
The last velvet merchant of Venice - ErnstByner21
http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20181113-the-last-velvet-merchant-of-venice
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kitd
Note the specific date is 1499, so only just 1400s!

Nearly as good are Balsons Butchers in Bridport, UK who have been operating
since 1515.

[http://rjbalson.co.uk/](http://rjbalson.co.uk/)

~~~
pienight
I'm in Bridport at least twice a year and I _still_ haven't paid a visit yet.
Will have to rectify that next time and get myself a string of sausages - and
possibly a dog to run off with them down the street.

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b3h3moth
This is why I love my Country. Italy I love you :-)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I'm Italian, too, and of course I love Italy so much.

It hurts to see how Italy's current decline is ruining so many beautiful
things that bright, smart and hard-working people have built over the course
of many centuries.

~~~
scottlocklin
Can you speak of this a little more? I have a number of Italian expat friends,
but their complaints about Italy's decline are all over the map.

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ilamont
_Weavers begin by hand-drawing the design on a millimetre grid. Every half-
millimetre of the grid represents a cardboard Jacquard card that is punched
through with a hammer, and every punched hole in the cards corresponds to a
thread. If a design has a repeat of 1.5m, it requires 3,000 cards. After
weavers tie the cards together one by one and hoist them atop the loom, the
real work begins._

Did any other industry use cards in this way prior to the punched card era of
computers?

~~~
akshayn
The Jacquard loom is what started [1] the punched card era. Check out this
episode [2] of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible for an accessible explanation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom)

[2] [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/kids-clothes-
articles...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/kids-clothes-articles-of-
interest-1/transcript/)

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ekblom
Hat's off to the weavers, seems like they have infinitely larger intention-
span than me.

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slededit
The end of the article has me confused, they say modern machines can't match
these old ones. But then say most of their ancient designs are now done on the
mainland with modern machines.

Which is it?

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Aardwolf
Argh, such attempt at fancy presentation, but so annoying in practice, why
overlay text on top of beautiful pictures and be so slow to nagivate?!

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quick_note
Article seems fascinating. Format seems (is) unbearable.

~~~
di_ry
Textbook example of form over function

