Inside the silk weaving workshop in the heart of Vieux Lyon (the old town), even the colors are luxurious. Spools of thread shimmer in crimson, royal blue, iridescent sage. There’s even a bobbin of gold thread so bright that it could be metal—almost as though, in a Rumpelstiltskin-like twist, the silk had changed properties while being spun. Two original Jacquard Looms—immense wooden structures built in the 1800s—barely fit under the Renaissance-era vaulted ceiling.

“We had to cut the looms down to size,” says Virgile De la Calle, Soierie Saint-Georges’ youngest team member. “Vieux Lyon was the silk weaving district before the Jacquard Loom was invented, and the ceilings are barely 3 meters [9.8 feet] high. In Croix-Rousse [the subsequent, 19th-century silk weaving district], they’re 3.6 meters [11.8 feet] minimum.”

Lyon, in Southeast France, has served as the European capital of silk weaving for five centuries. The silk trade is responsible not only for shaping the city’s architecture, but also much of its wealth. Italian silk weavers arrived here in 1466, when Louis XI first established silk manufacturing in Lyon, and shared their savoir-faire with the locals. The industry really took off in the early 16th century, under François I, who popularized silk in the French royal court.

Perhaps it’s the ancestry of the trade that makes Virgile a surprise. I’d expected someone grizzled and gray, or middle-aged at the very least, but at just 31 years old, he’s younger than I am. He runs the workshop with his brother Romain, 39, and unofficially, his father Ludovic, Soierie Saint-Georges’ founder. Ludovic, who is now 70, officially retired some years back, but he still spends much of his time at the workshop. One of the Jacquard Looms belongs exclusively to Ludovic, while Virgile and Romain share the other.

Thanks to its dominant role in the silk trade, Lyon’s economy boomed from the 16th through 18th centuries, surviving epidemics of plague and banking crises, which only slowed its growth temporarily. Originally, it took three to four workers to operate one loom, until Joseph Marie Jacquard, a Lyon-born inventor, unveiled his new automated loom in 1801. The Jacquard Loom, the same design used by the De la Calles today, could be operated by just one person, and programmed to create complex patterns using a series of punch cards. This is the same punch card system that was later adapted to create the first computers. (In 1843, Ada Lovelace, the British mathematician who became the world’s first programmer, was quoted as having said, “the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves.”)

Much like the first computers, and more recently, the widespread release of generative AI, initially the Jacquard Loom wasn’t particularly well-received. By cutting the number of workers needed to operate a loom by 75 percent, employers could drastically cut their staff numbers, while increasing both output and profit. Out-of-work or underpaid canuts, as the Lyonnais master silk weavers were called, began to revolt, and over the next 50 years, a series of bloody uprisings saw many more casualties on the canuts’ side than on the side of the authorities. Nonetheless, the silk weaving industry prevailed, and when Ludovic first learned to weave silk and operate a Jacquard Loom, in the 1970s, there were plenty of canuts still working in Croix-Rousse to teach him.

Today it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a silk workshop to make a profit by weaving exclusively on Jacquard Looms. In Soierie Saint-Georges, the De la Calles use their Jacquard Looms for commissions, such as restoration projects for châteaux and historical buildings; private projects for restaurants and hotels; and luxury goods. The bulk of the world’s silk has long been machine-woven; still, in a twist that feels oddly full-circle, AI is increasingly used to design, optimize, and control the whole process.

“It would be harder for young people to learn traditional silk weaving now than it was for me in the ‘70s,” says Ludovic. “Tuition on the modern, machine-based kind would be more readily available, but there are still things that the Jacquard Loom can do that machines can’t recreate.”

Ciselé velvet is one such example. By inserting metal rods into loops of silk thread and cutting them with a razor blade, weavers can achieve a soft, fluffy effect with different depths of velvet.

“When you use a machine, you can’t achieve the different thicknesses in the fabric,” Virgile explains, as he lays out Jacquard-spun, ciselé velvet on the loom. “You can weave silk velvet, but not ciselé.”

What I first believed to be engravings or framed pencil sketches on the workshop’s walls all turn out to have been woven from silk. The De la Calles are collectors, and some of the most famous moments in history, including the signing of the U.S. Constitution, have been immortalized in silken art. There’s a woven silk portrait of Jacquard himself, along with silk theater programs and restaurant menus. As Virgile weaves and the click-clacking soundtrack of the loom reverberates from the curved ceiling, I can imagine a time when Lyonnais high society ordered lunch from menus made of silk.

“I’m a silk nerd,” grins Virgile, who gave up a career in pharmaceuticals to join his father and brother in the workshop.

Far from seeing AI as a threat, Virgile uses it to come up with new designs that he then recreates on his Jacquard Loom. When you’re one of three remaining Jacquard silk-weaving workshops, out of 30,000 that once operated in your region, adaptation is key to survival.

“It was the technical side of silk weaving that inspired me to do it in the first place,” Virgile says. “Making something beautiful is great, but it’s the mix of technology and history, the history of this city that I love so much, that makes it special.”