Arachne's Blog

The Cap of St. Birgitta - second version

2011-07-25T15:05:00.000+02:00

I've never really worn the Birgitta cap I made three years ago. When it came to actually using it, I wasn't happy with it at all. Every time I was about to put on a medieval headdress I chose to just tie an all-purpose rectangular piece of cloth around my head and pin a veil to it rather than wearing my cap. Eventually I figured out that I would actually prefer a larger cap than the one I'd made. Something a bit more like the first mock-up I made the last time around, the one I had to scrunch up beyond recognition to compensate for my lack of Proper Hair.

So I made a new one! I wore it this weekend for the (to my mind) exceptionally paltry Medieval Festival at Bohus fästning, Kungälv (the second link will take you to a slide show of images of Bohus Castle itself - if you put up with the slightly tacky photo montages at the beginning you'll get to see some really spectacular pictures!). The cap, as opposed to the event, was a success!

I still don't have enough hair to fill the cap, but it nevertheless felt a lot better to have that extra fabric to play around with. The problem with the first cap was that it threatened to slide off my head, and I certainly prefer a bit of scrunched-up fabric to having my headgear fall off.

I took the opportunity to explore the art of embroidery a bit further this time and worked a slightly improvised version of interlaced herringbone stitch to join the two halves of the cap. It does look a bit scruffy, but I think it'll even itself out eventually.


The Cap of St. Birgitta - second version

And here's me trying it on and taking a picture of myself without a tripod. My arm is coming off at the shoulder (the camera is heavy!), but I've almost achieved that sought-after pear-shape! Yes, there's an obvious amount of deflated fabric too, but it's all my own hair in there this time!


Going slightly pear-shaped?!

References:

See the first post about the Cap of St. Birgitta, from 2008.

Work in Progress - The Dune Belt

2011-06-25T16:03:00.000+02:00

I'm weaving again!

In my NESAT X article about the so-called Eric of Pomerania's Belt and the Dune Belt, I focused on the weaving technique and on the better preserved Eric of Pommerania's Belt. The fragmentary Dune Belt from Gotland mostly served as comparison, although it was actually because of it that I finally managed to figure out how the two belts were made and reconstruct the previously unknown tablet-weaving technique. Three years on, it's finally time for the Dune Belt to receive some long over-due attention. As it happens, this summer marks the 650-year anniversary of the Battle of Visby in 1361, when Danish king Valdemar invaded Gotland. The Dune treasure, in which the Dune Belt fragments were found, is believed to have been buried some time around the invasion.

On a side note: there will be a reenactment battle commemorating the events of 1361 on Gotland this summer: The Battle of Wisby. I will be there.

One of the Dune Belt fragments. Historiska Museet, Stockholm. Inv. No. 6849:68D.

It's difficult to say much about what the Dune belt originally looked like - no colours are preserved, as you can see in the image above, but the weave itself indicates some sort of diamond-shaped diagonal pattern. By focusing on the weave, I think it might be possible to get a better idea of how potential colours were distributed: changes in the pattern (the colours) result in changes in the acutal weave. So I've started weaving samples to see what kinds of colour changes will produce a weave that matches the fragments. So far I've made 5 samples, and I have a few more ideas to try out before going back to analyse the material and see what conclusions can be made (if any). The thread I'm using is Nm 60/2 spun silk, which is not quite right (the original is more like tightly twisted 320 denier filament silk, which I will get for the next set of samples), but it will do for now.

First sample. Loosely tensioned wefts, giving the weave an "Eric of Pomeriana"-look, rather than the tight "Dune"-look.

Second sample. Wefts pulled tighter, moving towards the "Dune"-look.

Third sample. Almost half the width of the first sample. Still not quite tight enough for the Dune Belt.

The pattern of the third sample really looks very nice! I like it a lot - imagine an entire belt dotted with those tiny diamonds!!! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to match the fragments particularly well, but I won't rule it out completely until I get it under a microscope together with the original. I plan to put my results into a proper article when I'm done with all the samples and comparisons. In the meantime, the work-so-far will be exhibited during the huge weaving fair Väv 2011 in Borås, Sweden, this September (see this link for an English pdf-version of the programme)!

References and links:

Holmqvist, V. "A Study of Two Medieval Silk Girdles: Eric of Pomerania's Belt and the Dune Belt", in Andersson Strand, E. et al. NESAT X. Northern European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010, 117-125.

