Viking Age Tablet Weaving: Kufic or Not?

Please read the important update at the bottom of this post.

Well, here on the Left Coast of the USA I woke up to a Viking textile controversy this morning, and no mistake! Maybe I'm an idiot, and maybe I'm not, but here's my take on it.

Today's controversy involves the Birka tablet-woven brocade bands. According to Annika Larsson (about whom more below), the geometric designs actually depict Kufic inscriptions saying "Allah" and "Ali." We already know there was plenty of contact with Muslim culture of the period given the large quantity of Persian silver and Eastern silk found in Viking Age contexts. That contact is not at issue, not even remotely. But this particular reinterpretation of the bands has me really steamed, and here's why.

Larsson's "discovery" is predicated on unfounded extensions of pattern, not on existing pattern.

If you consult any of the current crop of articles about this topic, you'll see a photo of a graph on a page with a mirror next to it. (Here's a link to the Heritage Daily one.) The pattern graph is quite clearly Band 6 from the Birka finds, an artifact found in a tenth-century woman's grave, Grave 965, which was published in Agnes Geijer's 1938 Birka III: Die Textilfunde aus den Gräbern. (See photo below, which is taken from Abb. 20, "Muster der Brettchenbänder," on page 82 in Geijer.)

If you look at the pattern Larsson is postulating, it shows nine additional pattern units at each side of the band, for a total of 18 additional tablets' worth of width. In Larsson's photo you can tell the additional pattern units apart from the original pattern units printed in Geijer because the additional units indicating the brocade weft at the two sides of the graph are slightly lighter than the ones in the central part of the graph; they are also printed 90 degrees off from the direction of the original unit graphics. This unexplained extrapolation practically doubles the width of the band, and here's why that's a problem.

According to Geijer, Band 6 was woven in a technique common to almost every piece of tablet-woven brocade at Birka. Each pattern tablet was threaded half with silk, half with linen and offset by one-quarter turn from the tablet next to it. "Stave borders" of warp twining one tablet wide marked off the selvedges; they are threaded entirely with silk. The tablets were alternately threaded and turned continuously forward. The band was woven with a structural weft that is hidden inside the band as well as a supplementary metallic brocading weft that floats on top of the band to make the pattern. When linen is "up" during the weaving, it's always covered with metallic brocading weft; when silk is "up," it's often (but not always) visible as a tie-down point. This technique is very economical, as the resulting band looks like it's woven with 100% silk when it is much less expensive to weave than 100% silk as about half the warp is linen rather than silk.

If you consult Tafl 17:1 in Birka III for a photo of Band 6, you can clearly see the continuous metallic weft of the band turning at each selvedge to enter back in the other direction. If Larsson were correct that Band 6 was originally significantly wider, you would not see those turning loops; you'd see a series of discontinous single passes of brocading weft with cut or broken ends at each edge.

Annika Larsson is currently with the Institute for Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University in Sweden. The bio at her web page there says "[t]he first degree I took at the Textile Institute, where I trained myself as product designer and pattern designer for the industry. But I am also a craftsman and collaborate with various craft crafts in textiles and throws." She is not trained in archaeology as nearly as I can tell.

You may remember how she offered a radically disruptive theory in 2007 that Viking Age women's oval brooches were worn at the level of the nipples. (You can read more about her idea here.) I have yet to read a textile archaeologist's endorsement of that particular version of costume history, which doesn't surprise me since on the face of it it seems incompatible with much of the published archaeological material on women's clothing from Birka, let alone the rest of the Viking cultural milieu.

Again, I have nothing against the theory that these patterns are Kufic. I would welcome additional overt evidence for Persian influence at Birka, since I already believe the mix of cultures there is too rich and thorough to gloss Birka as representing a single and "Viking" cultural context. But Larsson's theory flies in the face of what we know about Band 6; it doesn't pass my sniff test.

UPDATE 17 October 2017: I see the Guardian has called me a "textile archaeologist." This is incorrect. I have never claimed to be a textile archaeologist, although the discipline of textile archaeology is my chief intellectual interest. Please do not hold me responsible for anybody's failure to describe me correctly.

