Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

 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  So here's a somewhat blurry and out-of-date photo of the first couple of centimetres of the St Wolfgang pattern, just to prove I've done something!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,...

Nancy Spies posted the following message to SCA-Card-Weaving yesterday: "I don't mean to do a "business" message here, but I did want to let folks know that I am liquidating all remaining stock of "Anna Neuper's Modelbuch" and "Here Be Drolleries" by the end of April. "Here Be Wyverns" is now out-of-print, but copies of "Ecclesiastical Pomp" will still be available until sold out." Ecclesiastical Pomp and Circumstance is THE book for brocaded tablet weaving and Anna Neuper's Modelbuch is also a great little book.  Get in quick!

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: White and green silk   Weft: Green silk Pattern: Hallstatt Inv.Nr. 89.870 Cards: 12 pattern + 1 and 3 border Width: 9mm Length: Approx. 75cm This band is covered in Bunte Tuche & Gleissendes Metall, Frühe Kelten der Hallstattzeit , and also "Tablet-woven Ribbons from the prehistoric Salt-mines at Hallstatt, Austria" - results of some experiments in Hallstatt Textiles . The former describes it as being in Hochdorf technique and the latter as being regular 3/1 broken twill. I wove the pattern in Hochdorf structure, but rather than the alternating pairs of SS and ZZ I oriented the tablets all Z on the left and S on the right. This allowed the tablets to turn as a pack 2/3 of the time (border excluded). Sorry the photo is a little blurry, but the end result is quite snappy in person especially considering its simplicity. If you're wondering about the uneven border, this was present on the original.

Warp: White and blue wool Weft: White wool Pattern: Hochdorf find no. 39 Cards: 32 pattern + 4x2 border Width: 1.8cm Length: Approx. 1m This is my first go at the technique sometimes referred to as "pebble weave" due to the sort of dimples or "pebbles" of the contrasting colour that appear in the ground areas.  "Pebble weave" can also refer to an Andean technique which is not the same thing. Excluding the border tablets, tablets are threaded in two holes, alternating in pairs of SS and ZZ. Each pair is turned as a unit.  To get the background area (white with blue dimples in my version), all rows do a quarter turn twice in one direction and then twice in the other.  To bring the other colour to the front, do not reverse the turning direction of a pair. In the pattern above right, each B or F represents 2 tablets turning backward or forward for 2 quarter turns.  Originally I just had a "pattern" showing what the finished band looks ...