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.

A Few Good Links

Though there are several long blog posts I'm working on, I have not succeeded in getting them close enough to completion before the end of November.  So in lieu of my own content, here are a few links to interesting free resources.

• A complete PDF copy of the book Things from the Town, which describes and discusses the artifacts discovered at the Kaupang site from 1998–2003. It is available for free download from the University of Oslo's website, here.  The permanent link to the free download page can be found here.  I've scanned the contents and there appear to be plenty of jewelry finds, though no textile finds, discussed in the book.
• Back in 2010, I posted a link to a paper by Susanne Thedéen called "Immortal Maidens: The Visual Significance of the Colour White in Girls’ Graves on Viking-Age Gotland. I just learned that the entire volume in which it appears, called Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception, Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 53 (2010), can be downloaded here. Though only the "Immortal Maidens" paper appears to have any bearing upon costume, the rest of the papers look interesting and, I suspect, are very much worth reading.
• A paper by Barbara Yorke called "'‘The Weight of Necklaces’: some insights into wearing of women’s jewellery from Middle Saxon written sources", which concludes, among other things, that the wearing of jewelry by nuns in England vastly predates Chaucer.  The paper can be found here. 

I'm hoping that December will be a month in which I can work on more costume-related projects and more reading about historic costume.  

Early Period Links

I'm still not ready to return to regular costume blogging, but over the past day I've found a number of fascinating Early Period links that I'd like to bring to the attention of my readers.  Most of these involve serious reproduction projects.

First of all, textile geeks and Early Period costuming buffs will want to check out Carolyn Priest-Dorman's latest post (just a day after her re-posted Viking double weave article) about her project to attempt to replicate textile specimen Jorvik 1307.  She started by spinning warp and weft yarns of  thicknesses and wool types to match the original.  I'm always humbled when I read about people taking clothing recreations to this level.

Over at The Reverend's Big Blog of Leather, I found an article by the eponymous Wayne Robinson describing how he made a pair of 6th-7th century CE Anglo-Saxon shoes he made, based on one of the Sutton Hoo finds.  Recent posts by "the Reverend" that are also shoe-related include this short post, with large, clear color pictures, about the world's oldest shoe, and this post and this post about late 16th century shoe horns.

From Irish Archaeology's website comes this recent article about an Iron Age body found in County Offaly wearing a very modern-looking leather-and-metal armband. Known as Old Croghan Man, the find is dated to between 362 BCE and 175 BCE. The article features a beautiful photograph of the armband that deserves a place on one of my Pinterest boards.

Finally, The Greenland Gown Project by Doreen M. Gunkel merits a serious look from students of early and medieval costume. She is in the process of making a replica of one of the 13th century Norse gowns discovered at Herjolfsnaes in Greenland.  She is starting by researching and searching for an appropriate breed of sheep from which to obtain suitable wool fleece to spin into yarn to use to weave fabric for the gown. Ms. Gunkel asks interested readers to register, but registration is free and gets you e-mail updates as she writes about new developments in the project. 

Happy reading!

New Archaeological Find--An Anglo-Saxon Princiess

Recently, on several different mailing lists that I follow, I read about an interesting archaeological grave find; the rather well-preserved remains of an early Anglo-Saxon princess.  Articles about the find appear here and here, among other places.

The articles indicate that the princess appears to have been about 16 years old when she died.  She is believed to have been a Christian because she was buried with a striking gold-and-garnet cross around her neck.  Pictures of the cross appear with most of the articles.  The cross has loops on each of its four ends, suggesting that it might have been sewn to an article of her clothing.  The grave has tentatively been dated to the mid-to-late 7th century CE, partly because of the style of the cross and partly because the princess was found placed upon the remains of an ornamental bed, with a wooden frame and a mattress; the few other "bed burials" known are from this period.

The princess was found with other items associated with wealthy ladies of this period, e.g., an iron knife, a chatelaine, and a small number of glass beads which appear to have been kept in a purse that hung from the chatelaine.

The article says that some preserved textile remains have been found on the knife and chatelaine, and I hope that they are thoroughly analyzed.  It would be wonderful to have more textile information from this period, because grave finds, common in the 5th and 6th centuries CE, become rare in Anglo-Saxon England after the Christianization process got underway.  This princess's grave might contain information that would help expand our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon costume.

Interesting Anglo-Saxon Sapphire Ring

I'm still not home, or prepared to write a long post, but here's a short news article about a large 10th or 11th century CE Anglo-Saxon period gold ring set with a sapphire, that was found by a metal detectorist in Yorkshire. The article includes a nice enlargeable photograph of the ring. The current thinking is that the ring was the episcopal ring of an archbishop of York of the period, a Northumbrian earl, or perhaps a member of the royal family.  Enjoy!

An Anglo-Saxon Cyrtel

I haven't been doing much of anything costume-related recently, but tonight in reading my e-mail I was reminded of an excellent site by a woman who made her own Anglo-Saxon kirtle, starting by dyeing and spinning the thread to weave the fabric. Her website has long since been defunct, but it is possible to find the pages on the Wayback Machine.

If you go to her first page as preserved on the Wayback Machine, here, and after that proceed from page to page using the internal links on the pages, you should be able to read all of the text. Unfortunately, many of the pictures no longer manifest.

If this talented woman (whose name is Joy Cain) ever finds a new home for her website, I will gladly post the new link. Her report of this project is very worthwhile reading.

EDIT (3/29/2013): Joy has started a new blog, and has reposted this project on it. Start here to read it in a nicer format, with all the pictures.