Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

I spent a lot of time weaving my bicep bands based on the chasuble of St Wolfgang a few years ago, but the end result was very underwhelming.  I used 120 denier loose-spun silk and it really wasn't up to the abrasion it got from the cards. This year I've re-woven it using 240 denier tight-spun silk and the thread came through it without any problems. I also used a better red. The result is so much better! The cards themselves took quite a beating just like they did last time. I think I'll try painting the edges of the cards with nail polish again next time I weave with this type of thread.  Getting enough "real" cards, like wood or bone, for a project with 400+ warp ends would be pretty expensive. I also think that tensioning would be challenging with cards that much thicker since the warp threads on the outside would need to be significantly longer than the ones in the middle.

Almost 2 months since last post and not a lot to report.  I've just started a new project but it's not going to be a quick one.  I'm going to make 12th century "Pontifical shoes" with tablet woven bands on them.  The bands and their layout will be inspired by the shoes of Philipp von Schwaben and the construction of the shoes will be similar to a number of other pairs from around the same time or slightly earlier.  Some of these shoes are pretty bling, with silk coverings, tablet weaving, embroidery (mostly chain stitch and wire embroidery), gilt leather, decorative rivets, precious stones and cutouts (I don't think any of them have *all* of those things but some have most).  Here are some links if you're interested: Photo of shoes of Bishop Bernhard of Hildesheim (d. 1153) Fabulous beasts—leather, silk and gold: recent research on and conservation of 12th century footwear from the episcopal tombs in Trèves Cathedral 2005 article on restoration of one...

  Yes, I have completely given up on naming these things.  Maybe it's a flower?  Anyway, here it is, the last of the 5 motifs. I took the photo below, which unusually for me managed to be in focus, and straight away noticed the knot (centre right, in red).  The knot is gone now but I'm glad nobody but the camera is looking that closely!   Here's another photo I thought I'd share.  When I finished the first of the two bands, the cards were a wreck, and when I swapped them all out for new ones I thought I'd try to improve the situation by making the cards a bit stiffer, so I painted nail polish around the edges of all of them.  Well, that worked, as far as making the cards stiffer went.  Not a one of them gave out. On the other hand, it didn't have a great effect on the warp.  This picture is of what greeted me when I moved the cards down about 10cm into the second band.  Threads dying all over the place.  Over the fo...

 This is the second motif I wove, but the first time I did it it was about 40% longer than this and I wasn't very happy with the outcome.  So here's my second attempt. I don't really have much more to say at this point other than that I'm about ready to finish this project and am very glad to have only about 5cm to go! Oh! and also, I bought brocade for the bliaut these bands will be going on and it is very pretty .

Here's another figure from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang: the candlestick. I assume.  It might be a flower, I guess. This is the first figure after I re-strung all the cards.  Most of the many, many knots I tied in my warp threads are hidden on the back of the cards, but some of them slipped into the front while I wasn't looking. For this figure I tried doing as the original seems to have done and making some of the pattern in the ground colour (the blue parts).  It looks OK here, but from many angles the blue rather fades into the background.

Yesterday, Aldygtha created a new Historic Tablet Weaving Facebook group, and it is already filling up with interesting discussions and beautiful photos of members' work.  If you like historical tablet weaving (and you don't hate Facebook!) you should join!

Sorry for the long break between posts, I've had 3 weekends in a row swallowed up by events, and also I may have got a ... little bit ... distracted ... by an embroidery project. OK, so I haven't done any weaving for the last 3 weeks.  And probably won't for another 2 or so, when I finish the first figure in the embroidery and hopefully get it out of my system. Anyway, here's another figure from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang band.  It's actually the 3rd one I wove; the second one doesn't look so great so I'm going to see how it comes out the second time through before posting it.  But this bird looks pretty much like I was hoping.  Here's the link to the photo of the original on Kopert.  Not sure why this bird is holding a boot.

 Right.  Here are some pictures of my lion from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang.  This is the pattern from pages 120-121 of EPAC . The pattern in EPAC is 125 tablets wide, although the description of the band says it has 132 tablets.  Not sure if any "lost" tablets are in the border or the pattern. There's one obvious way that this pattern differs from regular 3/1 broken twill: The vertical (lengthways) cross-sections of the regions where the red is up are not multiples of 2 passes long.  In fact to counteract the difference in warp density and weft density, the lines across the band are usually 1 weft pass wide while the lines down the band are usually 2 tablets (8 warp threads) wide.  When I started, I wasn't sure how to approach this- maybe there should be half turns to bring the red up and down at the right point? Or maybe the red should be brought up early or down late, with the brocade obscuring the jagged edges?  I couldn't tell from the photos ...