An old post about weaving Eric of Pomerania's Belt:

http://windwraith.blogspot.com/2007/04/practice-makes.html

Search the Collections, Historiska Museet (The Museum of National Antiquities):

http://www.historiska.se/data

The Battle of Wisby:

http://www.battleofwisby.com/

Väv 2011: Weaving Fair

http://www.svenskavav.com

Crocheted Reticule with Silk Ribbons

2011-06-02T23:38:00.001+02:00

from the Collections of the Textile Museum

(Borås, Sweden)

I continue my venture into modern times with another 19th-20^th century textile: A crocheted reticule bag from the collections of Textilmuseet (the Textile Museum), where I work.

Reticule bag, front and back. Textilmuseet, inv. no: BM54958

Small, fancy purses like this one became fashionable towards the end of the 18^th century, during the Regency era (and still survive today in the form of evening bags). They were popular DIY projects – early crochet books and ladies' magazines from the 19^th century are full of instructions on how to make them. There are some claims that the word reticule comes from ”ridicule”, because these bags ”were considered a bit silly”. As far as I can tell, this is just a linguistic misconception. Reticule is derived from the Latin word reticulum, which means ”small net” or a ”small mesh bag”. The word ridicule is derived from a completely different Latin word.

Silly or not, this particular reticule bag (inventory number BM54958) was donated to our museum in 1973, but it's from the turn of the last century or thereabouts. It's crocheted with an ecru-coloured cotton yarn and has red silk ribbons threaded into the crocheted piece. There are two small silk pom-poms attached to one side and it's closed with drawstring. The lining is a simple cotton satin fabric.

Close-up of the pom-poms

Close-up of the lining, drawstring and the finishing edge (reverse side)

The yarn roughly matches the modern yarn size Nm 12/3, which is what I used for my reproduction bag, together with a 1.25 mm crochet hook. I was a little sloppy with the tension and had to add another pattern repeat to my bag to get the final proportions right. Other than that, I did everything like it was done on the original. On the later pieces, like the pouch for my mobile below, I managed the correct tension just fine without changing the hook.

When I had finished the crochet part of the bag, I went out to buy some silk ribbons. And found out just how difficult it is to get hold of satin ribbons made of real silk in Sweden today: it's basically impossible. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to materials, so I refused the only available alternative - polyester ribbons - and made my own out of a piece of silk fabric instead. Of course, my ribbons don't have have the selvedges of a band woven to the correct width; they are just flattened tubes with a seam running down the back, but they still look much nicer than cheap polyester. The ribbons on the original reticule are wider than the openings they're are threaded through, giving the bag a lively, slightly puffy look. I made mine narrower to get a perfect fit instead, since I didn't want them to twist and bulge and accidentally end up showing the seam...

My own version of the reticule

I also made a little pouch for my mobile, with fulled wool instead of silk ribbons. The wool was sturdy enough on its own and it didn't need to be lined.

A pretty cover for an ugly phone

If anyone would like to make their own reticule bag, the Swedish pattern I made is sold in the museum shop for 35 SEK. For those of you who don't read Swedish, here's the English translation, for free:

Crocheted Reticule Bag, c. 1900 - Pattern

(I haven't test-crocheted the translated version, so if anything sounds strange or doesn't work like it's supposed to, please let me know!)

A Couple of Excuses and An Early 20th Century Skirt

2011-04-26T20:24:00.002+02:00

This past year hasn't been a particularly creative one, textile-wise. Or blog-wise for that matter. I simply haven't had the time or energy to create anything original or produce something worth posting about. The Slightly Insane Wool Project ground to a halt as I got more and more particular about the thread I spun. I went back to practising with pre-prepared, store-bought Shetland tops.

It wasn't until the Easter holidays last week that I actually started working with the wool I washed in the last post over a year ago! I practised longdraw drafting on my spinning wheel for two hours on Easter Monday and the result was...well, take a look at the lovely Ruth MacGregor spinning on YouTube and you'll know what my attempts did not look like... But at least I'm back in the game now, sort of.

So far, the things I've put on this blog have had something to do with medieval textiles/clothing, or the re-creation thereof. Lately, I've mostly done things like quite modern knitting and crocheting - very much for recreational purposes, but in the non-hyphenated sense of the word. Nothing even remotely traditional, medieval or even historical. And therefore, no posts.

But I've been thinking, why limit myself to medieval textiles? I work in a museum with huge modern textile collections (huge on a non-V&A-kind-of-scale. And modern in this case means post-1800), so most of my professional life is spent dealing with modern stuff.

