Double-Faced Designs on a 7-Block Grid with Radial Symmetry

© 2000 Carolyn Priest-Dorman

The last time I wove some motifs from the 13th century Scottish seal tag described in Audrey Henshall’s “Five Tablet Woven Seal Tags,” I was struck by some design properties they all shared. The motifs are 28 tablets wide; they were all designed in blocks of four tablets in a turning sequence of seven sets of two. This can be represented in shorthand fashion on a square grid consisting of seven rows of seven squares each. Further, all the Scottish motifs shared radial symmetry, and all the lines were orthogonal rather than the more typical diagonal lines of tablet woven square motifs (e.g., the Snartemo V motifs). The orthogonal lines show up very neatly due to the warp being entirely threaded in one direction rather than alternating from tablet to tablet.

Recently, I was looking for something in Brigitta Schmedding’s Mittelalterliche Textilien in Kirchen und Klöstern der Schweiz when I rediscovered several other textile examples of square motifs with radial symmetry and orthogonal lines. There is something about these motifs that looks extremely ancient to me! With the TWIST sample exchange in mind, I began doodling to test the limitations of the design. Since the sample exchange was supposed to be for relatively narrow bands, I kept my designs to the proportions of the original and used a 49-square grid. Soon I think I will have to try reproducing some of those elaborate Swiss designs from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; it will take a grid of at least 15x15 blocks.

On a seven-by-seven grid using radial symmetry, it is fairly hard to avoid repeating the Scottish designs or designing out-and-out swastikas, but I did my best. They’re far too basic to be “original,” of course, although I wasn’t looking at any other sources while I designed them. Here are the four designs I liked the best; I call them the Whirlpool, the Cross-and-Boss, the Running T, and the Well.

The motifs need to be squared carefully (my samples are not all carefully squared, due to unexpected time constraints). Also, my experience weaving these types of motifs shows that using smaller yarns minimizes the effect of the feathery weftwise color changes. They’re especially breathtaking in Size A sewing silk, which makes them pretty much identical in size to the Scottish piece of my original inspiration..


Sources

Henshall, Audrey. "Five Tablet-Woven Seal-Tags." Archaeological Journal 121 (1964), pp. 154-62.

Schmedding, Brigitta. Mittelalterliche Textilien in Kirchen und Klöstern der Schweiz. Bern: Schriftern der Abegg-Stiftung, 1978.

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This document was originally prepared to accompany my work in a tablet weaving sample exchange in Spring 2000 sponsored by TWIST (Tablet Weavers' International Studies and Techniques). It is also available at my old website which is currently frozen. (I am considering my options for recreating and updating that site.)

The original samples were woven of 20/2 Czech linen.

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.

Yes, But What Does That Mean?: A Synoptic Tablet Weaving Lexicon for Beginners

© Carolyn Priest-Dorman 2002-2003

   
A number of excellent instructional books are available for beginning tablet weavers.  However, they don't all use the same words to mean the same things.  Teachers of tablet weaving don't all learn from the same sources, either, so you can't avoid this problem simply by learning from gurus instead of books.  It can be very frustrating to learn one set of technical vocabulary and then discover that another instructor or book uses a different set! 

Among the influential sources for vocabulary in English are the works of Mary Meigs Atwater, Peter Collingwood, Candace Crockett, Russell Groff, Egon Hansen, and Otfried Staudigel (see bibliography).  Most other sources derive from one of these five.  This article is designed to compare and contrast the beginner terminologies used in these sources (with occasional references to other sources) in order to help you translate vocabulary from one version to another and, in the process, figure out what it all means.  It's aimed at beginners, so only some vocabulary terms are included.  Yet the included terms should suffice to get you off and started on your first few projects.  If you have trouble wading through all the terminology, just remember that you're, in effect, reading a dictionary.  Look up what you need and ignore the rest until you need it, and you'll get along fine.

