Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: White silk Weft: Really thin white silk Brocade weft: #5 Kreinik jap Pattern: brocade Cards: 42 Width: 2.3cm Length: 44cm This band is for my friend Kotek . He wanted a band that looked something like the one in the pictured below, which is from Leonhart Fuchs's De Historia Stirpium There's no particular reason to think this band was tabletwoven; it could well have been embroidered. But there were tabletwoven bands around at the time. I designed a pattern that looked like it would be at home in Anna Neuper's Modelbuch. It didn't really turn out with as much brocade showing as I wanted because I failed to take into account the way that alternating under-over-under with the brocade just looks like it's under all the time (I guess it would have looked better if my pickups had been under one strand only). But it still looks very pretty. I wove the whole thing at the Lindisfarne encampment held by Ordo Cygni over Queen's Birthday weekend (5-7 June)...

Ok, so remember how I said that although the illuminations show weavers sitting facing their band looms directly, I had to sit sideways to my Oseberg loom when I was weaving, because the crossbeam was at knee-height? That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. At Canterbury Faire I was weaving the Baltic S-motif, which is not a brocaded pattern. When I got home and set up my loom there, I realised I could turn my chest seat on its side, which would make it low enough for my knees to fit under the bar. I set up the loom so I was weaving from left to right, and I wove the rest of the band doing a passable job of sitting face-on (no pictures, sorry). However, when I tried to do the same thing with a brocaded pattern, it just didn't work. When the band went from left to right, so the tiedowns were picked up to the left of the cards, I couldn't work out an efficient way to hold my hands. And when the band went from right to left, I just found myself gravitating to the old ...

Here's the long-promised post about the Oseberg loom made for me by Iarnulf. Here's a link to Plate 13 from Osebergfunnet Vol. 2 with line drawings of the loom. Iarnulf has copied the dimensions closely. The wood is spruce and macrocarpa while the original was beech. The loom stands about a metre tall and is just under 2m in length. Here's a photo, taken before it was oiled. It feels great to be weaving on a documentable loom. Because it breaks down into pieces it's also very convenient for taking to camping events. The goodly length means you can go for a long time without having to reverse your twine direction (As I've mentioned before, it does make it very inconvenient for setting up in the living room!). If I had one complaint it would be that the crossbar is right where my knees want to be when sitting on my chest seat which means I can't have my lap directly below where I'm weaving so the bobbins can drop there when not in use. This could easil...