Earlier this year, the museum received a dress from around 1880 which I got to register in the museum catalogue. It wasn't one of those fancy late 19th century silk dresses worn by the well-to-do, which museums are so fond of putting on display - it was a reasonably simple woollen dress. Fashionable and well-made, but simple. It piqued my interest. So rather than just adding it to the catalogue, I took the opportunity to measure it thoroughly and draft a pattern of it. The next step is of course to try to make one for myself (there I go again - re-creating...). My theoretical knowledge of drafting patterns for modern clothes (the 1800s qualifies as modern for me) is non-existant, so I have no idea if my pattern will work or if I will ever be able to adjust it to fit me. But I like a challenge. And I might even make a proper post about it later!

Anyway, working with the 19th century dress got me looking into more recent fashions, slowly dragging me out of the 14th century. Now I've read up on 17th - early 20th century clothing and tailoring techniques, immersed myself into the surprisingly fascinating world of the so-called "Västgötaknallarna"**, along with the early cottage industry and well-developed putting-out system for producing cloth in this region. And as a result of my new-found interest in post-medieval things, I made an amazing find at a second-hand shop about a month ago:

Front- and side-view

An original early 20th century skirt! My guesstimate is that it's from around 1900-05, possibly a little earlier. As far as I can tell, it has never even been worn. The price was ridiculous: 105,00 SEK (that's less than 10 euros). And although it was made for someone a little thinner and shorter than me, I can actually wear it!

A turn-of-the-century wool moire!

It's made of a stunningly beautiful moire fabric of pure wool. It's really stiff and the reverse side is flat and shiny from the hot calendering that produced the moire pattern on the right side. The lower part of the skirt is lined with a rather coarse cotton cloth for protection and it's edged with a narrow woven band with a stiff fringe like a brush. I call these bands "dust-gatherers", but they probably have a proper name too.

Close-up of the "dust-gatherer".
(if you know the proper name for this type of band, please let me know!)

The skirt is cut with a slight flare from the waist across the hips to a little below the knees, where the sewn-on lower part flares out a little more. It's made up of several pieces put together in a rather interesting way - you can see two of the seams running diagonally across the front if you take a closer look at the first photo.

Back-view

The skirt is only a few centimetres longer in the back, so there is no train to speak of. Unfortunately, it didn't come with a jacket - I looked through the entire second-hand shop twice in the vain hope of finding one. So if I want to wear the skirt, I'll have to fake an Edwardian blouse to go along with it. I'm not sure I could bring myself to wear it, though; the museum curator in me sort of rebels against the idea of wearing a 100-year-old garment... I suppose I'll have to make a copy of this one as well. Yep. Re-creation as recreation.

Ruth MacGregor's Homepage: SpinningForth.com

**18th-19th century itinerant peddlars from the area around Borås where the museum I work in is situated. They travelled widely and were famous for selling locally made (and sometimes also illegally imported) fabrics.

Got wool, will spin

2010-04-01T21:06:00.012+02:00

After taking part in the first Textilforum meeting in Eindhoven last September and the spinning experiment carried out there, I just couldn't stop spinning (with a spindle, that is). I've expanded my collection of spindles and spindle whorls and got myself a pair of wool combs:
I've practised, practised, practised and now I think it's finally time to launch my Slightly Insane Wool Project: I'm going comb, card and spin wool into three types of thread (for warp, weft and sewing), weave my own fabric, possibly dye it and full it, and make some sort of handsewn garment out of it. It'll challenge both my craft skills and my patience, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun!

I got three fleeces from local sheep farmer Ingela på Ljungås who breeds a Swedish landrace sheep called Värmlandsfår - Värmland sheep. It's a double-coated breed with both short/fine and long/coarse fibres combined in the same fleece.

Last weekend I sorted and washed all the wool. I rinsed it three times in lukewarm water to the remove the dirt and some - but not all - of the lanolin. It took the better part of two days to finish the washing and four days for the wool to dry. Every empty surface in our flat was filled with wool that grew increasingly fluffy as it dried...
This week I've done a little combing and test spinning to try out the spindles/whorls. I've never really spun properly worsted thread before, using only the long, shiny guard hairs of the outercoat. I need a little more practice to get a consistent twist, but I'll be able to produce a perfectly usable wool sewing thread any day now, both thin and strong!

The image below shows what the wool looks like before and after combing - the wool locks to the right are separated into fluffy rolags for spinning woollen thread and tops for worsted.

Planning a Portable Loom for Tablet Weaving

2009-06-27T11:55:00.043+02:00

I commute to work so a lot of my craft-related stuff gets done on trains and buses. I knit, crochet and sew things; I do naalbinding and embroidery. Regrettably, I've had to leave my tablet weaving at home, because I haven't been able to find a portable loom that works for me. Backstrapping is not an option since I don't like being tied to my work and it doesn't suit my style of weaving anyway. I already have two inkle-style looms made after Toli's design, but they are too large and heavy to take with me on public transport...and impractical as I usually don't use a continuous warp. They are also conspicuously modern and I would like something that looks at least slightly historical. So a couple of weeks ago, I finally started looking around for sources and inspiration for constructing a portable tablet weaving loom of my own.

