Zetag Ag
Textile Museum Sorntal

Never mind the fact that history does not stand still and to try to make it do so is an exercise in futility. Progress and hope itself depends upon looking forward, not back, but the Sorntal Museum in Hauptwil, Switzerland, with its old world charm is a good example that one should never forget the past in order to plan for the future. The museum housed in five floor industrial building approx. 500 square meters textile mill built in 1823. Situated close to a brook due to availablity of water power, which came from the ponds of Hauptwil, the turbines were shut down during 1970’s. PTJ Editor, Amina Baqai visited this Museum in June 2004 and a pictorial presentation about this museum is given here for the interest of our readers. The story about the Textile Museum Sorntal exhibits is available on Internet at our website: www.ptj.com.pk

The Textile Museum is separated into three sections. First there are documentations, accounts, commercial books and teaching books from the last century. Another section consists of the largest sample book collections, containing more than 1 million swatches. The oldest sample book is dated 1849 and has patterns with woven-in squares. The second section entails more than 100 wooden units of the hand loom era. The master piece is a jacquard loom dating from 1860. The exhibits in the last section dates back to 1870 and most interesting fact is that all these machines can still be operated.

Three entrepreneurs started a spinning and weaving mill during 1850’s. In 1891 Brunnschweiler family became the factory owners, till in 1970’s, when ZETAG AG moved here and started the production in this old building until 1976. Then production needed more space due to a bigger demand and we had to raise a new mill. Short time later there was the idea to establish a museum in the old mill.

Documentations
In addition to the different business cards, there is an interesting document about the Moscow Textile Manufacturing Company in Glarus in Switzerland. What has Glarus to do with Moscow?. The Swiss textile entrepreneurs formed a textile company in 1907 in Moscow and at one time that company had 2,700 workers on its payroll. The share which has been much sought after was described in a magazine short time ago, and has the subscription warrant for annual dividends on its reverse. Between 1907 and 1914 those coupons are missing, whereas between 1914 and 1927 they are still existing on the reverse. We know that then was the World War I, Bolshevism came and nobody will have any profit from this share anymore.
There is a picture of Swiss hero Wilhelm Tell (1903)woven in pure silk. The tapestery had been woven in such a fine manner that 1.8 million threads were
was known only in Switzerland during 18th century. In 1860 there were 4,500 weavers in Appenzell. AuBerroden had a flat stitch weaving loom in the basement, partly connected with a jacquard machine.
However, from 1880, flat stitch weaving technique was slowly displaced by embroidery and around 1925 flat weaving was this was discontinued as these sample books with thousands of patterns are quite valuable to serius scholers in weaving technology. The flat stitch was complicated to weave and could be copied by other techniques.
There are documentations on fabric printing with several printing moulds on display. In all the edges of those block models there is a peg as setting point as each color needed its proper mould. There are pattern books with cloth prints, with 8,000 different designs on dyed fabrics, printed fabrics, laces, felt and terry cloth.
An extremely fine show piece is this book called "Travail de vacance" drawn with ink by Fritz Gugelmann during his holidays in 1869. Fritz Gugelmann attended a technical high-school in Lausanne drawing all kinds of textile machinery in spinning and weaving mills. This book contains 16 of such drawings.
There is a documentation on a sectional view of a coconut, there is the inside of the coconut and at the outside a 2inch fibre fluff. From this they produced ropes and many other products such as doormats.
From a twisting company of St. Gallen, the beautiful leather files with thousands of samples of twisted yarns are quite interesting.
The wooden tools of the hand weaving era originate mainly from eastern Switzerland, mostly from Appenzell. There are several spinning wheels and spooling frames, and there is one spooling frame (1850), where one can see the advent of mechanization. In order to use wooden frames, the operator uses one hand for the spindle drive and the other hand to lead the thread for the winding of the spool, this device has a metal shifting for the automatic thread guide.
Flax was cultivated for many centuries in eastern Switzerland and the hemp breaking block dates back to 1836. According to the old records of the cloister of St. Gallen, in the 8th century people had to pay taxes on flax. A document describing flax processing, starting with the flax stem, the breaking, the rippling with the flax comb and then the fibre. One can also see a sample flax plant and linen fabrics. In addition to linen, products of flax are linseed and linseed oil and several flax hackels from all regions of Switzerland were on display.
Another exhibit is flax hand weaving loom (1750), with wooden plugs, that can be dismantled easily. The farmers had time to weave in winter, as in summer, due to field work, the loom was quickly dismandled and easily stored in the loft until next season.