Atwater's book is the oldest of the group (1954), and Groff's and Crockett's the second-oldest (original publications 1969 and 1973).  Most of the plethora of books from the early 1970s that include tablet weaving use vocabulary like either Groff's or Crockett's.  Collingwood's terminology is generally the most rigorous from the perspective of structural analysis, although Hansen's analysis of a few of the early techniques has turned out to be the more insightful.  Also, Hansen's terms are frequently shorter and punchier, making them easier to drop into normal conversation.  However, while Collingwood wrote in his native English, Hansen's terms were translated from the original Danish.  Sometimes the translations resonate, sometimes they don't.  Staudigel's terminology, the youngest of the group, stands Collingwood's on its head, for reasons that will become clear below.

A Basic Assumption – Most works on tablet weaving assume that the weaver sits at or near one end of the warp, looking toward the far end of the warp, and that the weaving proceeds away from the weaver.  This is not the only way to tablet weave, by any means, but it is the most common.  Accordingly, most sources leave unsaid this basic assumption.  Thus you will need to keep it in mind as a spatial reference.  Once you've internalized it, it will become easy for you to adapt this frame of reference toward the less common weaving orientations.

Direction the Cards Face – Commercial weaving tablets are generally printed on one side with letters for each of the four holes.  Many authors take the sidedness of tablets into account when explaining their setups, and it is critical to the success of their patterns that you follow their expectations.  However, there is even less consistency on this point than elsewhere.  Beginners, don't be discouraged if this paragraph seems confusing; just look for the author you need to know about and ignore the rest for now.  Now then, climb aboard and hang on!  Atwater says that the tablets should face right, with Card 1 on the far right of the pack.  Hansen agrees with this, but only for right-handed people; he says left-handed people should read his patterns upside down and backwards!  The Snows and Staudigel say that the tablets should face right, with Card 1 on the far left of the pack.  Crockett says the say the same thing, only mirrored: the printed side of the tablets should face the weaver's left, with Card 1 on the far right of the pack.  Groff says the tablets should face left, with Card 1 on the far left of the pack.  But Collingwood transcends the entire question, expecting you to figure out everything based on his very informative graphs and threading instructions.  If your mind works like that, it's a very liberating approach; otherwise it's unbelievably confusing!

Threading Direction – If you want a tablet to be able to turn in the way that is common to tablet weaving, then there are only two (opposing) ways it can be positioned on its four warp threads. These two possibilities are called threading directions.  See the left half of each illustration below for the two possibilities.  You will note that the two tablets are labeled in their centers with an S and a Z.  These stand for "S-threaded" and "Z-threaded."  The S- and Z-threaded terminology is extrapolated from international conventions for describing textiles, and was first popularized for use in tablet weaving by Collingwood.  It describes an unambiguous visual clue you can find for yourself by assuming the Basic Assumption position and then looking down at the warp.   The slant made by the thread as it goes through the tablet, viewed from above the warp, goes in the same direction as the stroke in the middle of the letter:  \ for S-wise and / for Z-wise. See the right half of each illustration below for examples.  [Note:  weaving would take place from the left or down side of each photo, with the unwoven warp stretching away toward the right or upwards.]

S-threaded	S-threaded from above
Z-threaded	Z-threaded from above

Many tablet weaving instructional books, however, use different words to describe these two possible threadings.  Confusingly, Staudigel also uses the terms S- and Z-threading, but he uses them to mean the opposite of Collingwood!  That is, he uses the terms to describe the appearance of the tablet (again, when viewed from the Basic Assumption position) rather than the direction the thread takes through it.  However, other authors (e.g., Hendrickson and Spies) who use the terms S- and Z-threading follow Collingwood's usage.  Groff and the Snows use "threaded up" for S-threaded and "threaded down" for Z-threaded. Crockett, on the other hand, uses L for "left-threaded" and R for "right-threaded."  This system works if you look at the face of each tablet; the preponderance of visible thread (to the left of center, or to the right of center) tells you whether the card is left- or right-threaded.  Peter Collingwood's mnemonic for "translating" his understanding of Z- and S-threading (as opposed to Staudigel's–are you confused yet?) to R- and L-threading is "SaLaZaR," i.e., S=L and Z=R.  Accordingly, Crockett's or Hansen's "left" threaded equals Collingwood's S-threaded.  Crockett's or Hansen's "right" threaded equals Collingwood's Z-threaded.

So here's a table of equivalents.  Keep in mind that it's Collingwood's terminology I have illustrated above, and you should be able to work out what you need.