UPDATE 1 November 2017: The Enköping Museum has put out a statement about this controversy.

The criticism is directed towards a part of the exhibition, but not to the whole. In anticipation of clarifications from the researcher at Uppsala University, the museum now chooses to pause this part of the exhibition until further notice. [via Google Translate]

The statement further makes it clear that the issue centers on interpretation of a Birka band, not a band from some other site.

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.

Two Asymmetrical Pavy Weaves

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2003

A year ago my article “Some More Medieval Linen Weaves” presented a number of multishaft medieval liseré weaves of pavy design. One important design feature common to all these textiles was that the wales of the pattern all lined up and met perfectly. Accordingly, when I was attempting to draft an 8-shaft version of a pavy liseré weave for that article I focused a lot of attention on getting the diagonals to line up perfectly.

Last summer, however, I ran across two historic pavy weaves that are markedly irregular; their float arrangements are not perfect, and the wales do not line up perfectly. Further, the structure of these particular two textiles is not a liseré; it is a gebrochene. That is, it is an “Ms and Ws” structure with twill floats in both warp and weft systems, not just in the weft system as with a pavy liseré.

Middelburg-Nassau-Grimbergen, draft no. 1

One is part of an antependium from Middelburg-Nassau-Grimbergen, now in the Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium in Brussels. It dates to the first third of the 16th century. A complete analysis was not available to me, but the drawdown by J. Vynckier (de Jonghe, p. 70) was. The other is a large fragment of linen (Tx 63) in the collection of the Abbey of St. Truiden in Tongeren, Belgium. It was analyzed by Daniël de Jonghe (pp. 270-272), who assigns it a date similar to that of the Middelburg piece. Although the piece is a fragment, the complete width of 33.6 cm survives, including both tabby selvedges. Like most medieval ecclesiastical linens, it is woven with Z-spun singles line linen. The thread count is about 60 ends and 45 picks per inch, and the cloth is bleached.

If the structural analyses by de Jonghe and Vynckier are correct as printed, then the two textiles are curious inversions of one another. Both textiles are identically drawn in, yet their tie-ups are exact opposites. If, however, the structural analysis by Vynckier is drawn using a different convention than that by de Jonghe, then the two textiles may be closely related.

Middelberg-Nassau-Grimbergen draft no. 2

De Jonghe’s textile analysis can be checked against the photo of Tx 63; as always, he represents the warp with black and the weft with white. I was not able to check Vynckier’s analysis against the antependium because I do not currently have access to a photo of the actual textile. But if Vynckier’s drawdown uses white to represent the warp and black the weft, then the two textiles could be woven on the same warp using the same tie-up by simply changing the treadling sequence. Because de Jonghe dates them together due to their commonalities, it’s worth considering that they might be closely related, perhaps from the same production center. Accordingly, I give two different versions of the Middleburg draft, for those who’d like to try weaving them both on one warp without switching tie-ups.

St.-Truiden Tx 63

The draft called “Middleburg 1” is the one I first derived from the drawdown. It assumes the black-warp, white-weft CIETA convention that de Jonghe uses. The “Middleburg 2” draft I based on my hunch that the two textiles are related, and that Vynckier might have represented the textile “backward” from the CIETA convention. Instead, it is predicated on a white-warp, black-weft convention. The draft for Tx 63 is cut down and reworked from that of de Jonghe (p. 272), whose drawup and draft present more than a complete repeat and are tied up differently than I would do it.


Sources:

Daniël de Jonghe, “De Textieldocumenten uit Sint-Truiden: Technologische Bevindingen,” pp. 63-105 in Stof uit de Kist: De middeleeuwse textileschat uit de abdij van Sint-Truiden. Leuven, Belgium: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1991.

Daniël de Jonghe, catalogue entry for Tx 63, pp. 270-272 in Stof uit de Kist: De middeleeuwse textileschat uit de abdij van Sint-Truiden. Leuven, Belgium:  Uitgeverij Peeters, 1991.


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This article was originally published in Issue 35 (March 2003) of Medieval Textiles, the newsletter of the medieval textiles study group of Complex Weavers.  The drafts and drawdowns I submitted were created using the freeware drafting program, WinWeave.  Using GIMP, I have turned the original drafts into graphics for republishing here.

