An Old Band-Woven Bookmark

A while back, a private book collector in the Midwest sent me a textile to examine.  It had come to him as a bookmark in a sixteenth-century bound manuscript.  With his permission, I am sharing my analysis here.

The bookmark is what's known as a "portable register" type.  Rather than being attached to the binding or a page of the book, it is removable.  Specifically, it's a multiple-strand bar anchor bookmark.  Several textile strips are secured to a bar (the "anchor") that is designed to rest on or at the top of a book.  See this article for an introduction to medieval bookmarks, and see the sources at the bottom of this post for more information.


Description:

This bookmark is composed of what appears to be a hand-whittled wooden bar anchor around which are sewn five lengths of band-woven textile.  The strands vary in condition from bright, flat, and flexible to crusty, dirty, curled, and stiff.  Only one of the ends has any finishing treatment; most are quite ragged and torn. 

The anchor is is about 2-1/4" (56mm) long by 1/4" (6mm) at its widest diameter.  The carved away portion of the bar is about 1-1/4" (32mm) long.  The wood is a light-colored, fine-grained hardwood, slightly bowed along its length.  Wear has chipped and pitted the surface at the two ends, which were originally smooth.  The collars at either side of the carved away area are still sharply cut into the wood, as if by a small but very sharp knife.

The five individual lengths of band-woven textile have been looped around the anchor for an original count of ten hanging tails, the strands.  A line of coarse stitching worked with a naturally colored linen thread holds together the entire set of looped bands.  The sewing thread is wrapped several times around each of the two outside bands. 

Six of the original ten strands survive in a usable length.  Both sides of the middle strand have been torn away leaving nothing but frayed ends next to the anchor.  One entire side of each of two strands has also been torn away, again leaving frayed ends next to the peg.  Two strands are substantially complete although one end of each is shorter than the other end; both the shorter ends are also frayed. 

The two longest remaining ends are approximately 22" long.  One terminates in an overhand knot.  The other has some broken warps and comes to what looks like a blind end.  It may be that these 22" lengths reflect the original lengths of the strips.  The book in which the bookmark was found is about 12.5" tall, which corresponds to the area of each long length that is comparatively clean and bright in appearance.

The textiles appear to be five strips cut from a single long narrow band.  The band is of warp-faced tabby, i.e., either rigid heddle or inkle woven.  The warp is two-ply linen of approximately 0.4-0.5mm diameter.  The band varies between 4mm and 5mm in width, and the beat is very regular.

one of the best preserved pieces of the band

The eleven warp ends are in four colors—bleached, golden yellow, light greenish blue, and dark blue—and the weft is more of the light blue linen.   The blue threads are finer than the gold and white ones.

weaving draft for band

Conclusions:

There doesn't seem to be a good solid hook from which to hang a specific date on this bookmark.  There is no reason to assume it was necessarily as old as the manuscript.  While some portable register bookmarks found in medieval books are likely to have been original (Swales & Blatt 2007, 167), others are not.  This bookmark could easily have been an afterthought, added to the book centuries after it was bound.  Perhaps someone retrofitted an existing anchor by giving it new textile strands in a later century.  Or perhaps the present bookmark might have completely replaced an earlier marker whose anchor was in poor repair but whose existence was helpful.

Although some parts of it are worn and dirty, proving that it's been around for a while, the linen for the most part is in extremely good shape, supple and not deteriorating.  It is hard to imagine linen strands would be in that fine a shape after hundreds of years closed between two layers of vellum; over so long a period of time surely the pH of the vellum would prove damaging to the linen.  Also, the use of several colors in the linen tape is, as nearly as I am aware, more likely to be a product of the eighteenth or nineteenth century than of the sixteenth or seventeenth.  I could not find any examples in Swales & Blatt's catalogue that were even remotely similar to this one save #2, "plain-woven red/blue/white wool and linen tape," which the authors could not examine (Swales & Blatt 2007, 148).  A mixed wool and linen tape seems even less likely to date back that far than the one at hand.

Accordingly, I'm going to hazard a guess that the textile portions of this bookmark are nineteenth century, at the earliest.  About the anchor, I've no idea, but it seems to have been fairly amateurishly produced, perhaps by someone bookish who needed a replacement anchor for a special book.

I appreciate the opportunity to have examined this piece as well as the challenge it posed to my knowledge of historic bookmarks.  I learned a lot!


Appendix:

I created the weaving draft to match the original colors using KXStitch* and the Anchor color palette.  The exact Anchor colors I used for this draft are as follows.

• gold:  295 Jonquil
• white:  2 White
• light blue:  1062 Peacock Blue
• dark blue:  131 Blue

Sources:

Janzen, Jenneka.  "Mark Their Words:  Medieval Bookmarks."  https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/mark-their-words-medieval-bookmarks/.  Accessed 31 July 2015.

Kwakkel, Erik.  "Smart Medieval Bookmarks."  http://medievalbooks.nl/2014/09/22/smart-medieval-bookmarks/.  Accessed 31 July 2015.

Swales, Lois, and Heather Blatt.  "The Bookmark."  In Das Hainricus-Missale. Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe der Handschrift Ms. M. 711 der Pierpont Morgan Library New York. Kommentar, hrsg. von Hans Ulrich Rudolf, 165-175.  Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 2010.  (See also pages 179-181 in the German translation, which have the informative schematics and photos.)

Swales, Lois, and Heather Blatt.  "Tiny Textiles Hidden in Books:  Toward a Categorization of Multiple-Strand Bookmarkers."  In Medieval Clothing and Textiles, vol. 3, ed. Robin Netherton and Gale. R. Owen-Crocker, 145-179.  Woodbridge:  The Boydell Press, 2007. 


* KXStitch is an open source cross-stitch graphing program for KDE.  It comes pre-loaded with the Anchor, DMC, and Madeira color palettes.  When using KXStitch for graphing textile patterns, I habitually use the Anchor palette rather than the DMC or Madeira one; I find it better represents naturally dyed textile colors, which are the colors I am accustomed to using.

2/1 Twills: Rippenköper

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2000

The “rippenköper,” or “repp twill,” has no standard equivalent name in English. The weave was first identified, named, and explained in 1967 by Hans-Jürgen Hundt in an archaeological publication. Rippenköper is a catch-all term for those twills, usually 2/1, whose basic structure alternates bands of warp-faced twill with bands of weft-faced twill, “usually after every third pick” (Bender Jørgensen, p. 14). Although it is a very simple
weave, I haven’t found it yet in a modern book.

Jorvík 1307: This Project Grew in the Planning

Or, "what I did with the rest of that handspun warp."

