Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

As mentioned in the previous post, theses bobbins were part of the payment for the Birka 6 bands I'm making for Bjorn. They are based on an item in the Swedish Historical Museum (pictured below). In addition, they look a little like the bobbin in the picture at the end of this post, which a scene of the annunciation from a Festal Missal of Savoy (Den Haag, KB 128 D 30, fol. 37r, c. 1460). The bobbins work well for tablet weaving, having a wide neck making them quick to wind thread onto, but a narrow profile making them easy to pass through the shed. However, lacking any notches or other way to stop them from unravelling, they do tend to unwind when in use which can be a bit annoying.

There is a line drawing of a shuttle on page 36 of Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England. AD 450-700 by Walton Rogers described as " a bone band-weaver's shuttle, around which the weft would have been wound, from a 7th century settlement at Charlton, Hampshire". There was some effort a few years ago on the SCA-Card-Weaving list to track down the original object, but details surrounding the 1970s dig seem to be lost to the mists of time. At Canterbury Faire earlier this month, I had a discussion with a gentle I hadn't met before about this picture. He was a woodworker and spent quite a bit of time over the event working in our encampment, where we had various crafty things going on. Near the end of the event, I came back from somewhere or other to find the below item beside my loom. I didn't see him again to thank him! It's things like this that make Canterbury Faire really special. This shuttle is wood rather than bone. It is about 10cm long...