Medieval sources for tablet weaving looms are usually limited to contemporary illustrations which typically show the warp tied between two upright post, sometimes connected with a crossbar, as in these images:

I already have one of these posts-and-crossbar-looms, which I like a lot, especially for complicated work. But it certainly isn't portable enough to use on a bus!

There are also images of box looms, but they seem to be associated with rigid heddles or tapestry weaving rather than tablets:

(I'm not sure it's a loom in the top right image. It looks more like a bobbin winder to me, but it's small and box-like so I included it anyway...)

Looking at the more recent history of the box loom, it seems that Norway is the home of handy weaving contraptions. A quick search in Norsk Folkemuseum's collections came up with these 19th (?) century treasures:

For more of these wonderful little looms, go to http://primusweb.no/ and search for "båndvev"! You'll get a few pages of rigid heddles and weaving tablets as a bonus if you do!

Going back to the medieval illuminations, there's also this mystery loom:

It surfaced about three years ago on the SCA Cardweaving-list at Yahoogroups, but no one ever found the reference for the manuscript it's taken from (as far as I know). The image comes from a German book (see reference below) and appears to be an ad for a forthcoming publication about illuminated Gothic books (it's a "Probebild aus dem für 1932 in Vorbereitung befindlichen Band Gotische Buchmalerei". The bow-shaped object certainly seems to be used for tablet weaving - the woman holds her hand in a proper tablet-turning position and is using the beater like a pro! - but the actual design of the loom is left pretty much to the imagination.

Except for this "bow loom", there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of visual evidence for small and portable medieval tablet looms. But I still need one. So, giving up most pretenses of making something that's actually historically accurate, I've settled for a solution that I believe will work for me - a generic-looking box loom with a twist. I hardly ever work on only one project at a time and want to be able to change warps quickly and easily in mid-project - a procedure that doesn't work very well with box-loom roller beams... So I've decided to have "double" guide beams on my loom, mounted on top of each other in vertical slots in the sides of the loom. This allows them to move apart a little so they can be used to lock the band/warp in place without using the roller beams. I made this prototype to test that there wouldn't be any slippage:

It's not pretty, but it works perfectly, even with a slippery silk warp!

I used wooden toilet paper holders for the sides and a spice rack for the bottom part - unofficially I call it the "bog loom" (short for "bog roll holder loom"...) ;-p! It works fine as it is, but I want a nicer-looking, slightly larger version with roller beams too, one that I can use as an ordinary loom as well as for tablet weaving. My woodworking skills are virtually non-existent so I need to get someone to help be with this... In the meantime, I'll make do with my prototype and weave my way to work and back again!

(btw, I've sent in the proofs for my NESAT X article about Eric of Pomerania's Belt now, so hopefully it will be in print soon! And I will give a presentation about the belt at Medeltidsveckan in Visby, Gotland - see this link for more info in Swedish).

References and inspiration:

Swarzenski, H. 1931. Vorgotische Miniaturen die Ersten Jahrhunderte Deutscher Malerei. 2nd edition, Karl Robert Langewische Verlag.

Wyss, Robert L. 1973. "Die Handarbeiten der Maria". In: Stettler, M. & Lemberg, M. (eds). Artes Minores: Dank an Werner Abegg. Bern: Verlag Stämpfli & Cie, 113 - 188.

SCA-Card-Weaving at Yahoogroups, messages posted 2005-10-24 - 2005-10-27.

DigitaltMuseum: http://primusweb.no/

Karen Larsdatter's Medieval & Renaissance Material Culture: http://www.larsdatter.com/weaving.htm

Soper Lane: http://www.soper-lane.co.uk/

Toli's inexpensive inkle/cardweaving loom design:http://anvil.unl.edu/toli/loom.html/

Making a Boxloom: http://www.chateau-michel.org/boxloom.htm

Lynn the Weaver's Lucets and Looms: http://www.lucets.com/pages/looms.html

The Joyner's Shop: http://www.thejoynersshop.com/furnishings_TapeLooms.html

The Green Carpenter: http://www.greencarpenter.co.uk/

Les Très Riches Heures de la Vix

2009-03-24T19:44:00.011+01:00

Now what's wrong with this picture?

Instead of working on my new late 14th century wardrobe like I ought to or writing a proper blog post about weaving, I fooled around with PhotoShop and combined an image from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416) with a photo of myself from the photosession I wrote about earlier. Shame on me.