It all started when I realized I'd spun a good bit more warp than I needed for my yard of  Jorvík 1307.  I thought I should probably try some other weft with it so I'd have a sample for teaching aids.

I should say here that I have a good-sized collection of samples I use as visual aids when discussing various weaving concepts, structures, treatments, and colors.  They're mostly offcuts from larger projects.  Once in a while, though, I weave something specifically for use as a teaching sample.  Jorvík 1307 was turning out to be the occasion for doing that again.

I looked through my stash of handspun worsted yarn in appropriate fibers—Icelandic, Manx Laoghtan, Shetland.  I noticed I had a fairish quantity of Shetland singles yarn in the 0.6mm diameter range, some Z-spun and some S-spun.  The yarn size was in the zone for Jorvík textiles, although not dead-on accurate for any of them when combined with the pre-existing 0.4mm warp.  But the Z-Z versus Z-S textile divide has been on my mind since I first read Lise Bender Jørgensen's work on spin direction nearly 25 years ago.  Here by happenstance I had an opportunity to experiment with it at period-correct setts using period-correct yarns.  I decided I'd weave some of the warp off with each of the two types of yarns so I would have an example of two cloths sharing the same sett, with the same size and fiber type of weft yarn but differing in their direction of spin.

Partly as a relief from the attentive work I'd put into making the first part of the textile as correct as I could, I decided to beat this part of the textile by instinct, until it looked and felt "right."  Purely subjective!  The 17-18 picks per inch of Jorvík 1307 was too loose for this smaller weft.  I didn't count my picks, but I worked hard to beat evenly, especially when it came to matching the beat I'd used in the S section when it became time to weave the Z section.  Overall the weaving went speedily and without incident.  I did not notice anything to differentiate the ways the two yarns behaved as weft.

It was difficult to get a good representative photo of the section woven with S-spun weft.  This washed-out shot (taken on the loom) shows the texture more clearly than any of the others I took.  You can make out the lozenges, but they're indistinct.

S-spun weft

When I switched to the Z-spun weft, the structure was immediately more clear.  Here's a shot taken off-loom that shows mostly the Z-spun weft area.

Transition from S-spun weft (below) to Z-spun weft (above)

Here's a better shot of them both together.

Z-spun weft at top, S-spun weft at bottom

After finishing, the S-spun section of the cloth has about 27 picks per inch, while the Z-spun section has only 25 picks per inch.  I am at a loss to know whether this result stems from my having failed to beat precisely across different portions of the warp or from some property of the weft yarns themselves.

I have let some other string geeks (mostly spinners) play with the finished cloth to see what they thought.  Everyone agrees that the Z-Z textile shows the weave structure most clearly.  That could explain why so many broken lozenge twills are woven with Z yarns in both systems.  If you're going to go to the trouble of knitting heddles for and then weaving a broken lozenge, I should think you'd want your work to be noticed!

But if that's the case, then why would Z-S broken lozenge twills even exist?  The answer to that question may have something to do not with appearance, but with handling.

The Z-S textile, like the Jorvík 1307 one, gives a thick and cushy impression.  Everything about it seems like it's smooshed a little more together, from the pick count to its appearance and handling.  It's more limp, less dynamic than the Z-Z textile.  It reminds me of a tablet-woven band with alternating threading:  the twists cancel each other out, leaving the textile neutral.  The Z-Z textile responds more quickly to movement, which gives it a more lively hand.

Refreshing my memory about the numbers and distributions of Z-S broken lozenge twills will be a research pleasure.  Perhaps it will even lead to some practical conclusions, or at least a testable hypothesis.  But for production purposes I will probably stick as much as I can to Z-Z spun twills, since I enjoy the look and dynamism of them.  Also, my Z yarns are much better spun than my S yarns!

Jorvík 1307: Finishing and Conclusions

Previous posts here and here.

After I finished the second part of the weaving (see next post), I cut the web off the loom.  I washed it by hand in warm water with gentle soap, then spun it out and hung it up to dry.  (Warp-weighted looms serve many useful purposes in the modern home; mine is also good for hanging string things up to dry.)  I gently ironed it, and then I played with it a bit.

Because this structure is so weft-faced, the weft yarn exerts a lot of control over the handling of the cloth.  The texture is supple, but thick and cushy owing to the soft weft yarn.  It isn't exactly felted, but it fulled together very nicely.

After I played with it for a while, I carefully measured it. 

Take-up and finishing gave me a 6% shrinkage rate in the warp and a 4% shrinkage rate in the weft.  I had expected a little more shrinkage in the weft direction, maybe 7%-8%, but at 26 ends per inch I was pretty close to my target warp count of 27.5 ends per inch.  As for my target weft count, it was 17.5 picks per inch.  In most spots I exceeded my target by a bit, sometimes getting as much as 20 picks per finished inch, partly because I underestimated warp take-up and partly because I incompletely compensated for my linen weaving habit of a firm beat.

Next it was time for the photo session!  With bright indirect sunlight and a grey background (yes, I know it looks blue, but it's grey), I got a pretty representative couple of photos.  Here's the whole five feet of cloth.

the two-yard piece

And here's the diva closeup shot.

detail

Conclusions and Other Thoughts

I'm really happy with how well this turned out; given my inexpertness with a spindle, it could have gone much worse.  I'm especially proud of how well my first foray into warp spinning succeeded; it's given me courage to reach for a larger project.  But I'm even more happy about what I've learned about relative yarn sizes.

Many factors led to me choosing Jorvík 1307 as my target textile.  One of those factors was definitely the size disparity between the yarns used in the two systems of this textile.  I wanted to examine the common premise that Viking Age textiles are best recreated with yarns of similar grist in warp and weft.  I already knew that most of the Jorvík wool textiles are woven with differently sized yarns in warp and weft.  With Jorvík 1307 I would be working with an extreme example of that phenomenon.

Jorvik 1307 displays a warp yarn is among the very finest of the Jorvík, i.e., Viking Age York, wool finds.  Of the 31 wool textiles from Viking Age York in Walton's catalogue, only four (1261, 1299, 1308, 1382) have warps as fine as Jorvík 1307.  Only one textile has a finer warp, Jorvík 1300, which has warps in the 0.3mm size range but is an unevenly spun warp with other yarns up to the 0.7mm size.

Differences also come to light when considering the weft yarn.  Among those 31 Jorvík textiles there are four (1257, 1258, 1296, 1297) coarse tabbies with thicker wefts than 1307; another (1379) with a thicker weft is a coarse 2/2 twill.  The herringbone twills 1264 and 1302 have weft the same size as 1307 but their warps are not nearly as fine, making them more evenweave.  Jorvík 1300 has wefts in the same size range as 1307, but again it is uneven, with the wefts varying between 1.0mm and 1.5mm. 

