THE WORLD OF RIBBONS
WHAT ARE RIBBONS?
Ribbons belong to the family of narrow frabric, like plaits and braids. They can be defined as cloth bands which are less than 20cm. wide. Ribbons stand out from the former because their threads are interwoven like in wide fabric: a large number of threads are arranged in paralell (in what we call warp) and another yarn (the weft) crosses half the warp yarns alternatively, whereas cords or plaitings are interwoven as in a plait and braids are made by twisting their threads.
THE USES OF RIBBONS
There are different kinds of ribbons according to the threads they are made of and the uses they are given. They can be divided into three big groups:
- ‘coarse’ ribbons, woven in not very bright fibres –like cotton, hempen cloth or flax- which are called ‘vetes’ in Catalan and are mainly used in dressmaking to strengthen and work on clothing items. In Catalonia cotton ribbons are called ‘vetes’.
- ‘fine’ ribbons, made of such natural fibres as silk –nowadays also rayon and polyester are used- are mainly used to decorate other clothing items and many other objects.
- subjection and fastening ribbons, used in a large number of everyday objects: safety belts, handbag and ruck sack handles, sports equipment … They are produced from fibres like polyester or polyurethane.
RIBBONS IN THE HISTORY OF FASHION
The importance of ribbons is remarkable in many art masterpieces. It is known that in such ancient civilizations as Mesopotamia and Greece they were tightly worn around the head. That ribbon was the symbol of victory for those athletes who took part in the Olympic Games.
Apart from having that symbolic use, silk ribbons, a luxury fibre throughout history, have had a sumptuous use. They have been an outstanding sign of wealth when applied to dresses together with blondes, lace and braids. From the 16th C to the 18th C they have decorated men’s and women’s clothing without distinction, but from the French Revolution on, their use was definitely feminized. During the last two centuries they were also used as jewels by the poor all around Europe. Ribbons are used as support for the medals that hang round the neck (and military medals in the case of men), they decorate the traditional hairdoes, shoes and hats. According to fashion historians, silk ribbons have been a symbol of elegance in all times.
Coarse ribbons and plaited cords have always been a need in dressmaking, which are used to reinforce the structure of clothes.
HISTORY AND TECHNIQUE OF NARROW FABRIC
Silk arrives in Europe in the Middle-Ages through Al-Andalus, and from the Modern Ages on, concentrates in a group of cities that have facilities to get raw material.
Technically, we can distinguish three stages in the history of ribbon looms:
The Simple Loom
Up to the end of the 16th C people used a loom called ‘de perxer’ to make ribbons, a technically identical machine to wide fabric manual looms but smaller, in which a craftsman only wove one ribbon.
The Multiple Ribbon Loom
In the last few years of the 16th C the German artisan Anton Müller invented a loom for weaving more than one ribbon at a time –between four and six-. It allowed to multiply the weaver’s productivity and has been considered to be one of the main textile innovations before the Industrial Revolution.
Soon after, in1604, the Flemish technician Willem D. van Sonnevelt succeeded in the Müller’s loom automation, that is to say, the first mechanic loom in history, 200 years beforehand respect the wide fabric loom. With a simple rotative movement of a long bar or oar, the machinist had to only worry about knotting and changing the yarns. It improved ribbon productivity and quality.
The first bar looms could weave twelve ribbons and soon they improved that initial number up to twenty-four. They spread through Flanders, where they were exported to the Netherlands, England and Germany in the 17th C. About 1670 they arrived in such Swiss cities as Basilea and Zurich, where hydraulic power activated them for the first time. The spreading of that loom to France, in the 18th C, was initiated by Swiss businessmen in Marseilles and Saint Etienne (near Lyons). That loom arrived in Manresa between 1750 and 1775 from England, according to oral tradition.
That loom went on developing in other places around Europe. The zip fulling hammer, which allowed silk ribbons with high quality hems to be woven, was invented. It will get to Manresa in the 20th C. We must also point out the ‘doble component’ loom to make velvet ribbons and the use of the jacquard machine together with the the multiple ribbon loom, which led into a new type of ribbons with designs that look like embroideries due to the individual evolution of their warp threads.
The Revolution of the Needle Loom
From the 50s on, in the 20th C, a new technique of looms without shuttle developed in Great Britain and US. It allowed us to multiply by ten the speed of ribbon weaving. They were introduced with difficulty, but finally they prevailed, and today, they are the machinery of ribbon makers. They are small looms, which can make from four to six ribbons at a time maximum and work at a speed of 10,000 shots per minute.
MANRESA, CAPITAL CITY OF NARROW FABRIC
Catalonia has been the area where the Spanish textile industry has concentrated and Manresa has specialized in narrow fabric.
Narrow fabric arrrived in the city as one of the parts of the silk trade, which had spread throughout the city during the 18th C thanks to a powerful guild of silk weavers (manufacturers of veils and silk handkerchieves) that also included passementerie makers (ribbon makers) and manufacturers of braids and lace, who sold their products to the Spanish and colonial market.
From the 19th C on, under a deep crises caused by the loss of the American colonies, Manresa gets specialized in cotton ribbons, without leaving silk ribbons apart.
The development of narrow fabric in Manresa can be divided into three big stages:
The Craft Drapery
In 1758, 111 looms operated in Manresa and in 1775 a document talks about some ‘silk ribbon factories, where only one man makes and weaves twenty ribbons of various sizes and colours, simple or double’, in 1780 there were 200 trimming looms and 100 simple looms ‘of twenty pieces per loom’. The Census of Manufactures in 1784 confirms 57 running factories which employ 69 people and produce 13,680 articles a year. In Manresa bar looms were known as ‘de rem’ (oar looms), and were called factories because people did not accept that such big machines, 4m. wide, could be simply called looms.
The Prevalence of Ribbons
During the 19th C there was a great spreading of ribbon manufacturing in little workshops that span with manual looms of about forty ribbons. Those workshops were owned by small manufacturers and were situated in the upper flats of buildings with large windows that allowed good lightning. A group of powerful traders (in some cases manufacturers, too) placed orders and delivered threads to the small ribbon workshops. That kind of production organization caused labour conflicts that led to general ribbon strikes between 1890 and 1910. That home working system lasted until the beginning of the 20th C, when from the 20s on the manufacturers with joined work became more important than those of distributed work. At the beginning of the 20th C nearly all the manual looms were mechanized with bars activated by electrical engines. The noise that they produced when working at a constant pace caused people to call them ‘telers de patacada’ (banging looms).
The Industrial Specialization
From the 1930s medium-sized and specialized companies like Cintes Manubens -founded in 1934- have dominated the ribbon production in Manresa, even though a few ribbon workshops have lasted up to the 90s. The ‘patacada’ looms were progressively left apart in favour of looms with iron bedplates and zip fulling hammers. That process has to be connected with the decline of narrow bands (‘vetes’) in favour of more quality ribbons. The most important events in the 20th C have been the severe textile crises of the70s and the process of globalization that have forced a lot of firms to close down. Today, only those that, like Cintes Manubens have adapted to the environment with great investment and specialization survive.
Manresa has become the industrial ribbon district of the Spanish market for different reasons: the skills and knowledge of a group of technicians, workers and dealers that have produced, assimilated and financed technical innovations, the existence of narrow fabric auxiriary companies and the closeness of a good market, like the dressmaking market and haberdashery wholesalers.
