrived a number of models, and at last solved the problem. He made a machine and wove a little net with it. One day he met a friend who had read the paragraph from the English paper. Jacquard drew the net from his pocket saying, "Oh! I've got over the difficulty! see, there is a net I've made." After that he took no more thought about the matter, and had quite forgotten it, when he was startled by a summons to appear at the Prefectal Palace. The prefect received him very kindly, and expressed his astonishment that his mechanical genius should so long have remained in obscurity. Jacquard could not imagine how the prefect had discovered his mechanical experiments, and began vaguely to dread that he had got into some shocking scrape. He stammered out a sort of apology. The prefect was surprised he should deny his own talent, and said he had been informed that he had invented a machine for weaving nets. Jacquard owned that he had.

"Well, then, you're the right man, after all," said the prefect. "I have orders from the emperor to send the machine to Paris."

"Yes, but you must give me time to make it," replied Jacquard.

In a week or two Jacquard again presented himself at the palace with his machine and a half manufactured net. The prefect was eager to see how it worked.

"Count the number of loops in that net," said Jacquard, "and then strike the bar with your foot."

The prefect did so, and was surprised and delighted to see another loop added to the number.

"Capital!" cried he. "I have his majesty's orders, M. Jacquard, to send you and your machine to Paris."

"To Paris! How can that be? How can I leave my business here?"

"There is no help for it; and not only must you go to Paris, but you must start at once, without an hour's delay."

"If it must be, it must. I will go home and pack up a little bundle, and tell my wife about my journey, I shall be ready to start to-morrow."

"To-morrow won't do; you must go to-day. A carriage is waiting to take you to Paris; and you must not go home. I will send to your house for any things you want, and convey any message to your wife. I will provide you with money for the journey."

There was no help for it, so Jacquard got into the carriage, along with a gendarme who was to take charge of him, and wondered, all the way to Paris, what it all meant. On reaching the capital he was taken before Napoleon, who received him in a very condescending manner. Carnot, who was also present, could not at first comprehend the machine, and turning to the inventor, exclaimed roughly, "What, do you pretend to do what is beyond the power of man? Can you tie a knot in a stretched string?" Jacquard, not at all disconcerted, explained the construction of his machine so simply and clearly, as to convince the incredulous minister that it accomplished what he had hitherto deemed an impossibility.

Jacquard was now employed in the Conservatory of Arts and Manufactures to repair and keep in order the models and machines. At this time a magnificent shawl was being woven in one of the government works for the Empress Josephine. Very costly and complicated machinery was employed, and nearly L1000 had already been spent on it. It appeared to Jacquard that the shawl might be manufactured in a much simpler and less expensive manner. He thought that the principle of a machine of Vaucousin's might be applied to the operation, but found it too complex and slow. He brooded over the subject, made a great many experiments, and at last succeeded in contriving an improved apparatus.

He returned to Lyons to superintend the introduction of his machine for figure-weaving and the manufacture of nets. The former invention was purchased for the use of the people, and was brought into use very slowly. The weavers of Lyons denounced Jacquard as the enemy of the people, who was striving to destroy their trade, and starve themselves and families, and used every effort to prevent the introduction of his machine. They wilfully spoiled their work in order to bring the new process into discredit. The machine was ordered to be destroyed in one of the public squares. It was broken to pieces,--the iron-work was sold for old metal, and the wood-work for faggots. Jacquard himself had on one occasion to be rescued from the hands of a mob who were going to throw him into the Rhone.

Before Jacquard's death in 1835, his apparatus had not only made its way into every manufactory in France, but was used in England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and America. Even the Chinese condescended to avail themselves of this invention of a "barbarian."

Jacquard's apparatus is, strictly speaking, not a loom, but an appendage to one. It is intended to elevate or depress, by bars, the warp threads for the reception of the shuttle, the patterns being regulated by means of bands of punched cards acting on needles with loops and eyes. At first applied to silk weaving only, the use of this machine has since been extended to the bobbin net, carpets, and other fancy manufactures. By its agency the richest and most complex designs, which could formerly be achieved only by the most skilful labourers, with a painful degree of labour, and at an exorbitant cost, are now produced with facility by the most ordinary workmen, and at the most moderate price.