Several reel winders are also displayed on two tables, real beautifully crafted tools. A reel winder ornamented with many knobs is made from bones, with additional features, such as counting thread, craft wheel with 50 teeth. After one turn the hand goes forward by one mark. This scale has 15 marks, this means 15 multiplied by 50 are 750 twists of thread.
bobbin winder is from 1860. 14 spindles are driven by a complicated cording to produce bobbins from hanks or reels. This machine was powered by foot kicks of a spooling woman, and when a thread broke she could turn the spool table to this winding head to knot the threads together without stopping to use the pedal. This is a very rare and one of the last existing machines.
An excellent 200 years old hand weaving loom made of oak on display can weave a woollen fabric with squares of about 40cm or 15 inches. A hand weaving loom on display was used for weaving patchwork rugs.
A new system of warping was developed in the rural regions of eastern Switzerland, here at the museum a visitor can see the procedure of how a punch card for a jacquard loom was made on an old card cutting machine. Next to it is a card lacing machine , whihc operates like a sewing machine. The machines dating from 1895 can sew the punch cards together to have an endless band.
Other exhibits include a point paper design of the Suvrrttahouse in St. Moritz. The museum obtained this design from weaver who used to maufacture bath room rugs for the Suvrettahouse which belong to the Shah of Persia and was used as his summer residence.
The mechanical section shows a 6 spindle spinning machine, with cotton as roving yarn for a cotton yarn production.
An underpick power loom from Ruti No. 50 was also on display and this machine is around 70 years old and at one time the building housed 120 looms of this type. Another weaving loom, a so-called upperpick loom which is roughly 110 years old is still working and one can weave a herringbone twill weave. There is another upperpick loom with a device for multi-color fabrics. The visitor can also see a large Schonherr weaving loom for cloth manufacture.
The knotting machine on display dates from the last century is used for tying together warps. The machine is made of brass with an elaborate construction with a principle similar to a hand knotting apparatus.
The 8 spindle twisting machine was also on display, twist means winding together two or more single threads. .
The cone winder(1885) can produce cylinderical spools with a split drum device. On can see a old specimen of Schweiter spooler.
The embroidery was a speciality of eastern Switzerland and there were about 18,500 units at the turn of the century. The hand embroidery machine on display uses pantograph located at the left side of the machine, where design was transferred and the individual stitches were done. The embroidery machine has two embroidery levels; on each level there are 162 needles which are pointed at both sides. A skilled embroiderer made about 2,500 stitches in a 15 hours workday. The visitors can also see the swatch books with handkerchieves with up to 18,000 stitches. One can imagine how long it took then to finish the work. For handkerchieves they used special frames to embroider 30 handkerchieves at the same time.
These hand embroidery machines were replaced by the Schiffli embroidery machines, which had a punch card similar to the Jacquard machine. The punch machine is illustrated by a drawing showing how a punch card was manufactured in 18th century.
In case of hand embroidery, the machines needles had to be threaded by hand which was children's or women's work, where as embroidery was purely men's work. In about 1895 the threading of the needles was mechanised and the museum displays a very original threading machine for these needles.
The Museum diplay includes two different types of threading machines. The Martini machine works like a robot and only two machines left in Switzerland, other in embroidery school in St. Gallen.
It may be pointed out that teh same version of the Schiffli embroidery machine is still in use in a lot of mills today as it works similar to the principle of a sewing machine with a small shuttle carrying a tiny spool without tube. The fully automatic corresponding spooling machine dates from the beginning of the century.
A woven picture of the Tell's chapel at the lake of Vierwaldstadten was created by Schiffli embroideryspools, with 8,250 spools of 25 kg weight.
There is a copying machine for embroidery designs, where the original design was transferred on parchment paper by using a copying ink. This parchment drawing was placed in the pantograph, inorder to scan and transfer the design to the embroidery needles. When the parchment paper had been used too often with too many holes it was copied by simply damping the paper and by two press rollers a new copy was soon made.
The braiding machine on display has 13 braider bobbins which change position when the machine is powered. The moving bobbins look like a ballet dance and produce a rather thick lace. Another cord braiding machine on display dates back to 1912.
The ribbon loom developed by Saurer of Arbon in 1908 is powered by hand. This system moves with 750 rpm and was considered quite fast. (Today's narrow fabric looms run up to 1,800 turns per minute).
Another machine for technical braids as webbings or straps and machine for the preparatory processes machines. For the ribbon loom department there are special bobbin machines, this one of Hacoba. Concerning the braiding machines we have the corresponding spooling frames and we have also a reeling or winding machine to manufacture skeins which can be reconed later again on the split drum winder. Altogether our museum displays a multi step vertical textile mill.
