Hideo Mabuchi Capacity: 20 people
Tour ticket is required
Stanford Libraries now holds an 1883 edition of a rare book, Les laboureurs: poème tiré de Jocelyn, whose pages (text and ornaments) were entirely woven on a Jacquard loom by the firm of silk merchant Joseph-Alphonse Henry.
This book predates the more widely known and held Livre de Prieres fabricated by the same firm in the late 1880s. This session includes a viewing of the woven Les laboureurs (along with selected rare books on Jacquard weaving from the late-nineteenth century) plus a guided tour of an exhibition “Text machines: Scarlet thread of the digital order (1883-2025)” that was inspired by it.
The exhibition explores the cultural contexts and material conditions of Les laboureurs’ production, and considers parallels between technology-driven change in the late nineteenth century and in our current day. The exhibition includes microscope images revealing the textile structure of the woven text as well as a woven enlargement that illustrates its basic principles.