Of late years the silk manufacture has greatly improved, both in character and extent. The products of British looms exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1862 vied with those of the Continent. Every year upwards of L2,300,000 worth of silk is brought to England; and the silk manufacture engages some L55,000,000 of capital, and employs eleven to twelve hundred thousand of our population.

The Potter's Art.

I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. II.--BERNARD PALISSY. III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.

The Potter's Art.

I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.

There can be little doubt as to the antiquity of the pottery manufacture. It probably had its origin in that of bricks, which at a very early date men made for purposes of construction; but it is not impossible that he had previously contrived to fabricate the commoner articles of domestic economy, such as pans and dishes, of sun-dried clay.

Bricks, as everybody knows, are fashioned out of a coarse clay, such as we meet with in very numerous localities. After mixing up with water a kind of paste out of these clayey earths, the moulder works up the paste into the shape of bricks, and they are then exposed to the heat of the kiln. Sometimes it was thought sufficient to dry these bricks in the rays of a burning sun; but, so dried, their solidity is very inconsiderable. Baked bricks owe their redness of colour to the oxide of iron which they contain. They are either moulded with the hand or cast in rectangular frames of wood, dusted with sand. To bake them, they are piled up in huge stacks, in which intervals are left for storing and kindling the fuel. They are also baked in kilns.

The commoner pottery wares are manufactured with the coarse impure clays, which are allowed to rot in trenches for several years to render them more plastic. Flower-pots, sugar-pans, vases, and other and more graceful articles, are moulded on the potter's wheel.

Now, this potter's wheel is one of the most ancient instruments of human industry, one of the earliest inventions by which man utilized and economized his labour. It consists of a large disc of wood, to which a rotatory motion is given by the workman's foot. A second and smaller disc, on which is placed the paste for working, is fixed upon the upper extremity of the vertical axis to which the larger and inferior disc is attached. Seated on his bench, the workman places in the centre of the disc a certain quantity of soft moist clay, and turning the wheel with his foot, moulds the said paste with both hands, until it assumes the desired shape. You can imagine no prettier spectacle than that of a skilful potter causing the clay, under his nimble fingers, to assume the most varied forms. It seems as if by miracle the vase was created suddenly, and the rude clay sprang into a life and beauty of its own.

The Campanian potteries, improperly but commonly called the Etruscan, and the ancient Greek wares, belong to the class of soft and lustrous potteries which are no longer manufactured. The Etruscan vases are the most remarkable specimens of the ancient potter's art; pure, simple, and elegant in form, they cannot be surpassed by any efforts of the modern potter. The paste of which they are made is very fine and homogeneous, coated with a peculiar glassy lustre, which is thin but tenacious, red or black, and formed of silica rendered fusible by an alkali. They were baked at a low temperature. In this ware, which was in vogue between 500 and 320 B.C., the Aretine and Roman pottery originated. The former was manufactured at Arezzo or Arretium.

The knowledge of glazes, which was acquired by the Egyptians and Assyrians, seems to have been handed down to the Persians, Moors, and Arabs. Fayences, and enamelled bricks and plaques, were commonly used among them in the twelfth century, and among the Hindus in the fourteenth. The celebrated glazed tiles, or _azulejos_, which contribute so much to the beauty of the Alhambra, were introduced into Spain by the Moors about 711 A.D. In Italy, it is supposed, they were made known as early as the conquest of Majorca by the Pisans, in 1115 A.D. But Brongniart places their introduction three centuries later, or in 1415, and says this peculiar kind of ware was called _Majolica_, from Majorica or Majorca. This, however, seems to have been the Italian enamelled fayence, which was used for subjects in relief by the celebrated Florentine sculptor, Luca della Robbia.