In other words, Jorvík 1307 has a finer warp than about 83% of the Jorvík textiles, and a thicker weft than about 74% of them.  The contrast between its warp and weft—with warp at the small end of the scale and weft at the large end—is remarkable even among its own peer textiles.  And that doesn't even take into account the question of sett; I'll have to take that up with another project down the line.

I will use the shrinkage and take-up factors from this textile to inform future projects.  I expect these factors depend to some extent on loom type, yarn diameter, and degree of spin.  I think I'll change yarn diameter first in order to see how that affects the overall picture.

I will definitely be spinning another wool warp.  Next time I'll pick a textile with a slightly heavier warp and less size disparity between warp and weft.  That still gives me plenty of Jorvík textiles to choose from even if I stick to my favorite period.

I will definitely be separating and spinning þel for weft again, too.  The uneven S-spun weft was, I think, the weakest part of this project; there's lots of room to improve that particular skill!  The processing of fine undercoat wool is somewhat of a mystery to me, since my big combs didn't work with it.  The cards I used are inappropriate tools for Viking Age textiles.  While I did not use them in the way that would have been typical in the Middle Ages, to produce rolags of coiled fibers for woollen spinning, it still bothered me that I was using them at all.  As an interim solution they worked pretty well to get the fibers straight, but I'd like to move to a less anachronistic tool.  Next time I will try smaller combs.  If need be, I will resort to hair combs to get the fibers straightened out a bit before I try spinning them.

I'll do at least one more piece on the table loom before trying my homespun on the warp-weighted loom.  I'd rather not push my luck.

In the final installment:  what I did with the rest of the warp.

Jorvík 1307: Warping and Weaving

 Previous post here.

I drew up a weaving draft for Jorvík 1307 based on the graphic in Figure 137a in Penelope Walton's Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate.  Jorvík 1307 has a section that is regular broken lozenge twill and a bit that is point repeat lozenge twill.  Walton puts that down to warp disarray based on "muddled or torn areas" (page 331).  I suspect it was a threading error.  But either way, I don't think it was an intentional part of a greater pattern of broken and point repeats across the cloth.  Accordingly, I decided to make the entire textile a broken lozenge twill.

weave draft and draw-up I used

The loom I picked to weave this textile on is a Louet Kombo four-shaft table loom.  I would have preferred to use my Icelandic style warp-weighted loom, but it's in storage in the basement.  That's because the place on the dining room wall where I would have set it up is currently taken up with the project on my 7' ancient Greek style warp-weighted loom (see other blog).  But I've had good results weaving small lengths of Viking Age type textiles on the Kombo; at least for loom type, I was on familiar territory.

I worked out the math for the warp based on a thread count of 25 ends per inch (11 ends per centimeter according to Penelope Walton's analysis).  This got me within a couple of ends of the correct count, 27.5 ends per inch.  I figured the take-up and wet finishing at the end of the project would likely adjust the count to right about where I wanted it to be.

The Jorvík 1307 fragment did not survive with an intact selvedge.  Since I knew the selvedge of my textile would become the edge of a hat, I wanted it to be as strong as it could be without being too obviously modern.  I looked at other wool textiles from the same time and place as Jorvík 1307 to see what selvedge treatments might be appropriate.  All of the selvedges Walton mentioned were "simple," i.e., had no additional reinforcing threads or crammed ends or any of the other tricks modern weavers use to keep them strong.  All the twill ones suffered from the usual problem of the weft not always binding with the outside thread.  It was fun to see the different expressions of that problem in Walton's drawings.  In the end I decided to ply some of my warp double and use one strand of that as a floating selvedge at each side.  The thick weft would obscure it pretty much completely, but it would add structural integrity.

When it finally came time to wind the warp, I freaked out a little bit.  I had purposely avoided thinking about what might happen if I had critical warp failure.  What if the yarn were too hairy?  I hadn't considered using sizing on this project; for that matter, I'd never used it whether on linen or wool.  What if I got a lot of breakage?  Was there enough extra warp that I could handle several broken ends?  I didn't know.  But when I handled the yarn, it seemed to be very stable even with the high degree of twist.  I tied up the cross more securely than I usually do, just in case it wriggled once I took it off the warping pegs.  But it didn't!  It lay cooperative in my hands without twisting.  It wasn't the smoothest yarn of that size I'd ever seen, but I'd managed to work with several hairier ones in the past.  I was optimistic, and so I set to work.

My Kombo reed is ten dents per inch; I alternated sleying it 2 and 3 ends per dent to get my 25 ends per inch.  I threaded the heddles, triple-checking at the end of every lozenge to make sure I'd done it properly.  I added a couple of ends at each side just to give a little padding to the pattern.  Since I fully expected I'd lose threads at the selvedge, I figured I'd give the piece a few disposable threads.

I wound it onto the back beam without incident and tied it off.  The warp behaved beautifully throughout this process, better in fact than some of the commercial warps I'd used.  It also wasn't casting off fibers, which I thought was a good sign.

I was in a hurry to get a look at my handspun interacting on the loom, so I wove a complete pass (18 shots, one lozenge tall) right after the header cord, to see what it would look like.  The warp was not grabbing at all!  I felt like the Spinning Queen!  (I'll probably have to blog separately about this some day, because it's really sort of a rant about how people tend not to put enough twist in their yarn when weaving to period spec.)  But the warp was still not spread out as well as I'd like it to be, and the dark colors made the pattern hard to see.

One of the commercial yarns I considered using for a weft on this project is an undyed singles tapestry yarn from Wild West Weaver.  It was the correct diameter for this piece (1.2mm), so I used some of it as a high-contrast weft to help me establish my beat and weft count.  It also spread the warp out a little more evenly for the beginning of the usable portion of the cloth.

the first couple of inches

Once I tweaked my beat to get the weft count I wanted, the rest of the weaving went quickly and well.  Let's face it:  after you've gotten past sourcing and creating the yarn, weaving it up is the fun, fast, and easy part of a project.  The problem I've had keeping my place when I treadle a broken lozenge twill didn't occur when I was lifting shafts by using the pegs on the Kombo.  One of these days, after I get decent at weaving twill on the Icelandic loom, I'll have to try a BLT and see how lost I get.

Over the entire two yards of warp, I only lost three ends to breakage.  All of them were in the group of the two outermost yarns on each side of the warp, and they all snapped within the first few inches of the weaving.  Since I'd added a few extra yarns to the warp at each side, these breakages didn't even impinge on the lozenge pattern, so I didn't bother to replace them when they snapped.