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.

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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).

A Medieval Kruiswerk Weave

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2002

The ordinances of the London Guild of Weavers name several different linen products in their price list of 1456: linen cloth, plain towel, napery and towels of Paris work, "crosse werk," cross diamond, small knots, chains in work, "catrylettes," "damask knots with the chapelettes," and "all manner work made in draught work" (Consitt, pp. 205-207).  Many of these apparently were figured weaves.  While researching pavy weaves, I encountered a class of Renaissance linen patterning called in Dutch kruiswerk, or cross work.  Since cross work is listed as a 15th century weave in the London list, it drew my eye immediately.

J. Six's article mentions or shows photos of several kruiswerk examples, although none of them are dated to earlier than around 1600.  Kruiswerk is a subset of the gebrochene class of weaves, an elaboration of pavy in which certain design elements are stretched out by adding stairsteps to the typical Ms and Ws threading.  Unlike the pavy liseré weaves from the last article, they have twill floats of varying length in both systems on both faces of the textile.  The historic examples all require more than four shafts to weave.

None of the 17th and 18th century gebrochene variants in Zeigler or Lumscher look quite like kruiswerk; most of them are closer to pavy in style.  Marjie Thompson published the draft of an early 17th century kruiswerk, the "Earl of Mar canvas," in 1997.  However, late last spring I encountered an even earlier example, a textile dating to around the 15th century, Tx 60, documented among the holdings of the Abbey of St. Truiden in Belgium.  It is in the same pattern family as Six's kruiswerk examples and the Earl of Mar piece.

Here is a draft of Tx 60 from St. Truiden.  Daniël de Jonghe analyzed the weave and produced a draft which I have simply redrafted into a more standardized American notation.



This particular kruiswerk is woven on 12 shafts.  Unlike the Earl of Mar piece, its twill floats are balanced by an expanse of tabby ground.  The original textile remnant is a complete loomwidth of between 64 and 65.8 cm in width and 21.5 cm in length.  It is woven of linen, possibly bleached, at 23 warps and 17 wefts per centimeter.  Each selvedge is reinforced with a single S-plied thread (Stof uit de Kist, pp. 268-270).

It is not clear to me yet where Six got the term kruiswerk, but his article suggests there's an early manuscript with drafts of this type of weave structure.  I am looking into this more deeply, as it would be so nice to be able to identify kruiswerk as the "cross work" of the London regulations.


Sources:

Consitt, Frances.  The London Weavers' Company from the Twelfth Century to the Close of the Sixteenth Century.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. 

Hilts, Patricia.  The Weavers Art Revealed.  Facsimile, Translation, and Study of the First Two Published Books on Weaving: Marx Zeigler's "Weber Kunst und Bild Buch" (1677) and Nathaniel Lumscher's "Neu eingerichtetes Weber Kunst und Bild Buch" (1708).  Ars Textrina, vols. 13-14 (December 1990).

Six, J. "Kruiswerk, Lavendel, Pavy en Pellen," Het Huis, Oud & Nieuw, vol. 10 (1912), pp. 105-122.

Stof uit de Kist: De middeleeuwse textielschat uit de abdij van Sint-Truiden.  Provinciaal Museum voor Religieuze Kunst, Begijnhofkerk, Sint-Truiden.  Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1991.  (Textile analysis and catalogue entry by Daniël de Jonghe.)

Thompson, Marjie.  "The Earl's Canvas," Weaver's, Issue 38 (Winter 1997), pp. 38-40.



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This article was originally published in Issue 33 (September 2002) 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 by the editor into better software for printing and publishing.  Due to the large size of the repeat, the draft was not printed in its entirety.  A separate drawdown was printed plus a draft of the complete threading plus the first half of the treadling.   

Using GIMP, I have re-edited my original draft into a graphic for inclusion here.  I have chosen to reintegrate the threading, tie-up, treadling, and drawdown back into a single graphic.  The tie-up is for rising shed/countermarche.  Having it all appear as a single image gives a better idea of how the threading, tie-up, and treadling work together to produce the patterning.