Well, it's been a month since my last post, and I've been travelling, and sick, and lazy, so I haven't got around to writing anything up yet.  So here's a somewhat blurry and out-of-date photo of the first couple of centimetres of the St Wolfgang pattern, just to prove I've done something!  There are several mistakes just in this little section of the band but it still manages to look quite pretty. Hopefully I will get  real blog post together soon!

I have a new project.  It is the band on the Chasuble of St Wolfgang (or rather, one of them).  You may have seen the pattern in EPAC on page 120, or plate 179 in Collingwood.  There are photos of the original at Kopert -taken by someone who knows it's useful to show the part of the band where the brocade has worn away!  You can see Nancy's version here but it is not 3/1 broken twill The band is approximately 3cm wide, has over 120 tablets, and is woven in brocaded 3/1 broken twill.  This is the first time I am combining both techniques so it is a bit of an adventure.  To make things even more exciting, I am weaving it using very thin (120 denier) red and blue filament silk from Devere .  For the brocade I am using real gold thread I bought from John Marshall . I'll be weaving on my inkle loom because there's no way I'll be able to keep things neat otherwise. EPAC graphs the first figure from the band, the lion (or aardvark pushing a lion mask,...

Update: I had the shawl incorrectly dated to the 11th century-it's a bit later than that! Maikki Karisto and the Tallinn University Institute of History have given me permission to share some photos she took last year of a shawl from Siksälä and specifically its tablet woven border. This shawl can be found in the Tallinn University Institute of History archaeological collection under the major number AI 5100.  It dates to around the 13th-14th century. The tablet weaving is about 1cm in width.  It is in Baltic two-hole technique, or Hochdorf technique, depending on how you look at it. More information on the finds from Siksälä can be found in the book Siksälä, a community at the frontiers, Iron Age and Medieval by Silvia Laul & Heiki Valk.

Warp: Red, white, yellow and green silk (fibreholics) (original in wool) Weft: White silk (fibreholics) (original in linen) Pattern: St Maurice monestary, 8-10th century (Collingwood p. 156) Cards: 18 pattern + 2x2 border (2x3 in original).  2 holes per pattern card Width: 7mm (original 11mm) Length: 78cm This band is quite different to any I have done before.  The pattern area is woven with 9 pairs of 2 tablets, each threaded in two holes.  One tablet carries a red and a white warp thread, and the other a yellow and a green (note: these are the colours I used; discussion on the colours of the original below).  The tablets are manipulated individually to form the pattern.  The interesting point is that there is no warp twining: tablets "rock" from one colour to another but never complete a full rotation.  In the pattern to the right, the coloured squares show the colour that is up.  In the squares with the grey line through them, no colour...

UPDATE: Those of you who wanted a higher-res picture, here is a sample. Warp: Red silk (fibreholics) Weft: Red sewing silk Brocade weft: Anchor gold lame, green and good DMC cotton Pattern: 13th century German, birds and zigzags. EPAC p.143 Cards: 18 ( EPAC pattern has 16, original band had 17) Width: 1.5cm Length: 2 x 40cm It's been an odd 3 months, with earthquake and moving house and other interruptions. This is the first project I've managed to finish in that time. It is a pair of garters to go with a pair of silk hose I made earlier in the year. The pattern can be found on page 143 of EPAC and is from a 13th century band from Memmelsforf bei Bamberg. It depicts birds (eagles?) in two different colours of silk, separated by gold zigzags. That's 3 different brocading wefts- never more than two on the same line though, thank goodness. I wove this band backstrap-style and it's somewhate uneven. The hose are made of red silk lined with pi...

Warp: Red, white and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: blue wool (the original was a plant fibre) Pattern: Humikkala H31:18 -3/1 broken twill Cards: 33 Width: 2.8 Length: 14cm OK, here is my best effort at Humikkala H31:18. This band is covered in Hansen, and Hansen's pattern is converted into something that actually works by Guido (I think he tried to reconstruct the band based on the photo of the reconstructed band in Hansen, which differs from the actual pattern given). However after hearing from Silja Penna-Haverinen that there were some problems with Hansen's reconstruction, I really wanted to have a go at this band using other sources. Silja put me in contact with Maikki Karisto, who is working on a book which covers this band and many others, and who has examined the band closely. Maikki is understandably a little cagey about sharing all her information, since a) it is still evolving as she researches, b) she would like people to buy her book when it comes out and ...