I found it almost impossible to take photos of the cloth on the loom.  My weaving space for this project was in a darkish room.  The best condition for viewing the cloth, the conditions that allowed me to actually see the lozenges clearly, was when it was late in the day and the lights were off.  Both the indirect daytime sunlight and any electrical lighting washed out the surface; flash photography was even worse.  Here's the best photo I was able to take.

on the loom

You can see the contrast between the warp and weft yarn sizes at the top of the fell.

During the weaving I realized I wasn't entirely happy with giving away every inch of this cloth.  I wanted to keep a bit of it for myself, so I kept weaving after my target length had been achieved.  I used up all the weft yarn I had spun, down to the last four or five inches that were left on the shuttle after the last possible pick.  That gave me another few inches of completed cloth that I could keep for my teaching stash.

In the next installment:  finishing and conclusions.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The weave draft and drawdown I created for this project were produced using the freeware drafting program, WinWeave.  I took a screenshot of the completed draft.  Using GIMP, I edited the screenshot to produce the .jpg for posting.

Jorvík 1307: Fiber and Spinning

I recently had occasion to weave a reproduction textile.  Since I only needed about a yard of 8" wide cloth, I decided to challenge myself by spinning the warp and weft myself.  Even though I am a slow and not very accomplished spinner, with no experience of weaving from my handspun before this project, it seemed like the best decision.  I wanted to make this project very memorable, to try something new.  Spinning my own yarns would also place within my grasp a much greater range of textiles from my chosen time and location (Period 4B at Jorvík, i.e., the mid-tenth century Anglo-Scandinavian culture of York, England) than I would usually have to choose from based on the availability of commercial yarns in the right fiber content, fiber diameter, spin direction, and yarn diameter.

After looking through my stash of spun yarn and spinnable fiber, I chose Jorvík 1307 to reproduce.  It was from the right period in a classic weave structure for the period, the 20/18 (or 10/9, if you prefer thinking of it that way) broken lozenge twill.  Although I've woven other BLTs (that's my shorthand for broken lozenge twills), I'd never done a 20/18 one before.  It was also apparently an undyed textile, although brown in appearance.  I decided to do it in naturally pigmented wool because I thought the recipient would appreciate that more than plain off-white.

The first hurdle was warp yarn.  According to Penelope Walton's book Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate I needed tightly spun, smooth worsted singles yarn about 0.4mm in diameter of a hairy medium fleece type.  In mundane terms, that's a warp yarn about the size of a doubled piece of standard sewing machine thread, and I needed nearly 500 yards of it for my project.  (This project grew in the planning.)  The mode for fiber diameter in the Jorvík 1307 warp was 24 microns.   Luckily, I had plenty of Manx Laoghtan combed top which met that standard pretty well.  It's a heritage breed found only on the Isle of Man and believed to be period to the Viking Age.

Manx Laoghtan combed top

Although the Manx Laoghtan top was a little kempy, I succeeded in pulling out many of the kemps during the spinning.  Since I apparently like to spin small and tight, working to this fine a specification was significantly less of a problem than I expected.  I spun it to about 35 degrees of Z twist on a handspindle using a reproduction soapstone whorl; I set the twist with hot water and weighted drying.

warp yarn, twist set and ready to warp

So far, so good, and the project even managed to survive my energetic young cat's frequent "help" with the spinning.

I'm sure there's some cat hair in that yarn.

 Next I needed a really soft weft yarn.  The mode fiber diameter for wefts in the Jorvík 1307 textile was 20 microns, making them even finer and softer than the fibers in the warp yarns.  The original is very weft-faced, which would have accentuated the properties of the weft yarn.  Of the period-appropriate sheep breeds, only the þel (undercoat) from a purebred Icelandic lamb was likely to get me close to the micron count I needed.  After considering and discarding a number of possibilities, I bought an Icelandic moorit lamb fleece.

some of the washed locks

I washed some of it up, hand-separated the tog (guard hairs) from the þel, and spun only the þel into my yarn.
 

 separated tog (guard hairs) and þel (undercoat)

Manageable fiber prep was key to this part of the process.  The fluffy þel proved too unstructured for me to spin from the cloud.  I knew combing was the correct technology to use, but the þel was too short to mount properly onto my Indigo Hound Viking combs.  I gritted my teeth and tried using a flick carder on it.  That didn't work well.  Eventually I cursed and brought out my hand carders.  I used them to card the fibers parallel and doffed the carded fibers sideways.  I rolled the batts from the side edges too, making sure to keep the fibers parallel instead of coiling them into the more typical rolags.  This made reasonably manageable short lengths of not-quite-top for me to spin.  

The yarn needed to be 1.2mm in diameter, a "well-spun" S singles.  That's way outside the size range for the weaving yarns I am accustomed to use; it's more like a fingering weight knitting yarn (roughly a 4 ply size in the standard used at Ravelry).  I don't spin yarns as thick as 1.2mm by choice, and I rarely spin in the S direction either. I needed all the help I could get!  Fortunately I only needed about 150 yards of this weft.  I wound up doing a lot of park and draft spinning, and it took me about five times as long to spin as had the warp.  The result, while falling short of "well spun," was at least respectable enough to use for weaving.  I spun it to about 25 degrees of S spin, setting the twist with warm water followed by a light weighting.

I didn't take any photos of the completed weft yarn, and I used up every single scrap of it in the weaving, so I don't have any photos of just the weft to share here.

In the next installment:  warping and weaving.

Viking Age Pick-Up Double Weaves from Sweden and Norway

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman 2005

 The pick-up double weave technique flourished in medieval Scandinavia. Some of the earliest examples are narrow bands, while later examples are generally large coverlet-sized textiles. From a love of the patterns on them I was drawn inexorably into  a consideration of their structure and production methods. This particular research project centered around three questions. Did pick-up double weave date back as far as the Viking Age? If so, which of the modern versions of pick-up double weave was most likely to be the one used in the originals? And which type(s) of loom might have been used?

Early double weave textiles strongly resemble early Scandinavian tablet-woven textiles in their geometric patterning. For years they had intrigued me. I saw no reason why they shouldn’t date to the Viking Age, but most early assessments of their age identified them as somewhat later. Happily, more recent radiocarbon dating has assigned new and, to me, completely believable dates to these textiles. Not only are these textiles Viking Age, but at least one–the Marby fragment–is from the Early Viking Age (see Nockert & Possnert, 112-114, for the English summary of the dating). That part of the research project, at least, was easy!