This post was delayed by several weeks due to my being so inexperienced at editing graphics.  I had to cut and paste several different pieces of the original draft together into one big image, then hand-retouch a great many of the seams literally pixel by pixel.  Fortunately, though, I learned a whole lot by doing so!  Hopefully the next work won't take so long to produce.

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.

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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. 

Some More Medieval Linen Weaves

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2002


This article presents some multishaft self-patterned linen weaves that are a bit more complex than those of previous articles.  The interlacements can be woven on seven to 15 shafts.  All drafts were produced by the present author; with the exception of "Pavy 8," which is original, they were developed from drawdowns by the authors noted in the text.

Two basic classes of weave structure are represented by these more complex textiles.  Like some of the simpler self-patterned weaves, they share two basic principles.  First, they are self-patterned, with a single warp system and a single weft system.  Second, they display regularly repeating areas of different length floats in the same textile.

The first class has areas of twill floating in both systems on both faces.  Beyond "twill," this class of structure does not seem to have a specific name, although many of the weaves represented qualify as composite twills in CIETA terminology (Burnham, p. 29).  Many variants appear in Davison's chapter on "twill combinations," mostly based around the point repeat lozenge twill and the gebrochene, or "Ms and Ws," twill.

The point repeat lozenge twills covered in the previous article have some more complex cousins.  The Vatican's T-5, from the Museo Sacro collection, is a particularly attractive example (see draft).  This 13-shaft linen is of unknown medieval date (Volbach, pp. 16-17).  Its thread count is unavailable; however, Volbach's drawdown suggests the original proportions of the sett, four warps for every three wefts, yielding a lovely network of elongated twill lozenges filled with tabby.

 Another example is the "bloeddoek" (cup cover?) at Hoogstraten in Belgium, which dates to the last quarter of the 14th century (De Jonghe, p. 66).  Although De Jonghe analyzed it as a 16-shaft weave, if his drawdown is correct it can be woven on 15 shafts and 15 treadles (see draft).  The twill sections involve floats over three threads.  De Jonghe's drawdown notes a shedding anomaly in the original that results from one tie-up having been omitted; whether error or intention is unknown.  The draft below preserves the original error, but adding Shaft 5 to Treadle 9 in the draft will perfect the shedding.

The second type of weave structure to be considered here is one with twill floats of varying length in only one system per side of the textile.  Specifically, these textiles have only weft floats on the face of the textile, against a foundation of tabby.   The appropriate CIETA terminology to apply to these textiles is liseré weaves (Burnham, p. 86).  The effect is similar to a brocade, except that the floats do not derive from a supplemental weft.  Many medieval linen or silk liseré textiles are quite elaborate, woven on various types of drawlooms.  The one presented here, the linen chasuble from the Church of St. Godehard, is simple enough to be woven on a 16-shaft loom (see draft).

This 14th century liseré textile, preserved at Hildesheim in Germany, exhibits a marvelous pattern reminiscent of tiled floors.  As far back as 1682, this particular pattern was being called "pavy" (Six, p. 110),  no doubt from the French pavé, or paving stone; the term may be somewhat older.  Pavy patterning can also be woven as a class of gebrochene twill.  Patricia Hilts' section on gebrochene weaves from the introduction of her The Weavers Art Revealed devotes some discussion to the development and augmention of just such a pattern.  However, a liseré pavy weave lacks the floats in the warp system that are characteristic of gebrochene pavy weaves.

The St. Godehard linen is woven on14 shafts (De Jonghe, p. 66), and the twill areas involve floats over four warps.  It was woven at about 80 ends and picks per inch, with a weft thread slightly thicker than the warp thread (Flury-Lemberg, p. 500).  I have drafted it from Flury-Lemberg's drawdown using a standard gebrochene threading and treadling.

(drafted for rising shed)

 A similarly patterned pavy liseré exists at Maastricht in the Netherlands; its weft floats are over five warps.  The thread count is about 45 ends and picks per inch (Stauffer, no. 138, p. 214).  The tabby sections are large, and the twill floats are arranged in pairs separated by a single warp thread.  Accordingly, it appears to have been woven on 18 or 20 shafts.  Another fragment of a pavy liseré  (number 7c) is preserved among the relics at Tongeren in Belgium, also with five-thread floats.  Its thread count is about 48 ends and 45 picks per inch (De Jonghe, p. 138).

