Utmost flexibility to artists and professional weavers in tapestry creation

The TextielMuseum in Tilburg, Netherlands, is a Dutch national treasure and one of the world’s most extraordinary textile museums. It includes the TextielLab, housed in an old textile factory built in the 1860s, a national historic monument. The TextielLab offers artists and professional weavers the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art machinery.

The challenge

The TextielMuseum collaborates intensively with textile artists, professional weavers, and universities around the world. The museum wanted to expand its capabilities by installing a new Jacquard installation that would offer great flexibility and adaptability. This task was particularly challenging because space within the building, including the ceiling height, is limited.

Customer benefits

  • A vast range of new possibilities for weaving tapestries
  • Compactness: fits perfectly within the restricted space
  • Harness wear optimization in the case of limited ceiling height

The solution

The TextielLab installed a new 3.5-meter weaving machine equipped with the large-format Stäubli LXL Jacquard machine with 14,336 hooks and an end-to-end harness. Nigerian textile artist Otobong Nkanga, internationally renowned, was here to inaugurate the TextielLab new acquisition. It is the fourth machine from Stäubli to be installed in the TextielLab, allowing the TextielMuseum to welcome more textile artists and designers, providing them in the meantime new creative possibilities. The Jacquard machine was a central part of the solution devised by the project team. The Stäubli LXL Jacquard machine was chosen because it provides the great flexibility and adaptability the museum wanted, opening a vast range of new possibilities, also for weaving tapestries. The Jacquard machine is compact and fits perfectly within the restricted space. It permits safe and straightforward access for making machine adjustments. Moreover, Noemi, the new Stäubli electronic concept, allowed reducing the harness depth and spreading the harness cords evenly across the full width of the Jacquard machine. This new technology permitted the TextielLab to optimize harness wear. Thanks to a newly designed aluminum comber-board frame, it ensures a vibration-free operation.

Innovation and quality combine aesthetics and ergonomics

Stäubli is proud to be part of this impressive project and to contribute to its success. It is a perfect example of Stäubli’s long term commitment and company’s tenet that “innovation and quality combine aesthetics and ergonomics".

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