Table of Equivalents

Collingwood	S threaded	Z threaded
Atwood	threaded Down	threaded Up
Crockett	Left threaded	Right threaded
Groff	threaded Down	threaded Up
Hansen	from the Left	from the Right
Hendrickson	to the Left	to the Right
Snows	threaded Down	threaded Up
Staudigel	Z threaded	S threaded

Alternately threaded – Tablets alternating Z and S (or S and Z!) threading across the warp; accordingly, each tablet will be threaded in the opposite direction from its two next-door neighbors.  Hansen sometimes calls this "back to back"  In other European writings it's sometimes called "threaded left and right in pairs."

Home Position – The position the tablets take before weaving begins, specifically with reference to which holes go "up" when viewed from Basic Assumption position.  Not all sources use the term, but often the ones that do so rely on designs in threaded-in techniques, i.e., Atwater, Crockett, Groff, and the Snows. Atwater, Groff, and the Snows call for holes A and D to be uppermost, with the tablets facing the right.  Atwater calls this "beginning position," and Groff calls it "beginning position."  Crockett calls for holes A and D to be uppermost, while the printed side of the tablets faces left.  Hendrickson, in her instructions for double-faced weave, calls for holes B and C to be uppermost.  Any translations of one person's patterns into other arrangements should take this into account; otherwise they won't look at all like the pattern draft.

Turning Direction – Usually expressed as "forward" or "backward," or even F and B for short. Crockett uses "away" for forward and "toward" for backward.  Atwater uses "clockwise" for forward, and "counter-clockwise" for backward.

"Plain weave" – This term can be confusing because some of the less structurally sophisticated sources (e.g., Atwater, Crocker, Groff) talk about the normal or standard way of weaving as four forward, four backward.  But the weave structure of four-strand warp twining, continuously turned in a single direction, is what sets tablet weaving apart from any other type of band weave.  Accordingly, from within the context of tablet weaving "plain weave" defines this basic weave structure.  Outside the context of tablet weaving, however, "warp twining" is the preferred term, so as not to confuse it with potholder weaving! Also called "ground weave" by Hansen and "plain tablet weave" by Staudigel.

Threaded-in patterning – Hansen calls this "patterns as per diagram set-up."  Collingwood calls them "threaded patterns." 

That's more than enough for one issue!  Stay tuned for another installment in an upcoming issue.


Instructional Works Cited

Atwater, Mary Meigs.  Byways in Hand-Weaving.  Coupeville, Wash.:  Shuttle-Craft Books, Inc., 1988 [1954].

Collingwood, Peter.  The Techniques of Tablet Weaving.  London: Watson-Guptill, 1982.

Crockett, Candace.  Card Weaving, rev. ed.  Loveland, Colorado: Interweave Press, 1991.

Groff, Russell E.  Card Weaving: Complete Instructions plus 53 Patterns for Card Weaving or Tablet Weaving.  McMinnville, Oregon: Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1969.

Hansen, Egon.  Tablet Weaving: History, Techniques, Colours, Patterns.  Højbjerg, Denmark: Hovedland Publishers, 1990.

Hendrickson, Linda.  Double-Faced Tablet Weaving: 50 Designs from Around the World.  Portland, Oregon: self-published, 1996..

Snow, Marjorie, and Snow, William.  Step by Step Tablet Weaving.  New York: Golden Press, 1973.

Spies, Nancy.  Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstance: A Thousand Years of Brocaded Tabletwoven Bands.  Jarrettsville, Maryland: Arelate Studio, 2000.

Staudigel, Otfried, 1960-61. Der Zauber Des Brettchenwebens, or Tablet Weaving Magic:  Patterns from Oriental Countries and 25 Patterns in Plain Tablet Weave. Libri Books on Demand, 2001.

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This article was originally published in Issue 3 (August 2003)  of Knot Now, the newsletter of the Worshipful Company of Narrowworkers of the East Kingdom, SCA.  I have replaced the drawing in the original with photographs of a warped tablet, largely because neither my husband nor I could figure out whether one of us had drawn the original drawing.  I did not want to use someone else's work uncredited, hence the new illustrations.  

I don't have any notes on what the follow-up article was to contain; it never even reached the outline phase.