The Cap of St. Birgitta

2008-08-13T22:59:00.011+02:00

In the latest volume of Medieval Textiles and Clothing Camilla Luise Dahl & Isis Sturtewagen present a new analysis and interpretation of the so-called "St. Birgitta's Coif". They argue, very convincingly, that it is not a coif which ties under the chin (something which is typically associated with men), but a cap where the ties are meant to be drawn backwards towards the back of the head instead, resulting in a headdress that would look a lot like these ones from the Maciejowski Bible.

The cap is made up of two pieces of linen fabric sewn together with interlaced herringbone stitch. 8.5-9 cm is left unseamed at the back, creating a split. The bottom edges are pleated and the cap is edged with an embroidered linen strip that continues on to form the ties. Together, the split and the pleated edges create a "pouch" at the nape of the neck when the cap is worn (Dahl & Sturtewagen, 131-133).

At Historiska Världars forum, a Swedish re-enactment forum, reconstructions of the cap have been discussed over the past few weeks, and since I'm currently making myself a late 13th - early 14th century wardrobe I was inspired to make one myself.

My goal was to use the construction of the Cap of St. Birgitta, make it fit my head (which is a lot bigger than what the original wearer's appears to have been...) and at the same time achieve something that looked like what the women are wearing in the Maciejowski Bible. I found that the biggest obstacle to do this was my hair - there simply isn't enough of it to give any kind of cap that characteristic pear-shape! As Åsa Vävare at Historiska Världars forum clearly demonstrates in this picture, the hair makes all the difference (it's the same cap worn first "without" hair, then "with" hair)...

To make my cap, I first took a measurement from the top of my head to the nape of my neck, i.e. the part of my head the cap would cover. I added 8 cm to the measurement (for the split) and used that as a guide when I cut the curve of the two pieces that make up the cap. I made a cotton mock-up to try out the pattern and promptly discovered that the "pouch" was much too large for my short and very thin hair. The cap sagged and looked pretty sad and deflated unless I used the ties to scrunch it up. And the "scrunched-up" version didn't look much like the images in the Maciejowski Bible. For mock-up no. 2, I only added 2 cm for the split, which resulted in tighter cap with a less pronounced pouch that fit me much better, so I used this pattern for my linen cap.

The finished cap

The final version still looks a little deflated, but that can be remedied with a couple of fake hairpieces...

Fake hair!

I made these braids from unspun flax and they can be arranged in a number of ways to boost my flimsy pigtails; as long as I cover them up properly they work really well, and I too can have at least the semblence of proper hair!

The cap worn with fake braids

It can also be worn with the ears showing, as in most of the images in the Maciejowski Bible:

The decision to make the split very short naturally makes my cap less like the original, with its 8.5-9-centimetre split, but it certainly looks better on me. It's nice and tight, which makes it practical to wear as a foundation for a veil too.

To join the two halves of the cap, I used a scaled-down version of the interlaced herringbone stitch described by Dahl & Lester in Medieval Textiles and Clothing 4. I've never done any kind of interlaced stitch before, so I decided to keep it simple and made the seam rather narrow - unlike the original where it's approximately 1.7 cm wide. The next cap I make will definitely have a more complex embroidery; it was so much fun to try something new!

I haven't had the opportunity to wear my cap for a full day yet, so I don't know how it will work when really put to the test, but for now I'm reasonably pleased with it. With a few more experiments I think I can find a cut that works better for me, but I'm certain I will still need some sort of stuffing to achieve the right shape...

My version of St. Birgitta's Cap

References:
Medieval Textiles and Clothing 4 (eds. Netherton, R. & Owen-Crocker, G. R.):
Dahl, C. L. & Sturtewagen, I. 2008. "The Cap of St. Birgitta", 99-129.
Dahl, C. L. & Sturtewagen, I. 2008. "Appendix 6.1. The Construction of St. Birgitta's Cap", 130-134.
Dahl, C. L. & Lester, A. M. 2008. "Appendix 6.2. The Embroidery on St. Birgitta's Cap", 135-142.

Martinsson, Å. Birgittas huva
(http://www.textilverkstad.se/pdf/funderingar_kring_en_huva.pdf)

A late 14th - early 15th century outfit

2008-08-02T15:14:00.023+02:00

Some time ago I got to model some of my medieval outfits for Svarta Galten, a group that arranges LARP-events (Live Action Role-Play). They wanted pictures of late 14th century clothing as inspiration for the participants of their events, which are set in the fictional, medieval-ish world of Kastaria. The result can be viewed on their homepage, but I thought that I'd put up a few images of my clothes here as well.

