New Source of Information About Early Textiles

This week, courtesy of Katrin Kania, I learned about a free, searchable database of scholarly publications.  It's called Digital Vetenskapliga Arkivet, or DiVA, and it allows one to search for books, dissertations, and articles published by scholars at nearly 50 different universities in Scandinavia. (The above link goes to the English language version of the home page; for the Swedish version of the home page, go here.) Best of all, DiVA is absolutely free to use.  You can go directly to the DiVA search page from here. 

Naturally, DiVA includes dissertations, articles, and other works that are not related to textiles, clothing or the Vendel and Viking Ages.  In addition, many of the works findable via DiVA are not in English.  However, I still found an excellent work relevant to textile-related Vendel period studies with my first search:  

Malmius, Anita.  Burial textiles: Textile bits and pieces in central Sweden, AD 500–800 Doctoral Dissertation, Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies (2020 (English))

I am really looking forward to reading this volume of Anita Malmius's work, which on first glance appears very comprehensive.  I look forward to further searching on DiVA for other useful papers when I have more time (and brain energy!) to invest.  In the meantime, by means of this post I hope to make DiVA available to more costume researchers, and perhaps to people with different reenactment-related interests as well.

Tablets at Work

Tonight, I was trying to find a page on EXARC.net that was referenced in someone's Instagram about a new book on the use of bows and arrows by the Vikings.  The link given on Instagram was dead, so I started looking through all the book reviews  I could find on EXARC. 

I still haven't found out anything about the bow-and-arrow book, but I did find a review of a book which is indisputably relevant to this blog:  

Wollny, Claudia. Tablets At Work. (Claudia Wollny Edition 2017).

Tablets At Work, which is written in both English and German, is a 704-page, self-published tome that includes over 900 tablet weaving patterns.  The EXARC reviewer noted that these patterns "can be followed without having to understand in depth weaving techniques." From the review, it's clear that Ms. Wollny intends this book to be a one-stop education on how to perform every possible tablet weaving technique, including how to design one's own patterns.  The book is proof of the success of her pattern design methods, as the EXARC reviewer states that all of the patterns are new and can't be found elsewhere.*  And there are lots of photographs of bands made from Ms. Wollny's 900 patterns, too!  Like EXARC, TWIST (Tablet Weavers International Studies and Techniques) also gave this book a glowing review, which you can find and download here.

If you have 49,50 Euros to spend and this book sounds interesting or useful to you, you can buy a copy from Ms. Wollny's website, here.  (She even takes Paypal.)  I have looked a bit for other places to find it, and her website appears to be the only place from which one can presently obtain this book.  Although 49.50 Euros strikes me as an amazingly reasonable price for this much information (to say nothing of the photographs!) I am sad that I can't justify spending that much money right now, given how little tablet weaving I have done or even tried to do in the past decade, and even though Ms. Wollny's book may well supersede Peter Collingwood's classic work on the subject.

If historical tablet weaving is closer to your heart than even the best manual of techniques, Ms. Wollny is also selling another book of hers, also written in English and German, which is her publication and translation of a notebook found in a 15th century Poor Clares convent in Nuremberg that contains hundreds of brocaded tablet weaving pattern. Ms. Wollny's book publishes the nuns' notebook but does not stop there; she also includes, according to her website, "a basic course for brocading, web pages in a modern form (?), a motif overview and a dictionary."**  That book, roslein und wecklein, may be purchased for 29,90 Euros here.  According to the webpage Ms. Wollny only has a few copies of this book left, so act quickly if you are interested!

EDIT: (11/7/2019) Ms. Wollny also sells her books and other things on Etsy, here.

*    Though it's unclear whether this claim is based on the author's statement, or on some other information.
**  The quotation is what Google Translate made of Ms. Wollny's German.  I have so little knowledge of German that I have no basis on which to render an opinion concerning its accuracy.

Band and Cord for My Køstrup Project

The tablet-woven band and wool cord for the Køstrup apron dress that I am planning to make have arrived!  

