Our kitchen tea towels are family designed and woven on old Jacquard looms in Czech Republic, Europe. In 1801, French weaver Joseph Jacquard invented a loom attachment which automated how patterns were woven. We still use old looms which continue in his tradition and use traditional Jacquard punch cards.
This is how it works ...
First we draw our design and copy it onto square paper. A skilled worker translates the design into punched cards. The cards are stitched together in a continuous belt and fed into the loom. Woven fabric is made by passing threads over and under one another. The holes in the cards control which vertical threads are raised for weaving the pattern. These threads are passed over and under by using a shuttle. Inside the shuttle is a spool of thread which unwinds with each passing of the shuttle. Modern looms have computers built in them and are very fast. However we believe that the slow traditional way still has its advantages. Sometimes less is more. Careful attention to every detail and quality is still sought out by many customers... We are fourth generation working in textile. Turning our ideas into designs and designs into the final product is an adventurous journey... We enjoy the process...
Thank you for being interested and enjoying our unique kitchen art...
- Milan and Angie
www.crystalarrow.net
From my memories growing up in textile:
At the early age of two, I played at my father’s feet while he was experimenting with one of his Textile designs and weaving at the hand loom. Thanks to my inquisitiveness I unattached a counter balance weight from the loom’s roller and a twenty pound piece of metal weight narrowly missed me…
The clapping sound of a wooden textile loom is one of my first childhood memories. Mom, Dad, my grandparents, and even great-grandparents all worked with textile. It always was a big part of our family tradition. I grew up in the very heart of Europe. Ever since I was a small boy I loved to roam our beautiful countryside… to ride my bike, play Indians, swim in the lakes, pick blueberries…
Jacquard fabric is one of my and my family's favorites. It is one of the oldest and most sophisticated types of textiles, which allows for a lot of creativity. The jacquard loom reads perforated paper cards, which tell the machine how to produce the elaborate, textured designs and intricately woven patterns.
Even after moving here to America I can cooperate with my family back in Europe and participate in designing new motifs with intricate patterns. Influenced by our home European design traditions, we also ventured into designing motifs from the American West...
From my Dad's memories:
I love textile designing. It allows me to enjoy outdoors where I often love to be inspired, process and think about my designs. A lot of the knowledge in this work was passed on to me through our family and later from my older colleagues. Hunts for old pieces of fabric, visiting our countryside’s castles and old museums, and figuring out how ancient fabrics were woven, are all part of the adventures of this work. I have done this work for over thirty years, and I love the fact that there is still something new to learn. Thanks to my experience, customers also ask me to translate their designs into the textile language for their looms. The problem solving and intricacies of the different loom machines are addictive to me, just like puzzle solving. The Jacquard loom is one of my favorites. It creates one of the oldest and most sophisticated types of fabric, which allows for a lot of creativity on my part. I prefer old Jacquard looms still using perforated paper cards. The punctured holes on the cards tell the machine how to produce the elaborate, textured designs and intricate woven patterns.
I am well known among my customers for coming to visit them on my bike and for transporting the stacks of these old fashioned Jacquard cards on my bike. They smile and consider it an oddity however I wouldn’t change it for anything else. How to explain it? Do you like the smell of a freshly baked pie, Sunday’s lunch, freshly cut summer meadow (I still stubbornly prefer the hand sickle- great exercise), or the smell of spring in the air? Or the feeling of the wind on your face while coming down the hill on your bike? It is said that supposedly the smallest things we savor the most. I just like to cling to them and with that also to the traditions of old time textilers.
Thanks to my family in America we can now share parts of these traditions with you too… Thank you for being interested in our business!