Pink dress

(other people might prefer to call it a cotte, a cotehardie, a kyrtle/kirtle or some other word, but I try to avoid using historical terms until there's a clearly defined terminology for medieval garments available)

I'm very happy with this dress. It's made of a wonderful, lightweight, slightly fulled 2/1 wool twill, laces up the front and gives me ample support without being constricting. The bodice is lined with linen to prevent the twill from stretching. Since this photo was taken, I've made the sleeves even tighter by adding buttons to them to make it a little more 'fashionable' (and it's always nice to be able to roll up your sleeves when you do the dishes...).

I make all my tailored medieval clothing by fitting them onto myself and adding gores; the pink dress is no exception. I do have an assistant - my rather rigid and unsquishable dress dummy, but for the final adjustments and to get the bust support right I need to wear the dress myself. It's a little tricky fitting a dress with no one to help, but it can be done. It also helps to be stubborn, patient and not afraid of pricking yourself with pins...

With the pink dress I wear my shortsleeved

Green over-dress

This over-dress is also made of 2/1 wool twill, but it's heavier than the pink dress and more fulled. I had very little of this fabric so while I wanted to use the short-sleeved dress from Herjolfsnes as a model, I didn't have enough to make the side-gores go all the way to the armscye and had to settle for a simpler cut. I also had to piece the sleeves together from several pieces (a rather common practice in the middle ages). The sleeves are a bit too long in these images so I shortened them a little after the photo session. I haven't seen too many medieval images showing short-sleeved overdresses like this one (short-sleeved without tippets or flared sleeves, that is), so if anyone out there has some art references to share, please drop me a line!

Both dresses are completely handsewn with waxed linen thread.

Photos: Tobias Högström/Svarta Galten

I think I'm back...

2008-07-12T15:39:00.003+02:00

After not having written anything for almost a year, this isn't much of a post, but I just can't stop thinking about how extremely alike Snoopy the dog and my nålbinding socks are!

Weaving with tablets and a rigid heddle

2007-09-24T22:15:00.005+02:00

This famous depiction of a weaving woman comes from the 14th century manuscript commonly known as the Codex Manesse (Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift; Cod. Pal. germ. 848). The first time I saw it a couple of years ago, I thought that the artist didn't seem to know a thing about weaving or tablet weaving (assuming that the hexagonal objects on the warp are tablets and not a levitating warp beam) - the lady's sitting at the wrong end of the warp and, if we're talking about tablet weaving here, what's the rigid heddle doing there anyway? But now when I've thought about it and heard what others have to say, this set-up doesn't seem all that far-fetched anymore.

First of all, the woman's not actually doing any weaving in the picture, so she's not really at the "wrong end". It seems to me she's fiddling with the end of the warp (tightening it, sorting the threads?) , while using her beater to ward off the advances of the kneeling man (monk?) who's got his hand up her skirt. In Ecclesiastical Pomp and Aristocratic Circumstance (2000), Nancy Spies further interprets this situation as the woman actually incorporating the man's hair into the warp (p. 100). Secondly, looking at other medieval pictures of weavers and tablet weavers - and at their modern counterparts too - it's obvious that you can sit pretty much anywhere in relation to the band you're weaving; it's not necessary to have the fell (the woven band) right in front of you as long as you can reach it to beat the weft.

As for the rigid heddle, Spies (2000) describes it as a "heddle/warp spreader" (p. 97, my emphasis), which could explain what it's doing in the middle of a possible tablet weaving warp; it's separating the threads and helping the weaver keep the band even. But there may be another, albeit conjectural function for the rigid heddle.

In The Techniques of Tablet Weaving (Collingwood 1996) I found a description of an unusual way to produce a double-faced 3/1 twill. It's described on pages 166-167 and involves both four-holed tablets used standing on their points and a means to raise and lower alternate tablets to achieve the correct structure. Collingwood suggests using a stick and leashes tied around the warp for this. There are no indications that this technique was ever used historically, but when I read about combining tablets and leashes like this, I immediately thought of the weaving lady in Codex Manesse - tablets together with a rigid heddle should work just as well as leashes!

The technique was a little tricky to master. For each weft, the shed was split twice - first by the square tablets standing on their points and then by the heddle raising or lowering every alternate tablet - which meant the final shed ended up being very small. It really helped to tilt the warp vertically on its side to get a better view of the shed. In various medieval manuscripts band weavers can be seen working with the warp in this position and I can verify that it really makes sense to do that if the shed's unclear!

The finished sample is approximately 2 cm wide and the front and back are shown here next to each other (I used thick cotton yarn, so it looks kind of rough).

