Pendleton Woolen Mills headquartered in Portland, Oregon, a globally celebrated American lifestyle brand, has added new jacquard looms to operations at the company’s original mill in Pendleton, Oregon. These Italian looms from Itema and Swiss jacquard machines from Staubli are equipped with the latest technology and provide high-speed performance.
“We are excited to partner with these two world-class companies to bring the world’s most advanced weaving technology to Pendleton, Oregon.”
“These looms will improve quality, enhance design capability, add capacity and increase efficiency to produce the ‘Warranted To Be’ quality of Pendleton products and fabrics that the Brand is famous for,” said Charlie Bishop, Executive Vice-President of Manufacturing. “We are excited to partner with these two world-class companies to bring the world’s most advanced weaving technology to Pendleton, Oregon.”
Jacquard looms weave complex designs, angles and shapes, brocades, damask, matelasse, and three-dimensional fabrics. Jacquard blankets were the first items made by Pendleton Woolen Mills when the company opened in Pendleton, Oregon in 1909. The original jacquard looms required tedious manual setup that allowed for one new blanket creation per year. With today’s technology, producing a new jacquard blanket is improved from months to minutes, from the development of the computer-aided design to actual weaving. Jacquard looms, developed with binary logic, were the forerunners to the first digital computers.
Pendleton originally used jacquard looms to create blankets for American Indians living in Eastern Oregon, weaving symbols and utilizing colors that were important and preferred by the Native American culture in the region. Today, jacquard blankets are iconic staples of the brand and still the most popular product of Pendleton craftsmanship.
2015-09-11