This article focuses on a group of five double weave textiles executed in the same weave structure. Four of them are securely datable to the Viking Age, and the fifth seems to belong in the same category even though it hasn’t been securely dated. Each has a double warp system, half wool and half linen, and is woven with a double weft system as well. Each warp system interlaces with a weft system of the same fiber type in tabby structure, giving two separate layers; the two layers  interpenetrate, or exchange places, to build up the patterns. One side is colorful wool with white linen patterns, while the other side is white linen with colorful wool patterns.


Historic Examples

At least four securely dated Viking Age double weave textiles survive: the Revsund border, Överhogdal IV, the Marby fragment, and the Kyrkås hanging. Two examples (the Revsund border and the Marby fragment) are narrow bands in the 6-7" range. Överhogdal IV is a frieze about a foot wide, part of the Överhogdal group of textiles, a wall hanging stitched together of five narrower friezes woven in various techniques at different times, which was preserved at a Swedish church. The fourth is the Kyrkås coverlet, surviving in four fragments of which the largest is rectangular and roughly one meter square (Franzén & Nockert, 108).

Although I couldn’t locate any secure date for the Rennebu fragment, I consider it likely to be a Viking Age textile as well; it is very similar in size to the Revsund and Marby pieces, and in technique to the entire set of four pieces. However, it does differ in one important respect from the Revsund and Marby pieces: in addition to geometric  pattening, the Rennebu fragment has human figures worked in the weftwise direction, i.e., it was meant to be displayed horizontally like a frieze. Narrow horizontal orientation such as this is paralleled in early pictorial textile work by the ninth-century Oseberg tapestry and the eleventh-century Bayeux embroidery. The figures on the Revsund border, on the other hand, were meant to be displayed vertically. The Marby piece is inconclusive since it is entirely geometric in patterning and can be viewed without prejudice from either orientation.

These five textiles share several technical features. Most early woven textiles from Scandinavia involved fine singles threads; in contrast, however, most of both the linen and wool thread used in these pieces was two-ply and more coarse. All save the Marby fragment feature a striped wool warp, a design feature quite remarkably uncommon among indigenous Viking Age textiles. In four cases, including the Marby fragment, the wool weft is entered in stripes. Three of the five are striped in both systems. The Kyrkås coverlet is especially remarkable in this regard, with three colors of wool used in each system, yielding the startling effect of white linen patterning on wool plaid! All display quadrate geometric patterning, often involving interlaced elements, and some also have pictorial elements.


Structural Issues

Engelstad discusses the apparent historical relationship between loom type and double weave structure (see page 133 for an English summary). While she does differentiate between the warp-weighted and the two-beam upright loom, it seems clear that the pick-up double weaves under consideration here were more likely to have been woven on the warp-weighted loom. However, she doesn’t go into the mechanics at all. A warp-weighted loom would easily permit the wool and linen systems of the warp to hang each at its own tension. A two-beam loom, by forcing all the warp to be wound onto the same warp beam, would have permitted the wool warp to stretch out of all proportion to the linen. These cloths, particularly the narrow ones, could easily be woven on either a standard warp-weighted loom or an upright loom with a weighted warp, i.e., a warp-weighted loom that stands vertically rather than leaning.

Structurally, it is readily possible to distinguish between two major types of pick-up double weaves, the reversable and the non-reversable. Textiles in reversable weave have the same appearance (with opposite coloration) on both faces of the cloth, and the patterns tend to be blocky in appearance. Textiles in non-reversable weave are one-sided, with the back side often not at all resembling the front side; however, the technique  permits more curvilinear patterning than in reversable. Some modern names for non-
reversable double weave are bohusväv, finsketäcke, finnväv, täkänä, and Finnweave. However, Finnweave is also used in some contexts as a name for reversable double weave, which can confuse and mislead. The specific quality of reversability is more important than the name an instructor might use for the weave structure.

The Viking Age double weaves are all of the reversable type. Back before I knew they dated to the Viking Age, and mostly out of structural curiosity, I blew up the best photos I found in books (Branting & Lindblom was great for this!) and tried to identify the weave structure from views of the front face only. Subsequently as I read Franzén & Nockert, Nockert & Possnert, and then reread Engelstad, I discovered I had correctly identified the structure, although I hadn’t figured out anything new and I still hadn’t figured out exactly how to weave one.

After the Viking Age but still during the Middle Ages, the technique of non-reversable double weave became popular in Scandinavia; it was executed on treadle looms.  However, weavers there did not entirely abandon the technique of reversable double weave. In Gudbrandsdal, a district of Norway, people were working it on the warp-weighted loom “until well into the ninteteenth century” (Engelstad, 133). Unfortunately, no records of the specific methods they used appear to have survived. The Technical Bibliography, below, offers some suggestions for information on reversable double weave. Becker & Wagner from the Historical Bibliography is also useful for technical information; it is an English version of the Norwegian-language explanation by Signe Haugstoga first printed in Engelstad, with the same set of drawings.

The Överhogdal IV textile proves that warping over a cord is an (although likely not the only) appropriate method for this technique. The cord-loop method for warping is recorded in “Åklevev pa Oppstodgogn,” a documentary film shot by Per Gjaerder and Marta Hoffmann that was posted on the website of the Norsk Folksmuseum for a couple of years. This film of early twentieth-century weavers at the warp-weighted loom, and several others like it, was shot during the research that led to Marta Hoffmann’s publication of The Warp-Weighted Loom. It was thrilling to discover the museum had made them available for viewing (and devastating when they disappeared from the site), because they offered practical physical documentation of that rarest and most precious of information, how people go when they “go like this.”

Warping on a cord can be done very simply over two pegs or posts an appropriate distance apart. This type of textile requires a warp with pairs of threads in each system. Accordingly, a linen and a wool thread would be held together and wound simultaneously; every complete circuit of the two pegs would create one warp unit (two threads of each fiber type). When the right number of warp units have been wound, a cord is passed through the entire set of loops on the “far” peg, that is, the peg at which new threads are never started. The cord and loops are carefully lifted off and transferred to the loom.

Marta Hoffmann’s suggestion that pick-up double weave was probably woven on the warp-weighted loom using “not more than one heddle rod” is manifestly unsatisfactory. Even assuming that at most one free shed might be provided by either a shed stick (which she doesn’t mention) or by the main shed rod of the loom, it would still be necessary to pick out at least two of the required four separate tabby sheds, plus all the pick-up patterning, by hand. This method would be at least a level of magnitude more complex than the freehand rosepath method to which she compares it (Hoffmann, 186f). She also considers the meaning of the medieval textile designation “ferskeptr,” or four-shaft (Hoffmann, 209), mentioning that Engelstad suggests it might refer to a type of double-face weave (Hoffmann, 364, note 45). On a warp-weighted loom fitted with four separate heddle rods, each with its own set of brackets, it would be a laborious yet somehow familiar task for a modern weaver to weave reversable double weave. It would
be largely the same as working with a table or floor loom using a straight twill draw (1234...) and a skeleton tie-up. However, Viking Age weavers might have been able to exploit the basic shed separation provided by the shed rod of a warp-weighted loom to simplify the weaving method.