Weaving with tablets and a rigid heddle on the same warp creates many new possibilities! For example, I tried it with two-holed tablets and managed to produce a nice little piece of double weave, combining ordinary interlaced twill with tabby. It might not be a historical technique or the most efficient way to weave complex structures, but for someone like me who loves all the technical stuff behind both tablet weaving and ordinary weaving, it's great fun!

References:
Collingwood, P. 1996. The Techniques of Tablet Weaving. McMinnville: Robin & Russ Handweavers, Inc.

Spies, N. 2000. Ecclesiastical Pomp and Aristocratic Circumstance. A Thousand Years of Brocaded Tabletwoven Bands. Jarrettsville: Arelate Studio.

Finishing old projects... II

2007-09-06T15:48:00.000+02:00

Here's the assembled purse! It's not very big, though - I can just about fit my hand into it...

Finishing old projects...

2007-09-05T14:06:00.000+02:00

Today I finished an embroidery I've been working on for I don't know how long!
(I think a lot of people who are interested in medieval emobroidery and textiles will recognise the pattern - it's from a silk purse displayed in the textiles study room at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Timothy J. Mitchell's article on counted thread embroidery with drafts of this purse and others can be found on his homepage A Stitch Out of Time.)

The finished piece is less than half the size of what I originally intented it to be and it will be a very small purse indeed if I ever assemble it. When started working on it, I didn't worry too much about the materials and went for the cheepest option: mercerised cotton thread instead of real silk. At the time it seemed like the right decision to make, but after a while I realised that if I was going to wear this with my medieval clothing, I actually wanted it to be silk (or at least look like it, which this thread didn't)... By then I had done almost two thirds of what can be seen in the picture above, but I put it aside and ignored it successfully for years. This summer, in an attempt to relax after all the work with my thesis, I decided to finish it after all. I think I'll make it into a purse now while I'm at it and use it for my mobile rather than with my medieval outfits!

My thesis, by the way, will soon be available - I still have one image I need to check the copyright for before I can post it in the digital archive I mentioned in a previous post. Now the holiday's over I'll hopefully get round to it... After handing in my thesis in May, I continued working with Eric of Pomerania's Belt - there were still a couple of things I hadn't been able to explain properly. The analysis of the weave I present in my thesis is still correct (as far as I can tell), but the way I tried to recreate it isn't. But eventually I did figured it out - just in time to include the new findings in my paper proposal for the NESAT conference (North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles) that takes place in May next year! When I got back from my vacation there was an e-mail in my inbox, telling me that my proposal had been accepted - yay! So whatever else happens this autumn (does anyone out there want to hire an archaeologist specialising in textiles ;-) ???!), I will still be here weaving Eric of Pomerania's Belt in my spare time. And if my research continues in the direction it's heading at the moment, I think I will have a rather interesting paper to present!

Visiting the 14th century

2007-07-02T15:08:00.000+02:00

Yesterday a friend and I went to Varberg on the westcoast of Sweden. There was a "medieval market" at Varberg Castle (where they also keep the Bocksten Bog Man, complete with his well-preserved 14th century clothes). The event was mainly aimed at families and tourists so there wasn't much there for serious re-enactors, except an excellent lecture on 14th century clothing by costume historian Eva Andersson. Still, I got the chance to dress up and spend a lovely day off in beautiful surroundings, so I'm happy. I also got some pretty good pictures taken of my handsewn "Herjolfsnes dress". The cut with 4 narrow panels in each side giving it its shape is based on one of the dresses found in the medieval cemetary at Herjolfsnes, Greenland. Whether or not this method of constuction is representative of medieval clothing elsewhere is much debated by costume historians and re-enactors, but I think that the silhouette it results in is perfect for the early 14th century (and no, I'm not pregnant - my hand just happens to fit nicely there!)! It's an extremely fabric-saving way to make clothes too - my dress only uses 3 m of wool (150 cm wide) and the circumference of the skirt is over 3.5 metres! It took just about forever to finish all the side seams, though...

Bachelor of...Science?!

2007-06-15T10:32:00.000+02:00

There. Now I have my degree. I was a little surprised to learn it's actually a B. Sc., but I suppose it's because of all the technical texile stuff and the handweaving. I'm happy it's finally over, anyway! With the archaeology and everything else, I've studied for a total of 7 years now! And that doesn't include the two years I spent doing textile arts and crafts at Löftadalens folkhögskola... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm fit to do anything other than studying...