I am very pleased with the quality of both band and cord, and also with the fact that the band and cord are a good match in color for each other (though the band looks much darker in my photographs).  The photographs are clickable to show the image larger and with more detail.

After I downloaded these pictures, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to include an item in them that would show the scale of the cord and band!  Perhaps some actual measurements will help.  From the beginning of the fringe on each end, the band measures 25.5 cm (about 10 inches) long and 1.8 cm (about 3/4ths of an inch) wide.  The cord looks as though it's a lighter blue than the band, but I think that is because it is plied from wool felt, and thus reflects light a little differently than the threads in the tablet-woven band.  

The fabric for the planned apron dress is a single-tone herringbone twill in a rose-red shade which should look lovely with the blue.  However, it will look visually different from the original Køstrup dress in at least two respects.  First, it will be in a twill weave (the Køstrup fragments are woven in tabby) and it will not be blue (the Køstrup fragments had been dyed blue).  But my primary objective is to demonstrate how I think the tablet woven band and the cords trimming it were fastened to the dress, and that should be easier to observe given that the dress itself will be a different color from the band.

A Køstrup Band!

In her paper on the Køstrup smokkr, Hilde Thunem mentions that she persuaded a friend to make a tablet-woven band for her Køstrup smokkr (i.e., apron dress) because she could not do one herself.    Nor can I; I do not know how to do brocaded tablet weaving, and I do not have the time and patience to acquire such skill at present.  

However, a week or two ago, I was delighted to discover that a seller on Etsy is selling reproductions of various Birka bands, and of the Køstrup one as well!  You can see the seller's Etsy store here, and one version of the Køstrup band is selling here.  I have already ordered that band for the Køstrup smokkr I'm planning to make.

Another Etsy vendor is selling a plied wool felt cord here; I will probably order that for my project as well.  

Research On Hallstatt Band 3

Merry Christmas!  Here's a bit of a Christmas present for those of you interested in tablet weaving, and ancient period costume.

From the Finnish blog Hibernaatiopesäke comes a recent post about research on a tablet woven band from Hallstatt, including a chart showing the pattern for weaving the band and a recreation of the band.  The research and re-creation work was done by Mervi Pasanen and Maikki Karisto.  The relevant post may be found here. The post is written in Finnish with an English translation, and includes excellent color photographs of both the original and the recreated band.    Enjoy!

If I ever get my inspiration for actual costuming back, I will weave my own recreation of this find; it's a striking and attractive design.  

Tablet Weaving Patterns from the Past

Three pieces of tablet weaving showing the "ramshorn" pattern
which is NOT PERIOD for the Viking era or any pre-modern cultures.
Photo by Cynthia M. Parkhill depicting her own work (found on Wikipedia).

Early Iron Age tablet woven band from
Hallstatt salt mine (found on Wikipedia)

When I first became interested in early period costuming, I wanted to learn period techniques for ornamenting the clothes I was making.  That's why I taught myself the rudiments of tablet weaving in the first place.

As is also true for many people who attempted to learn about tablet weaving in the early 1990s, the first book I encountered that purported to teach the basic technique was Candace Crockett's book Card Weaving (The link is to Amazon, but the book is available both new and used from other places). The pattern shown in the photograph to the right, called the "ramshorn" pattern, though attractive, dates to 20th century CE Anatolia and is not even remotely plausible for earlier periods. Early period designs tend to be based on diamonds or triangles, like the Hallstatt band shown to the right.

The disconnect between the information I could obtain about tablet weaving (very modern) and the information I could obtain about period tablet-woven bands (very sparse, and concentrated on brocaded designs that still intimidate me to contemplate, two decades later), led me to shy away from further experimentation with tablet weaving.

But things are different now.  Now it is possible to obtain many articles, and even some books, that I could not afford during the 1990s as free downloads on the Internet.  And now there are more costumers who publish the fruits of their own research, much of it of excellent quality.