Warp: Red, yellow and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: blue Pattern: Masku Humikkala, 8658:H17 Cards: 14 Width: 7mm Length: 110cm Don't get too excited, this is not the well-known Masku Humikkala band covered by Hansen, but a simpler band from the same site. My information on this band comes from Maikki Karisto who is a weaving teacher from Finland. Her information comes from Seija Sarkki's 1979 thesis "Suomen ristiretkiaikaiset nauhat" which covers bands from the Finnish crusade period. The diagram above is from Maikki but doctored by me. The original diagram was missing the outer tablet on each side. Sarkki was unaware of these tablets because the band has a tubular selvedge and as a result the outer warps were hidden on the reverse of the band. The technique of the band is very similar to Snartemo II . The border tablets contain 4 threads of the same colour while the pattern tablets have two threads, diagonally opposite and alternating positions...

I have become interested recently in the medieval Finnish bands such as the Kaukola and Humikkala bands that appear in Hansen and the Kirkkomäki band described by Silja Penna-Haverinen in NESAT X. Imagine my delight when Silja herself commented on my previous post on the subject and said she would be willing to answer some questions I had. I thought I would share some information from her answers that might be of interest to people. 1. I feel a bit better about not being able to work out how the technique of altering the places of two adjacent tablets at the intersection of two diaonal lines works, because Silja says this research is out of date. Actually what was thought to be the two central tablets is only a single tablet (the pattern has an odd number). 2. Apparently there is no good source of photos of the Finnish bands from earlier than the 20th century (not even in Finnish publications), which is quite sad. There are some random published photos, but not any kind of compilat...

Warp: Dark green and white wool (fibreholics) Weft: same as above (varying colour) Pattern: I made it up Cards: 15 Width: 8mm Length: ~60cm I had a band all strung up on my Oseberg loom that I had been using at String Day to demonstrate doubleface techniques. Most of it was still unused at the end of the day so I needed to find something to use it for. I'd recently been reading Silja Penna-Haverinen's article in NESAT X: Patterned Tablet-Woven Band - In Search of the 11th Century Textile Professional , in which she hypothesises that bands from medieval Finland employed 180-degree turns. Her article focuses on a band found in the Kirkkomäki burial ground in Turku, but she mentions that the Masku Humikkala band uses the same techniques, and I think that the Kaukola band in Hansen falls into the same category. According to the article, 180-degree turns occur in pairs on either side of a reversal, giving the appearance of a tighter corner. There is also mention of a 180-deg...

Someone asked earlier today on the SCA-Card-Weaving list whether anyone had a pattern for the Kaukola band in Hansen. This prompted me to re-visit my pattern and check it against Hansen, since I've recently found instructions on how to read his mysterious patterns. It turns out the pattern I reconstructed by looking at his band was slightly off, so I've re-jigged my pattern to reflect that. The difference to the appearance of the finished band is pretty trivial. There are just a few extra reversals in column 4. They don't change what colour is up at any point, just the direction of twist. I did have this pattern marked up for half-turns but I've been informed this is incorrect so I've removed them.

Warp: Green silk (colourmart) Weft: Green silk (colourmart) Pattern: card idling monochrome twill Cards: 17 Width: ~1cm Length: ~1m I decided a while ago that I wanted to have a go at the "simulated satin effect" band from Þóra Sharptooth's Three Tablet Weaving Recipes page. So I did- but it seems I did every imaginable thing wrong in the process! Here's a list: No loom: because I was taking this band travelling with me, I did it backstap style. This is the only band I have woven without two fixed tension points (whether it be 2 chairs, my Oseberg loom, or an inkle loom), excluding the tubular cord I did around Christmas. The tension of this band was all over the place Using a new type of silk: This was the first outing of the silk I got from colourmart . The silk from colourmart is great value and the customer service is very friendly, but this silk turned out to be a lot stickier than what I was used to (closer to how wool behaves) which didn't help...

Warp: Red silk Weft: Really thin red silk Brocade weft: 3x Anchor lame gold Pattern: Knotwork brocade, based on 11th century Swiss pattern Cards: 67 Width: 3.5cm Length: 2m This band is a belt for Sinech, a local SCAdian who does beautiful embroidery. Her persona is 8th century Irish but lacking documentation for tablet weaving going on around there we decided on a knotwork pattern based on a band from 11th century Riggisberg, Switzerland. It's on page 170 of EPAC . The original had 146 tablets but I created a dumbed down version with only 67. I wove this band on the inkle loom, like the last one. Here's a picture of it in progress. Brocade weft coverage is not great but the pattern is still quite striking. Since this is a belt I put slits in the blank areas of the pattern in the middle section of the band. This worked a lot better than it did on the "Anglo-Saxon" belt from last year- the slits are pretty much invisible. This is more an artefact of the weavi...