In my puzzling on the best way to weave a pick-up double cloth on a warp-weighted loom, I have begun to think that the simplest tool might be an upright loom with a weighted warp. It might even be possible for two people to work in tandem, one on each side of such a loom. Most considerations of the warp-weighted loom do not tackle the question of the angle at which such a loom may slant. Many such looms are (or were) leaned against a convenient wall or beam; the slant of the uprights combines with gravity to make the natural tabby shed large and easy to clear. It is only convenient to work from one side of such a loom, the side that slopes away from the weaver’s head. However, the specific angle at which any warp-weighted loom did slant is completely conjectural. It is likely to have varied from instance to instance. While it is likely that the angle of slant tended to vary within only a fairly small number of degrees, it is also possible that some looms did in fact not slant.

A full-size, or even oversize, loom would be required for wide pieces such as the Kyrkås coverlet. However, the small upright loom found in the Oseberg ship burial (dated to 834 CE) might be a perfect tool for weaving a narrow double weave band. I am pursuing this question in a practical way with my warp-weighted loom and my small Oseberg loom. If I am successful, watch this space for a report!



Historical Bibliography

Becker, John, and Wagner, Donald B. Pattern and Loom: A Practical Study of the Development of Weaving Techniques in China, Western Asia and Europe. Copenhagen: Rhodos International Publishers, 1987. A good technical discussion of the historic method, borrowing from the explanation in Engelstad.

Branting, Agnes, and Lindblom, Andreas. Medieval Embroideries and Textiles in Sweden, 2 vols. Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckerei, 1932. Exceptional plates of some of these pieces, especially the Kyrkås piece, which was what sparked my interest in the topic. Authorship of Chapter II, “Swedish Double-Weavings and Double-Sided Weavings of Foreign Origin” is credited in a footnote to Viivi Sylwan.

Engelstad, Helen. Dobbeltvev i Norge. Fortids Kunst i Norges Bygder, Serie II  Publikasjon VI. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1958. Excellent historic survey of large numbers of historic Norwegian double weaves; includes a catalogue and an English summary.

Franzén, Anne Marie, and Nockert, Margareta. Bonaderna från Skog och Överhogdal och andra medeltida vägbeklädnader. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och  Antikvitets Akademien, 1992. Best single source for technical as well as art historical information on this topic, although some of the datings they report have since been reassessed.

Hoffmann, Marta. The Warp-Weighted Loom: Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Implement. Oslo: The Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, 1974 [Robin and Russ Handweavers reprint; original printing 1966, Studia Norvegica 16].

Nockert, Margareta, and Possnert, Göran. Att Datera Textilier. Södertälje, Sweden: Gidlungs Förlag, 2002. The most recent word on dating. Some wonderful photos and a brief English summary, but not very technical.

http://www.norskfolke.museum.no/prosjekt/WebStar/katalog.html?kategori=10224&side=1&video=0 . Norsk Folkesmuseum, Oslo. This URL leads to what used to be the listing of the museum’s archival film footage relating to the practice of traditional textile arts in Norway. According to my notes, I was last able to view these films on 15 May 2003.

Sundstrom, Amica. “Tidigmedeltida Textilier från ett Hus i Sigtuna: en tekstilarkeologisk analys och diskussion.” Laborativ Arkeologi 2003-2004, University of Stockholm. http://www.archaeology.su.se/pdf/asundstrom.pdf, last accessed 26 February 2005. Brief consideration of these textiles as part of her survey of early medieval domestic textiles; two photos. 


Technical Bibliography

Atwater, Mary M. Mary Meigs Atwater Recipe Book: Patterns for Handweavers. Salt Lake City: Wheelwright Press, Ltd., 1969.

Black, Mary E. The Key to Weaving: A Textbook of Hand Weaving for the Beginning Weaver, Second Revised Edition, pp. 219-225. New York/London: Macmillan Publishing Company/ Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1980 [1957]. Some terminology confusion (she calls both reversable and non-reversable “Finnweave”), but still useful for the orderly way in which the double weave options are laid out.

Cyrus-Zetterström, Ulla. Manual of Swedish Handweaving, 2nd U.S. edition, trans. Alice Blomquist. Newton Centre, Mass.: Charles T. Branford Co., 1977.

Irwin, Allison. “Doubleweave Pick-up.” Handwoven, vol. XX, no. 1 (January/February 1999), pp. 36-39.

Janson, John. “Celtic Knot Scarf." Handwoven, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (January/February 2002), pp. 32-33.

Moore, Jennifer. “Doubleweave: a workshop in your studio.” Handwoven, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (January/February 2002), pp. 26-31.

Van der Hoogt, Madelyn. “A Pick-up Handbook for Handweavers.” Weaver’s, Issue 24 (Summer 1994), pp. 8-13, 48-52. See page 50 for the section on reversable double weave. Includes a lengthy bibliography.

Scorgie, Jean. “Patterned Double Weave.” Handwoven, vol. VII, no. 2 (March/Apri.l 1986), pp. 56-57.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

This article was originally published in Issue 43 (March 2005) of Medieval Textiles, the newsletter of the medieval textiles study group of Complex Weavers.  Some of the information may be a bit dated now, and my thinking has evolved a bit on some aspects of the problem.  Also, I have yet to reconsider the section on loom types based on what I have learned since about Norwegian folk tapestry looms.  Nevertheless, I'm putting the article up here in the interest of keeping my work together and accessible in one place.

Here are links to images of the textiles mentioned in the text.  None of these were available on the web when the article was originally published.

• Revsund border 
•  Marby fragment
• Kyrkås textile 
• Överhogdal I-IV 
• Rennebu fragment (post-Viking Age) 

Even more remarkably, since I wrote this article the textile research footage from which Marta Hoffmann worked has re-emerged.  The Norsk Folkesmuseum channel at YouTube has reposted many of these very valuable films which show mid-century Sami women working with basic warp-weighted looms.  You can find the specific film mentioned above here at YouTube.  The section on warping over a cord begins at around 6:30.

I haven't been able to find a live current link to the Amica Sundstrom article.

Here are some additional bibliographical references that are relevant.