Some of those costumers who are making information about how to tablet-weave reproductions of accurate, early period designs.  For example, Shelagh Lewins has recently posted a page containing PDFs with directions for recreating specific tablet woven bands that have been found by archaeologists, including the narrow Oseberg band (early 9th century CE Norway), the Laceby band (7th century CE Anglo-Saxon), the Snartnemo II band (6th century CE Norway).  The relevant page on Shelagh's website is here.

In addition, Susanna Broomé, of Viking Age Clothing, has recently published a booklet of instructions and information about four Viking Age tablet woven bands that can be recreated with basic tablet weaving technique.  Susanna also sells patterns,  instructions for making good quality well-researched reconstructions of Viking Age clothing from her website.  The page about Susanna's booklet on tablet-woven bands may be found here.  Interested readers can order Susanna's booklet from the resellers she links to here, or order it from her directly through her Facebook page, as I am planning to do.

I have some excellent fine yarn, and a good sturdy table-sized tablet weaving loom that would be perfect for weaving some of the bands that Susanna and Shelagh discuss.  After I finally complete my sprang hair net, I intend to experiment with some of those designs.  I encourage interested readers to do likewise.

New Books of Interest to Early Period Costumers

Over the past day or so, I have learned of three books that are coming soon that are of great interest to me, and may interest other costumers intrigued by the Viking Era.

One of those books comes from Finland, and is written in both Finnish and English. It is about Finnish tablet weaving patterns during the Iron Age (which includes what many of us think of as the "Viking age") and is coming out on June 20, 2013. Here is the citation information (in English):

Karisto, Maikki & Pasanen, Mervi. Applesies and Fox Noses - Finnish Tabletwoven Bands. Salakirjat, 2013.

Annika Madejska wrote about this book, and about her experience in beta testing a tablet weaving pattern described in the book, in her blog, Textile Time Travels. The post includes a beautiful photograph of the band Annika wove using the directions from the book. You can read her post about the book here. The book will sell for 25 Euros, and can be pre-ordered here. (Note: they take Paypal.)

The second book, which is being published and sold through Oxbow/David Brown, is a book about textile experiments intended to help us learn more about ancient textiles. More specifically, it contains lectures and reports on experiments from the First and Second European Textile Forums in 2009 and 2010. An article by Katrin Kania of a stitch in time is one of the articles in the book, which is going to be published later this year. This page from Oxbow's website contains pricing information (Oxbow will, as the publisher, be offering the book for less than the price quoted by Amazon) as well as the table of contents for the book. The citation information is as follows:

Hopkins, Heather (ed.) Ancient Textiles, Modern Science. Oxbow Books (2013).

Finally, the third book, which is will also be an Oxbow Books publication, addresses "Viking" costume. Specifically, it's about the use of silk by the Vikings to decorate clothing. Here's the citation information:

Vedeler, Marianne. Silk for the Vikings. Oxbow Books (2014).

Judging from Oxbow's description, this book will cover everything from the actual silk finds in the graves, to how silk found its way to Viking age Scandinavia, to the social roles silk played in Viking society. Oxbow's page about the book may be found here.

I am immensely pleased to see more and more books being published about early period costume and textiles, though I'm also frustrated that so much good material is being published at a time when I cannot afford to purchase a lot of expensive books. Hopefully, my finances will improve before the tide of good publications abates.

An Observation About Tablet-Weaving Patterns

Like many Americans, I first learned how to do tablet weaving from Candace Crockett's book, Card Weaving.

Crockett's book is a godsend to the would-be weaver in a number of ways. For one, if you purchase it new it comes with a set of pre-marked, 4-hole cardboard weaving tablets that are sturdy enough for many uses, so that if you decide tablet weaving is not for you, you're only out the amount of money you paid for your book and for the yarn. For another, the book is written in very clear language with good illustrations, so that it's pretty easy to learn the basic process from the book alone. Finally, the book includes a number of different, simple patterns for a new weaver to try.