Robbia had been bred to the trade of a goldsmith--in those days a trade of great distinction and opulence--but his artistic tastes could not be controlled, and he abandoned it to become a sculptor. A man of a singularly enthusiastic and ardent nature, he applied himself arduously to his new work. He worked all day with his chisel, and sat up, even through the night, to study. "Often," says Vasari, "when his feet were frozen with cold in the night time, he kept them in a basket of shavings to warm them, that he might not be compelled to discontinue his drawings." Such devotion could hardly fail to secure success. Luca was recognised as one of the first sculptors of the day, and executed a number of great works in bronze and marble. On the conclusion of some important commissions, he was struck with the disproportion between the payment he received and the time and labour he had expended; and, abandoning marble and bronze, resolved to work in clay. Before he could do that, however, it was necessary to discover some means of rendering durable the works which he executed in that material. Applying himself to the task with characteristic zeal and perseverance, he at length succeeded in discovering a mode of protecting such productions from the injuries of time, by means of a glaze or enamel, which conferred not only an almost eternal durability, but additional beauty on his works in terra cotta. At first this enamel was of a pure white, but he afterwards added the further invention of colouring it. The fame of these productions spread over Europe, and Luca found abundant and profitable employment during the rest of his days, the work being carried on, after his death, by brothers and descendants.

II.--BERNARD PALISSY.

The next great master in the art was Bernard Palissy,--a man distinguished not only for his artistic genius, but for his philosophical attainments, his noble, manly character, and zealous piety. Born of poor parents about the beginning of the sixteenth century, Bernard Palissy was taken as apprentice by a land-surveyor, who had been much struck with the boy's quickness and ingenuity. Land-surveying, of course, involved some knowledge of drawing; and thus a taste for painting was developed. From drawing lines and diagrams he went on to copy from the great masters. As this new talent became known he obtained employment in painting designs on glass. He received commissions in various parts of the country, and in his travels employed his mind in the study of natural objects. He examined the character of the soils and minerals upon his route, and the better to grapple with the subject, devoted his attention to chemistry. At length he settled and married at Staines, and for a time lived thriftily as a painter.

One day he was shown an elegant cup of Italian manufacture, beautifully enamelled. The art of enamelling was then entirely unknown in France, and Palissy was at once seized with the idea, that if he could but discover the secret it would enable him to place his wife and family in greater comfort. "So, therefore," he writes, "regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for these enamels as a man gropes in the dark. I reflected that God had gifted me with some knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him to give me wisdom and skill."

He lost no time in commencing his experiments. He bought a quantity of earthen pots, broke them into fragments, and covering them with various chemical compounds, baked them in a little furnace of his own construction, in the hope of discovering the white enamel, which he had been told was the key to all the rest. Again and again he varied the ingredients of the compositions, the proportions in which they were mixed, the quality of the clay on which they were spread, the heat of the furnace to which they were subjected; but the white enamel was still as great a mystery as ever. Instead of discouraging, each new defeat seemed to confirm his hope of ultimate success and to increase his perseverance. Painting and surveying he no longer practised, except when sheer necessity compelled him to resort to them to provide bread for his family. The discovery of the enamel had become the great mission of his life, and to that all other occupations must be sacrificed. "Thus having blundered several times at great expense and through much trouble, with sorrows and sighs, I was every day pounding and grinding new materials and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money, and consumed my wood and my time." Two years had passed now in fruitless effort. Food was becoming scarce in the little household, his wife worn and shrewish, the children thin and sickly. But then came the thought to cheer him,--when the enamel was found his fortune would be made, there would then be an end to all his privations, anxieties, and domestic unhappiness, Lisette would live at ease, and his children lack no comfort. No, the work must not be given up yet. His own furnace was clumsy and imperfect,--perhaps his compositions would turn out better in a regular kiln. So more pots were bought and broken into fragments, which, covered with chemical preparations, were fired at a pottery in the neighbourhood. Batch after batch was prepared and despatched to the kiln, but all proved disheartening failures. Still with "great cost, loss of time, confusion, and sorrow," he persevered, the wife growing more shrewish, the children more pinched and haggard. By good luck at this time came the royal commissioners to establish the gabelle or tax in the district of Saintonge, and Palissy was employed to survey the salt marshes. It was a very profitable job, and Palissy's affairs began to look more flourishing. But the work was no sooner concluded, than the "will o' the wisp," as his wife and neighbours held it, was dancing again before his eyes, and he was back, with redoubled energy, to his favourite occupation, "diving into the secret of enamels."