Keasbey, Doramay.  "Pick-Up Pattern: Five Techniques."  Handwoven, January-February 2011, pp. 46–49.  I haven't read this article on pick-up doubleweave yet, but Keasbey's technical articles are always useful.

Oscarsson, Ulla.  De gåtfulla Överhogdals-bonaderna [The enigmatic Överhogdal tapestries], trans. Anita Lahiri.  Östersund, Sweden:  Jamtli Förlag, 2010.  Although this only discusses the Överhogdal textiles I-III which are soumak and not double weave, this book does provide a list of early furnishing textiles that includes all the ones named in my article.  It also provides a post-Viking Age date for the Rennebu double weave (page 80).

An Irregular Fustian Weave

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2003

Sometimes interesting information comes along when you're researching something entirely different.  Take this unusual four-shaft weave, for example; I found it in an article on printed fustians. Even though the weave in and of itself isn't "complex," it formed the ground for two surprisingly elaborate late medieval printed textiles dated about 40 years apart.  Further, it represents the industrial use of a weave structure that I thought should be added to the knowledge pool of medieval four-shaft weaves.

Fustian is the English equivalent of "fustagnano," a medieval Italian term for a class of mixed-fiber products.  They were most typically woven on a linen warp with a cotton weft.  By the 12th century, the Italian cotton industry was cranking out a wide variety of these mixed-fiber textiles for the domestic market; for example, Perugian wares were commonly fustians.  Some types of fustians were brushed and napped, giving a texture like that of "brushed denim."  In the 15th and 16th centuries, fustians became popular all over Europe as linings for elaborate garments; many examples survive from the Elizabethan period as various types of domestic textile, e.g., hangings, bed linens, and the like.  They were also used by the middle classes as outerwear.

The two textiles printed over this unusual weave are pieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum:  V&A 1478-1899, a chasuble dating to around 1490, and V&A T280-1916, a fragment dating to around 1530.  Milton Sonday made the technical assessment and analyzed the weave structure of these two textiles.  The warp is Z-spun linen, the weft S-spun cotton, and the thread count is 24x24 threads/cm.  The structure is an irregular weft-faced twill with floats spanning two, three, and four warps.  No wales are evident.  Sonday likens the structure to that of satinette (Mitchell and Sonday, 109). 

I have re-drafted Sonday's analysis into something a little more familiar to handweavers while preserving the same interlacement.  See the draft for V&A 1478-1899 below.

Sources:

Arnold, Janet.  Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women c1560-1620.  London:  Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1985.

Thornton, Peter.  The Italian Renaissance Interior.  New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991.

Endrei, Walter.  "Les Étoffes dites de Pérouse, leurs antécédents et leur descendance."  Bulletin du CIETA, no 65 (1987), pp. 61-68.

Mazzaoui, Maureen Fennell.  The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages 1100-1600.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Mitchell, David, and Sonday, Milton.  "Printed fustians: 1490-1600."  Bulletin du CIETA, vol. 77 (2000), pp. 99-118.

Starkey, David, ed.  The Inventory of King Henry VIII, vol. 1, The Transcript.  Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, No. 56.  London: Harvey Miller Publishers, The Society of Antiquaries of London, 1998.

Willan, Thomas Stuart.  A Tudor Book of Rates.  Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

This article was originally published in Issue 37 (September 2003) of Medieval Textiles, the newsletter of the medieval textiles study group of Complex Weavers.  The draft and drawdown I submitted were created using the freeware drafting program, WinWeave.  All my drafts were translated into better software for printing and publishing.   Using GIMP, I have re-edited my original draft into a graphic for inclusion here. 

Warp-Float Weaves with Deflected Wefts: Wabengewebe

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2001

A small group of related weaves survive from the period between the seventh and tenth centuries (Tidow, 133).  The examples (there are, by all accounts, seven or perhaps eight) have been found in England, Sweden, and Germany, and they are believed to be Alamannic or perhaps Frankish in origin.  Hans-Jürgen Hundt, who first took an interest in them after he discovered one, named them Wabengewebe, or honeycomb.


Technical Details

Technical information is only available for six of the pieces.  Two are from Swedish warrior graves of the Vendel period, Valsgärde 8 (the earliest piece) and Valsgärde 13.  One is from an eighth- or ninth-century Slavonic grave at Osmarsleben in Sachsen-Anhalt.  Two are from eighth-century Alamannic warrior graves, Sievern Grave 66 in Lower Saxony and Alladorf Grave 60 in Bavaria.  The last, Jorvík 1336,  is from tenth-century Anglo-Scandinavian levels at York.  The other two known pieces, Vendel 11 and Vendel 12, come from Swedish graves at Vendel and have not been published.

Some pieces used the same grist in warp and weft, while others used a heavier weft than warp yarn.  All were woven using Z-spun singles in warp and weft.  Only one piece (Alladorf 60) has been identified as woven of wool; all the other pieces that were susceptible to fiber type analysis turned out to be linen.

Fig. 1:  Alladorf Grab 60 wabengewebe; 20Z x 16Z wool; 8thC Frankish

Four of the pieces are in the medium fine range, at 20 to 24 ends per cm, with weft counts of 12, 16, and 18 per cm.  One piece is slightly less fine, with 15 ends and picks per cm, and one piece is pretty coarse at 7 ends and 9 picks per cm.  Some pieces were woven with equal numbers of ends and picks per cm, while others were less even.  The largest disparity in thread count comes from the Valsgärde 8 piece, with its 24 ends and 12 picks per cm (Walton 1989, 356).  Although it's unclear what purpose these textiles served, I believe that most of them were used as domestic textiles, e.g., towels or table linens.


Structure

The early medieval Wabengewebe is a real puzzler: apparently, no two known examples are identical in structure.  The basic structure is a one-shuttle, two-block weave that resembles both a modern honeycomb weave and a huck weave.  It has groups of warp floats like huck, and it has deflected wefts outlining cells in the ground weave, like modern "honeycomb" weaves.  However, there the resemblances end.  Especially, there are no corresponding long weft floats on the backs of Wabengewebes.  Variations in cell interlacements (tabby or 1/2 twill), numbers of warp floats, and cell sizes make all the known examples different from one another. 

Published photos of textile fragments in this technique are rare, and often it is not possible to determine the weave structure from them.  Since the original fragments are often very small, it is possible to misread a 1/2 twill cell as a tabby cell, or to miscount the number of weft threads in a cell.  The deflected weft sometimes obscures as many as three other wefts, depending on structure, and counting the total number of wefts can therefore be very difficult.