As I learn more about the construction of historical tablet weaving bands, particularly those from the Migration Period and the early Middle Ages, it occurs to me that there is a big disadvantage to the Crockett book. That disadvantage is that it inadvertently misleads the reader as to the types of tablet weaving techniques that were common during the periods when tablet weaving was used in the West. One easy-to-spot consequence of this is the prevalence of the "Kivrim" or "Ram's Horn" pattern (images and tutorial here for those interested) that Crockett's book teaches and that a lot of new tablet weavers start with. It's a lovely pattern, but one doesn't see examples of it among Migration Period or medieval European finds.

What one does see in the early European finds are patterns based on short diagonal motifs, such as the Snartnemo II pattern I'm hoping to recreate. As I spotted more and more of such patterns on the Internet, I learned that many, if not all, of such patterns use what has been called the "skip hole" technique--i.e., they are woven with tablets that do not have threads in every hole.  The Lagore Crannog band that I struggled with is another example of such a band, and there are others, including, but by no means limited to, this band from Laceby, England, this band from 13th-14th century CE Estonia, and this band from 6th century BCE Hochdorf.   Although it certainly cannot be said that all ancient bands used a missed-hole technique (this band from the grave of 7th century CE Queen Bathilde in France did not, though a different band in the grave does), the missed-hole technique was much more commonly used in early European tablet-woven bands than  Ms. Crockett's book seems to imply.

I suspect that Ms. Crockett downplayed the use of missed-hole technique because her book was aimed at beginners and, as my experience of the Lagore Crannog band demonstrated, missed-hole weaving can be tricky because the cards are more likely to shift during weaving.  Given how many early bands use the technique, however, I think more SCA members and early period reeenactors should experiment with it. It's a great way to develop a feel for the type of band patterns that are "period" for those times and to generate trim that is appropriate and attractive for period costume.

The Lagore Crannog Band: Final Thoughts

After a year, I've finally made another attempt to complete a piece of tablet weaving based upon the Lagore Crannog find.  This time, I took better care to keep a good level of tension on the warp threads and to avoid letting any of the tablets flip.

I believe I have finally managed a consistent, tight, and (fairly) even weave, using a turning sequence of four turns forward, four turns back.  The photograph shows the best section of the finished band.   This band is still full of flaws, (mostly because I kept forgetting where I was in the turning sequence), but I believe I have finally produced a work product that gives the viewer some idea of what pattern the weave formula was intended to produce, and looks (barely) good enough that I'm willing to try to find a way to use it.  At any rate, I'm sufficiently satisfied that I won't be trying to weave another such band for a long time.

The best two-inches of the 15-inch band!

To me, this pattern looks a lot like a modern lanyard, or perhaps like one of those two-toned woven shoelaces that used to be sold here in the US to wear with "saddle shoes" (a kind of two-toned lace-up shoe, mostly white or cream in color with a navy, brown or black section across the instep where the shoe laced). Given the coarse wools used in the original band, the original band might have served such a utilitarian purpose--as a shoelace or a hairtie, rather than as trim for clothing.  I will probably use the band I made as a hairtie for when I'm wearing one of my early period costumes, since it's not long enough for anything else.

I'm glad I used a sturdy wool for this project; more fragile threads probably would have snapped with the strain imposed by my repeated do-overs, as well as the strain imposed by my repeated combing of the cards and pulling on the threads to try to make the tension tighter and more even.

Now I'm ready for a new tablet-weaving experiment.  One thing I've considered is attempting to adapt the Lagore Crannog pattern to triangular tablets.  This may not be as difficult as it sounds, since only one of the tablets is threaded with yarn in all four holes.  Or I may just start experimenting with one of the Snartemo patterns. Shelagh Lewins provides directions here for the Snartemo II pattern that look fairly simple, and I wanted such a band to use as trim for my proposed Vendel costume.   Hopefully, I can start one or the other soon.