The pavy liseré weave evidently even crossed over from the linen industry into the German fustian industry.  One 10-shaft pavy liseré from the 15th or 16th century (Endrei, p. 61), Cologne Z 1020, has a linen warp and a cotton weft (von Stromer, p. 121).  For all we know currently, other examples of fustian in this weave may also exist.  There are certainly other known examples of pre-1600 pavy weaves; however, they are not as accessible or well published as the ones in this article.  It is therefore difficult to know whether they are liseré pavys or gebrochene pavys.

Using the basic design principles of the pavy pattern, I attempted to devise a pavy liseré draft for only eight shafts.  I did not succeed with any number of shafts fewer than eight.

(drafted for rising shed)

The eight-shaft draft presented here (Pavy 8) preserves the proportions of all its constituent lozenges as well as the symmetrical arrangement of all the pattern lines, which is not always easy with this pattern.  However, due to the comparatively small number of shafts involved, the floats are relatively short.  Accordingly, the contrast between long floats and areas of tabby is not as great as it would be on a textile woven with more shafts.  For best effect, pavy liseré needs to be woven on more than 8 shafts.


Sources:

Burnham, Dorothy K.  Warp & Weft: A Dictionary of Textile Terms.  New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981.

Davison, Marguerite Porter.  A Handweaver's Pattern Book, Revised Edition.  Swarthmore, Pennsylvania:  Marguerite P. Davison, 1993 [1950]. 

De Jonghe, Daniël. "Technologische Beschouwingen," pp. 65-88, and "Relieken," p. 122-248 in Textiel van de vroege middeleeuwen tot het Concilie van Trente.  Tongeren Basiliek O.-L.-Vrouw Geboorte, vol. I.  Leuven:  Uitgeverij Peeters, 1988.

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

Flury-Lemberg, Mechthild.  Textile Conservation and Research: A Documentation of the Textile Department on the Occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Abegg Foundation. Schriften der Abegg-Stiftung, Volume VII. Bern:  Abegg-Stiftung, 1988.

Hilts, Patricia.  The Weavers Art Revealed.  Facsimile, Translation, and Study of the First Two Published Books on Weaving: Marx Zeigler's "Weber Kunst und Bild Buch" (1677) and Nathaniel Lumscher's "Neu eingerichtetes Weber Kunst und Bild Buch" (1708), Part I: Marx Ziegler's "Weber Kunst und Bild Buch".  Ars Textrina, vol. 13 (December 1990).

Six, J. "Kruiswerk, Lavendel, Pavy en Pellen," Het Huis, Oud & Nieuw, vol. 10 (1912), pp. 105-122.

Stauffer, Annemarie.  Die Mittelalterlichen Textilien von St. Servatius in Maastricht.  Schriften der Abegg-Stiftung Riggisberg, Band VIII.  Riggisberg:  Abegg-Stiftung Riggisberg, 1991.

Stromer, Wolfgang von.  Die Gründung der Baumwollindustrie in Mitteleuropa.  Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, Band 17.  Stuttgart:  Anton Hiersemann, 1978.

Volbach, W.F.  I Tessuti del Museo sacro vaticano.  Catalogo del Museo sacro della Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, Vol. 3.  Città del Vaticano:  Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1942.

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This article was originally published in Issue 31 (March 2002) 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.  During that process the draft I created for the "bloeddoek," which specifically preserved the original shedding error Daniël de Jonghe noted in the original, was changed by the editor to correct the error.  The draft for the Godehard textile was truncated down to a quarter of its original threading and treadling, turning it from a gebrochene into a much simpler hin und wieder (point repeat lozenge) structure.

Using GIMP, I have re-edited each of my original drafts into a graphic for inclusion here.  The draft for the "bloeddoek" that appears here is the draft I intended to be published with the article, not the corrected draft which was published.  The draft for the Godehard textile shows the complete gebrochene threading and treadling repeat; due to the size of the draft, the rising shed indicators in the tie-up have been changed to black squares in order to make them more visible.
 

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.

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.