Additionally, not many drawdowns are published, and some of the published drawdowns are incorrect.  The generalized Wabengewebe drawdown published in Bender Jørgensen (Figure 1P, which she labels "honeycomb,") is incorrect: it's for a modern waffle weave.  Penelope Walton twice published a Wabengewebe drawdown that was 90 degrees off true (Walton 1989, 350; Walton 1990, 66). 

Adding to the mystery, Hundt's published schematic for the Sievern 66 fragment is technically impossible: some of the short warp floats abut other long warp floats rather than showing longer continuous warp floats (Hundt 153 and Abb. 4).  During the course of his investigations into Wabengewebes, Hundt consulted a weaving instructor named Frau Kircher.  The sample she wove for Hundt does not match either the photo of the original or Hundt's drawdown for the textile in question (see Hundt 159, Abb. 8-5).  Accordingly, since any reconstruction would be conjectural and without benefit of having consulted the actual textile fragment, a draft for the Sievern piece is not included here.

Two definite examples exist of cell structures in 1/2 twill, those from York (see the draft for Jorvík 1336) and Grave 8 at Valsgärde.  Two shots of 1/2 twill are followed by a shot of tabby in the first block; in the second block the opposite two twill sheds and the opposite tabby shed are used instead.  The reverse of a textile in this technique shows a section of tabby interlacement behind the warps that float on the front; some weft floats are sandwiched between the two layers.

Fig. 2: Jorvik 1336 wabengewebe

According to Walton, the Valsgärde 8 piece has shorter weft floats and longer cells than the Jorvík 1336 piece (Walton 1989, 356).  However, when you consider that Walton believes the textile to have been woven 90 degrees off its true orientation, this means that Valsgärde 8 actually has a larger number of warp floats than Jorvík 1336, and that they are shorter.  This results in wider, flatter cells than Jorvík 1336.

Other examples, more mysterious and less well documented, have been identified by various specialists as consisting of tabby cell structure.  Among these is the Sievern piece, with its impossible drawdown.  Another piece, with small cells definitely woven in tabby, is also woven in a mixture of twill and tabby.  Shots of 2/1 twill alternate with shots of tabby, with the tabby shed changing to mark the change between the two blocks.  Pairs of warp floats on the front alternate with single warp floats on the reverse.  The deflected wefts are of course in twill.  (See the draft for Alladorf Grave 60.)  The Osmarsleben fragment is identified as having tabby cells (Bender Jørgensen 1991, 237, entry Germany V.40.l).  The accompanying photo (Bender Jørgensen 1991, 147, Fig. 181d) appears to have tabby cells; however, since the cells are small I suspect that some interlacement like the Alladorf one may have been used.

Photos and/or drafts are not available for the other three Swedish examples.  The eighth century fragments from Grave 13 at Valsgärde in Sweden were found on a shield boss.  A firm identification of the ground weave is impossible, but it was either "tabby or 2/1 twill" (Bender Jørgensen 1991, 262, entry Sweden IV.17:113).  No further information on the two Vendel fragments is available at the time of writing.


Sources:

Black, Mary.  The Key to Weaving: A Textbook of Hand Weaving for the Beginning Weaver, Second Revised Edition.  New York:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1980.

Bender Jørgensen, Lise. North European Textiles until AD 1000. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1991.  Huge catalogue of extant early textiles, mostly fragments; exceedingly well documented.

-----.  "The Textiles of the Saxons, Anglo-Saxons and Franks."  Studien zur Sachsenforschung, vol. 7 (1991), pp. 11-23.  Good summary information on textile types particular to these cultures.

Davison, Marguerite Porter.  A Handweaver's Pattern Book, Revised Edition.  Swarthmore, Pennsylvania: Marguerite Porter Davison, 1951 [1944]. 

Hundt, H.-J.  "Textilreste aus dem frühgeschichtlichen Kriegergrab von Sievern, Kr. Wesermünde, 1954."  Studien zur Sachsenforschung, vol. 2 (1980), pp. 151-160.  Write-ups on Sievern 66 and Alladorf 60.
   
Tidow, Klaus.  "Kleingemusterte Woll- und Leinengewebe aus der Eisenzeit und dem Mittelalter--Herkunft, Herstellung und Verbreitung," pp. 131-137 in Textiles in European Archaeology: Report from the 6th NESAT Symposium, 7-11th May 1996 in Borås, ed. Lise Bender Jørgensen and Christina Rinaldo. GOTARC Series A, Vol. 1. Göteborg: Göteborg University Department of Archaeology, 1998.  Brief summary of information on several interesting early medieval weaves, including Wabengewebes.

Walton, Penelope. Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate. The Archaeology of York, Volume 17, Fascicule 5. York: York Archaeological Trust and the Council for British Archaeology, 1989.  Write-up on Jorvík 1336 and an excellent comparative section on similar weaves.  [Now available from Pangur Press at this link.]

Walton, Penelope.  "Textile Production at Coppergate, York: Anglo-Saxon or Viking?," pp. 61-72 in Textiles in Northern Archaeology: NESAT III Textile Symposium in York 6-9 May 1987, ed. Penelope Walton and John P. Wild. London:  Archetype Publications, 1990.  Brief mention of Jorvík 1336 and similar weaves.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

This article was originally published in Issue 27 (March 2001) of Medieval Textiles, the newsletter of the medieval textiles study group of Complex Weavers.  The draft and drawdown I submitted were created using the freeware drafting program, WinWeave.  Using GIMP, I have turned the original draft into a graphic for republishing here.  I have also restored the annotations to the bibliography; they were omitted for space reasons during publication.

This is a kitchen towel in the Jorvík 1336 weave structure.  It was woven in unmercerized cotton as a present for me by Susan Nalley.  It's been in my normal kitchen towel rotation for maybe seven or eight years now and is holding up beautifully.

 

I have not pursued the Wabengewebe class of weave structures lately; it may be that other examples of it have turned up in the last 15 years.  If I find any more, I'll post about it with cross-links.

2/2 Twills: Kreuzköper

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2000


The "kreuzköper," or "cross twill," is often called a "broken twill" in English.  It is identical to Marguerite Porter Davison's "Halvorsen #5 Pebble Weave," treadling VII (Davison, p. 5).  In north Europe, during the centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest, such weaves were executed in singles wool threads at medium to coarse setts and served as blankets, cloaks, outer clothing, and the like.

Some Medieval Linen Weaves

[This article was originally published in Issue 30 (December 2001) of Medieval Textiles, the newsletter of the medieval textiles study group of Complex Weavers.] 

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2001

While the most common linen product in the Middle Ages was tabby-woven, weavers also produced many types of figured linens.  The rippenköper and Wabengewebe described in previous articles represent some early medieval examples.  This article expands the scope of medieval cultures and techniques producing simple figured linen weaves.