Over there is a very old warping machine of a quite simple construction. It has a bell at the side. One could set the turns to be run and when they were achieved the bell rang.
Close to our location, in Uzwil, there is Benninger, a textile machine manufacturer. This Benninger warping machine - as you see it now - has already been shown at the 1878 International Paris Exhibition. A special show piece is the warping machine for ribbon weaving. Here we show a very small version, but isn't it beautiful with its cast steel wheel looking like gotic motives?
The machine you had seen so far were mainly equipment from Swiss based companies.
Now we are standing in front of a vertical weaving loom originating from Pakistan. We could acquire this loom from a carpet dealer giving up business and who had this beautiful loom as show piece in his show room. You can see here a started knotted rug and it is interesting to know that 620,000 knots are necessary for one square meter or 56.000 knots for one square foot. At this rug 120,000 knots have been made already. 2 working persons made knots at this loom as the design was reflected the same from the middle to the left and right. In one room there were always several of these looms. One person had to sing melodically the design, i.e. 6 green knots, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and then the color was switched. So only one in the room had to pay attention to the design and the others could chat when working.
Next is a pleating machine. The fabric is pressed between 2 cylinders with a knife and so the fabric comes out pleated.
You probably know the following household utensils: a free standing and an on table ironing machine. The fabric was slipped through 2 wooden cylinders however, this procedure had to be done several times to get the laundry nearly wrinkle- free. Another beautiful show piece is a calander or a laundry press. It's also roughly 100 years old and was still working until June 1988 in a 60 bed hotel in Arosa, Switzerland.
In this corner you find several pieces of a work shop office. For example a very old still working check clock from the last century.
Here we have a copying press being invented about the same time as the typewriting machine. Close to the press is a copied commercial book, dated 1896. Then a standing-desk in the corner and a calculating cylinder which has the same performance as a slide rule measuring 12 m (40 feet). Also on the standing-desk we have a carton with a weaving loom construction. It consists of 250 beautifully colored drawings from David Tobler. He developed several new ideas for the textile industry and had a couple of patent in the early twentieth century.
In a shelf we show many old yarn and fabric testers. There are yarn balances or apparatusses to check on the evenness of the yarn or on the torsion of twisted yarns.
In this corner there is also set up a wool compression machine. The hanks were compressed in a way to have them fit into the shelves of the wool shops; this was also important for the packaging when the wool was shipped abroad.
This one is a laboratory jig to do first trials with new colours or to check on flaws in the fabric. It is only about 25 years, but it is a part of fabric finishing and so we can show you within a close compass how to dye fabrics.
Let us now leave this old weaving room and head for the embroidery room.
Here we show several techniques of embroidery and we start with sketch books of which we have hundreds with many thousands of embroidery drawings. Some drawings refer to embroidered collar, others to cloth insertions, applications for evening dresses or velvet embroidery. A beautiful speciality of Eastern Switzerland is the burnt - out embroidery.
We have collected all these different documentations as ZETAG's site at Hauptwil is in a region where embroidery is still alive as of today. We also show a total annual volume of the magazine "Die Stickerei - Industrie" ("The embroidery industry") of the year 1892. There we also find a reference to the daily wages at that time which were roughly 3 - 4 Francs per day.
In the corner you see the original drawing and the finished embroidered product. There we have also set up an enlarger from 1860. At the very beginning of the industrialisation of embroidery it was stipulated that embroidery drawings had to be enlarged 1:6 facilitate the work with the pantographs.
Now we are in the knitting room. We are standing in front of a crocheting machine driven by hand; close by a mechanical flat bed knitting machine and then a knitting machine where 8 tubes can be knitted at the same time. Opposite a bottle bobbin winding machine of the last century is located where the knitters used a bottle bobbin as centre core. Then you see a hand knitting machine and also a small circular knitting machine for the production of laces or also lantern wicks. If you compare those knitted goods with woven fabrics you realise that knitwear is more flexible and supple whereas woven fabrics are more stable and solid. Both techniques have advantages in there special fields.to the end of our tour we have arrived at the room of the garment industry. Again you can see very old books and annual volumes of fashion magazines, part of them dating back till 1853. In this room you find several sewing machines, old flat-irons, a whole collection with flowers made of fabrics and books of a blouses producing mill with hundreds of pictures. Also we show here many needle work books; however, this room is still in its initial stages.Interessieren Sie sich für eine Führung im Textile Museum der Zetag AG, Sorntal?
Gruppenführungen von 10 bis max. 40 Personen; Dauer ca. 1 Stunde
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Gottlob Lutz, Direktor der Zetag AG
zetag@compuserve.com