"Lacey" TEF's First Machine

Brad Jamison is the sole master lace-braider in the USA.  His singular braided and patterned textile innovations are the result of  years of trials and breakthroughs.  In that time, he’s generated a catalogue of more than 1,000 original patterns. 

It all began with Birds
In 2004, following an exhaustive U.S. search for flexible, stable, unbound mesh fabric to enable Jamison's company at the time, Enter Play Sports’, fabrication of its oversized shuttlecocks--Bird Ball —Brad acquired a first-generation computer-controlled circular Lace Braiding Machine from China, capable of producing material to his specifications.

Over the years of invention and practice with programmable circular lace braiding machines Brad has transformed a technology that historically produced ornamental textiles into an efficient, virtually zero waste process for production of high performance fabrics and textile structures that provide the benefits of a braid and fluidity of a knit.  His pioneering digital graphic interface translates visual representation of his pattern designs to the machine’s operation, in the tradition of Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s punch-card system for automating textile production in 1800.

Brad’s significant machine improvements and manufacturing advances are inextricably linked with his patterning process. He holds two patents for patterns that are the foundation of his development and continues to create new and efficient manufacturing processes for  Tensengral Brand manufactured by TEF Braids. 

Tensengral's bodywear serves as an intimate, testable example of manufacturing capabilities and product design that merges science and technology in creation of products that function in a “less is more” efficient way by distributing load and balancing the tensions of movement with only patterned filaments.

"What I wound up finding out playing with all these patterns for many a year, that they need to function with a balanced tension. 

 I find that the machine’s taught me how nature works in that the only good patterns I can produce function under a balanced tension,

Which is to say, the patterns were pliable, they can adapt to situations and pressures nicely, and conform to different shapes as needed.

It is hard not to get that analogy to life, that it balances itself as nature intends to, and we as humanity, you know, I think, would be better off attempting that balance with nature and ourselves."