Two years of unremitting, anxious toil, of grinding and mixing, of innumerable visits to the kiln, sanguine of success, with ever new preparations; of invariable journeys home again, sad and weary, for the moment utterly discouraged; of domestic bickerings; of mockery and censure among neighbours, and still the enamel was a mystery,--still Palissy, seemingly as far from the end as ever, was eager to prosecute the search. He appeared to have an inward conviction that he would succeed; but meanwhile the remonstrances of his wife, the pale, thin faces of his bairns, warned him he must desist, and resume the employments that at least brought food and clothing. There should be one more trial on a grand scale,--if that failed, then there should be an end of his experiments. "God willed," he says, "that when I had begun to lose my courage, and was gone for the last time to a glass-furnace, having a man with me carrying more than three hundred pieces, there was one among those pieces which was melted within four hours after it had been placed in the furnace, which trial turned out white and polished, in a way that caused me such joy as made me think I was become a new creature." He rushed home, burst into his wife's chamber, shouting, "I have found it!"

From that moment he was more enthusiastic than ever in his search. He had discovered the white enamel. The next thing to be done was to apply it. He must now work at home and in secret. He set about moulding vessels of clay after designs of his own, and baked them in a furnace which he had built in imitation of the one at the pottery. The grinding and compounding of the ingredients of the enamel cost him the labour, day and night, of another month. Then all was ready for the final process.

The vessels, coated with the precious mixture, are ranged in the furnace, the fire is lit and blazes fiercely. To stint the supply of fuel would be to cheat himself of a fortune for the sake of a few pence, so he does not spare wood. All that day he diligently feeds the fire, nor lets it slacken through the night. The excitement will not let him sleep even if he would. The prize he has striven for through these weary years, for which he has borne mockery and privation, is now all but within his grasp; in another hour or two he will have possessed it.

The grey dawn comes, but still the enamel melts not. His boy brings him a portion of the scanty family meal. There shall soon be an end to that miserable fare! More faggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and the sun rises on the third day of his tending and watching at the furnace door, but still the powder shows no signs of melting. Pale, haggard, sick at heart with anxiety and dread, worn with watching, parched and fevered with the heat of the fire, through another, and yet another and another day and night, through six days and six nights in all, Bernard Palissy watches by the glaring furnace, feeds it continually with wood, and still the enamel is unmelted. "Seeing it was not possible to make the said enamel melt, I was like a man in desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled to myself that in my mixture there might be some fault. Therefore I began once more to pound and grind more materials, all the time without letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound, grind, and maintain the fire. I was also forced to go again and purchase pots in order to prove the said compound, seeing that I had lost all the vessels which I had made myself. And having covered the new pieces with the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, keeping the fire still at its height."

By this time it was no easy matter to "keep the fire at its height." His stock of fuel was exhausted; he had no money to buy any more, and yet fuel must be had. On the very eve of success--alas! an eve that so seldom has a dawn--it would never do to lose it all for want of wood, not while wood of any kind was procurable. He rushed into the garden, tore up the palings, the trellis work that supported the vines, gathered every scrap of wood he could find, and cast them on the fire. But soon again the deep red glow of the furnace began to fade, and still it had not done its work. Suddenly a crashing noise was heard; his wife, the children clinging to her gown, rushed in. Palissy had seized the chairs and table, had torn the door from its hinges, wrenched the window frames from their sockets, and broken them in pieces to serve as fuel for the all-devouring fire. Now he was busy breaking up the very flooring of the house. And all in vain! The composition would not melt.

"I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further to console me, I was the object of mockery; even those from whom solace was due, ran, crying through the town that I was burning my floors. In this way my credit was taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman," if not, as he tells us elsewhere, as one seeking ill-gotten gains, and sold to the evil one for filthy lucre.