My friends told me I should take some time off now to relax and not fiddle around with threads and boring, brown archaeolgical textiles for a while. But...fiddling around with threads is what I always do, even in my spare time, and I love boring, brown archaeological textiles!!! So I ignored them and went to Copenhagen yesterday to look at "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" again... My thesis is finished (and will eventually be available on the web through the University College of Borås's academic database BADA), but now I have a proposal for a conference paper and a couple of articles to write! So I thought it would be nice to see the good old girdle again and to verify a few things before I get started on those...

Here's me with Eric of Pomerania's Belt and one of my samples in the background. I thought the National Museum wouldn't mind me posting this picture here since you can hardly see the actual girdle. It could be any old ribbon, really... ;-)!

The work of days and hands...

2007-05-19T17:53:00.000+02:00

I handed in my thesis this week!

It ended up being part archaeolgical report, part something else. There's so much more I would have liked to put into to it. I had to cut 1 page of background, which means there's no historical overview of medieval girdles in it anymore. But at least it's finished and on Monday I'm going to present my work to the graduation people and defend my thesis... Then I'm going to sleep for a week...

My brain hurts...

2007-04-29T00:13:00.000+02:00

Since my weaving is going very well I decided to turn my attention to the paper I have to write instead. I spent the better part of the day fiddling with the introduction and then tried to write the background instead. I seemed to have forgotten everything I had ever read on the subject of medieval girdles and had to sit down with the books again and take new notes. This also meant I had to re-translate the relevant parts of Ilse Fingerlin's book Gürtel des hohen und späten Mittelalters because I had no idea what they said anymore despite having read them all a month ago. It's very annoying, but I suppose that's what stress does to you...

I don't know any German, but luckily my native Swedish is similar enough to make reading it possible with the help of a dictionary and a lot of patience. Fingerlin has some interesting discussions concerning the dating of Eric of Pomerania's belt - she pushes it back to the 13th century, wheras Poul Nørlund and the National Museum of Denmark say it's 14th century (all of them agree that attributing it to Eric of Pomerania is completely wrong, though. But the name still sticks...).

Hopefully I'll manage to write something tomorrow instead. I have a meeting with my supervisor on Monday and it would be nice to have something written to show her, but it's a real struggle to write in English again. I haven't done it in years, but I thought it would be a good idea now since there's a lot of non-Swedish speaking people out there who might find my thesis interesting...

Practice makes...

2007-04-24T22:40:00.000+02:00

...perhaps not perfect, but at least a whole lot better!

I changed the pattern for the gold thread (there's hardly anything left of it on the original belt, so I had to improvise a little) and started all over again with my sample piece. I have to show it in the graduation exhibition organised by the school, so I decided I needed something that can be displayed without having to cover up the first couple of centimetres of uneven picks...

And I'm much happier with this second piece - the "gold" thread looks a lot better and the proportions are closer to the original. I wove it in half the time it took me to do the first one too, so yay for me!

Here's a picture of the new and improved sample!

So many threads, so little time...

2007-04-19T21:19:00.000+02:00

My first full-scale trial piece of the "Eric of Pomerania's Belt"-weave is progressing slowly and I'm reasonably happy with it. The cheap spun silk I'm using as a substitute for the more appropriate reeled silk is a bit fuzzy and the fake gold thread doesn't cover the background very well, but otherwise it's working. I had a hard time pulling the weft tight enough to get the band down to the correct width today (approximately 3 cm). There are over 100 threads/cm and although the edges are nice and tight, the threads in the middle still look a little too spaced-out. But they do that in the original too, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it...

Here's a close-up of today's work. Remember it's only 3 cm wide!

Bachelor's Thesis Angst

2007-04-17T23:35:00.000+02:00

I'm analysing the so-called "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" kept at the National Museum of Denmark for my bachelor's degree in handweaing. It's an extremely well-preserved silk girdle dated to the 14th century with a very complex weave. It's wonderful, fascinating work and I should be loving every minute of it. And I am. It's just that it's also incredibly slow work and I only have one month left before everything has to be finished..

The archaeologist in me wants to do a proper report with lots of background research and comparative material, but the powers that be at the University College of Borås where I study are more into textile design and product development so I'm worried that an archaeological/historical type of thesis like mine will meet with puzzled incomprehension. I won't have a designed product or a textile artwork at the end of this like my classmates; I will have a tiny woven sample the size of a bookmark if I'm lucky and spend my nights weaving instead of sleeping! I just hope I'll be able to make them see all the work behind it... Just figuring out the weave took me almost a month and several weaving experiments!

First time blogging

2007-04-16T18:55:00.000+02:00

Hmm... Never done this before, but it seems to be a good way to keep an easy-to-update page to store thoughts and post things on the net. It's worth a try!