Triangular Tablets Revisited

Quite a while ago, I wrote a little about my first efforts to learn more about triangular tablets used for tablet weaving.  A monograph reporting archaeological finds in the English town of Winchester has given me new food for thought on this issue.  The citation is:

Section 3: The Small Finds, by H.E.M. Cool, in B.M. Ford and S. Teague, et al., Winchester, A City In the Making: Archaeological excavations between 2002 – 2007 on the sites of Northgate House, Staple Gardens and the former Winchester Library, Jewry St (Oxford Archaeology 2011).

Section 3 can be downloaded from this page (scroll about halfway down and look for the PDF labeled "Small Finds").

Although no textile finds are described in section 3, there was some interesting information about textile making equipment, particularly particularly triangular weaving tablets. The report briefly reviews the history of Roman-era tablet finds in Great Britain, and observes, that, since 1970, most such finds have been triangular, not square. The author concludes, though the evidence is "scanty", that "square plates may well be a late Roman introduction in Britain." (page 16).

Even more interesting is the Winchester find itself, which consists of four square tablets and a triangular one. The author notes that the usual tablet find is of one tablet; sets are rare. Moreover, there are other British finds consisting of four-tablet sets, suggesting that a four-tablet grouping may have had a particular function in textile manufacture:

Interestingly where groups have been found together in Britain, they generally consist of four pieces. A set of four triangular tablets dateable to the late 1st century was recovered from the vicus rampart at Malton (Greep 1997, 145 nos. 15-8) and in discussing them Greep notes a similar unpublished set from Lincoln; a set of four large square tablets was found unstratified at Cirencester (Wild 1986, 114 nos. 218-221). This set from Winchester continues this pattern. Tablet weaving can make use of use [sic] large deck of tablets, a Viking ship burial at Oseburg had a part-woven linen band threaded onto a set of 52 wooden tablets (Walton Rogers 2007, 35), and four seems a rather small number for a set. The regular recovery of groups of four suggests that this number was indeed sufficient for some purposes, and it may be significant that Wild has hypothesised that some tubular selvedges that were tablet woven may have needed four tablets to create. (page 16)

The author goes on to speculate about the purpose of the lone triangular tablet in the Winchester set of otherwise square tablets. This particular triangular tablet has four holes at the "base" and one at the "apex". The author consequently suggests that the four warp threads for weaving were fastened to the four holes along the base of the triangular tablet, one per hole, and the hole at the apex of the triangular tablet was used to fasten the entire assemblage to a post or the weaver's belt (probably using as separate string though the text doesn't so specify) to tension the threads for weaving.

This sounds like a plausible theory, though the comment I quoted above that mentions a different find consisting of a set of four triangular tablets suggests that sometimes triangular tablets might have been used for the actual weaving process and not just as a thread anchor. Perhaps it was routine, before the Romans introduced square tablets to Britain, to use triangular tablets to make selvages for larger pieces of cloth. When I get a chance, I should obtain four triangular tablets and do some experimenting. 

Thinking Outside The Box;-Non-Square Weaving Tablets

Now that I have a frame that will let me tablet weave without having to literally tie myself down, I've been thinking of non-typical forms of tablet weaving.  For example, triangular tablets have been found in Scotland, dated to approximately 200 B.C. to 200 C.E.  A picture of this find can be seen here. 

I've been wondering what types of patterns one can get with triangular tablets.  One essay discusses the author's experiment with an early South American pattern involving triangular tablets, but it doesn't give a recipe. The essay, which includes color pictures, can be downloaded here (it's the last essay on the page). The one hint it gives is that weaving with triangular tablets is like weaving with hexagonal tablets but threading only every other hole, which makes sense.  I found Bonnie Datta's page of research about tablet weaving with hexagonal tablets, and the PDFs on her page are very informative.  But she approaches the use of hexagonal tablets by comparison to the way four-sided tablets work--which doesn't tell me a lot about ratcheting down to three-sided tablets instead.

Phiala's Stringpage Supplies sells triangular tablets. I'm tempted to buy some and experiment, but I'm not sure where to begin. Should I thread the border tablets in one direction and the rest in another? What kind of turning sequence; three forward, three away? I've looked at Phiala's, Shelagh Lewins's, and Linda Hendrickson's pages on tablet weaving, and found nothing about triangular tablets other than that they have been found. 

So I ask my readers: Have any of you experimented with triangular tablet weaving tablets? Are there any websites I haven't found that describe interesting patterns? Do you have any advice for me as to good weaving patterns for triangular tablets, or historic examples that were or could be woven with triangular tablets? Or should I just pipe down, buy a bunch of hexagonal tablets, and play with those using Bonnie Datta's research as a guide? Any ideas would be enjoyed, and appreciated.

Playing with String

Feeling a bit intimidated by the Snartemo II pattern, I strung my tablet weaving loom for a smaller band--the four-strand Lagore Crannog band--only to find that I'd made my life much more interesting thereby.

The Lagore Crannog band uses only twelve strands of yarn and four 4-hole tablets. Only one of the four tablets has a thread in all four holes. The next two cards have strands in three holes, and the last in only two. the turning pattern is simple--three turns forward, three turns backward.

My source warned that the band would have a tendency to twist, and the cards would have a tendency to slip out of alignment, and I was prepared to deal with both of those things. However, I didn't realize that I would have a hard time figuring out where the shed was! I pulled out the weft and restarted at least three times because of that. I think I'll wait till tomorrow or later this week, to start again. (Partly, this is because my old card-weaving shuttle is tied up on another project, so I've decided to buy another one to have available.)

The good news is that I found the mitten I was nalebinding (see my project list on the far left)! The partial mitten (with my favorite nalebinding needle stuck in it) was in a plastic bag, stuffed inside one of the yarn cones I decided to use for the Lagore Crannog project. However, I think I may just start over with the mittens. Looking at what I'd done so far, it has so many visible knots I'd rather just write it up to experience instead of trying to proceed with what I had completed to date.

There will be pictures of the Lagore Crannog project when I have enough of it finished.

New Project--Snartemo II Band

Since the band I got from Amalie will only trim the neckline of my proposed Vendel tunic, I have decided to put my new tablet weaving loom to use, weaving a band in the Snartemo II pattern to trim the sleeve-ends.  I am using the directions on Shelagh Lewins' website, though I plan to weave the band in dark blue and yellow, with a two-tablet border, using 20/2 wool yarn obtained from Phiala's Stringpages Supplies.

When this project is done, I plan to try a band from an old issue of the newletter of the Complex Weavers' Study Group that was found in Lagore Crannog, Ireland.  Like Snartemo II (which is also discussed in the same newsletter),  one or more holes are left unthreaded in most of the tablets for the Lagore Crannog band.  That band only requires four cards, so it should be quick and easy to weave.  I should probably use bigger cards and thicker yarn for that one than the 20/2 wool thread I bought for the Snartemo project.  Maybe I'll do the Lagore Crannog band first.   

Christmas Update

Happy Holidays, one and all!

Today, I am recovering from a bout of what was either a bad stomach virus or food poisoning (yes, sadly, I was sick over Christmas, alas).  So while I am taking it easy, I'm updating my list of new costume-related books for 2011.  This year, it seems as though all of the costume-related books to be scheduled for publication in 2010 actually published within the year, except maybe Else Østergård's Medieval Garments Reconstructed, but since I know of some folks who have received a copy of that book already, I am going to omit it from the 2011 list.  If any of you know of a good costume-related book that's in the works and scheduled for publication in 2011, please send me the information and I'll post it here--even if it's not in English.

My new tablet weaving "loom"

As for Christmas presents, I got a number of fun things, most of which were not related to costume at all.  The only costume-related item is this one.  What's this?  Well, it's a simple "loom" for doing tablet-weaving, which my thoughtful sister-in-law selected from my Universal Wish List on Amazon and purchased from Lynn the Weaver. I learned of this simple but useful item from Arachne's Blog; thanks, Arachne!