Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Peter Collingwood's The Techniques of Tablet Weaving is probably the most comprehensive book out there on tablet weaving in general. It also contains a lot of information on (SCA) period bands. However since the book is organised by technique and not by time or place, it can be hard to track these details down. Below for my own reference and that of other people is a list of items from the SCA period that I have found from skimming the 2002 book. If you notice something I've missed (and I'm bound to have missed something!) please let me know. p108, 208, plate 167 Maniple of St Ulrich, diagonals and brocading p109 Egyptian diagonals including medieval Finnish bands p114, 217 12th century Sicilian Orphrey, diagonals and brocading p117 12th century belt of Philip of Swabia, checkerboard effect with warp twining p119 9th-10th century Germanic (Augsburg and Speyer) bands, lettering with warp twining p122 "Anglo-Saxon" belt with card idling - more recent research su...

Note: This pattern doesn't match exactly what's in Hansen; you can see an updated version here Warp: White and light green silk Pattern: Kaukola 'S' motif Cards: 15 Width: 1cm Length: 1.1m I wanted to try a non-brocaded pattern at Canterbury Faire and this seemed like a pretty gentle introduction. This is the band from Kaukola mentioned on page 109 of Collingwood. It is from 11th-13th century Finland. It is covered in Hansen, pattern included. This is the first time I've tried to follow a non-brocade pattern out of Hansen. People had warned me that Hansen's patterns are not the clearest but this was my first personal encounter with them (It didn't help that I was working from the Danish version of the book). In the end I abandoned the pattern and just worked it out from the picture of the reconstruction. The pattern is only 7 tablets wide so it wasn't too hard to work out and would have been trivial if I'd done any patterns with Egyptian di...

Well, I think the time has come- the next two bands I will be writing about are not brocaded. So I've changed the name of the blog to "Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving". There will be more brocaded bands, but they probably won't be in the majority any more.

Here are the details on the further tablet woven bands I found when going through Sakrale Gewänder des Mittelalters. In addition there were a few that mentioned tablet woven bands without giving any details on their composition, and many more that mentioned "gold bands" which I assume were probably tablet woven. 5. Two fragments of a cingulum (Augsburg, Diocesan Museum, late 9th century) a) Red tablet-woven silk band with narrow, yellow-green edges. Inscription, created through different directions of the warp strands: IN NOMINE DOMINI AILBECUND VE ... VXPI (Christ) IHEV (Jesus) NOSTRI IN NOMINE DOME (Domini). The end of the band is bound with gold bands. In the middle of the band are sewn on little silver frames (5x4cm), in which under glass one finds a piece of silk (probably little bits of the sewn-on stripes from b). On the back side of the silver frame, seal impressions. Length 123.5cm, width 3.8cm. Materially and technically belonging together with Queen Hemma's gir...

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, here's a list of the contents of Sakrale Gewänder des Mittelalters , in case it's of use to anyone. If anyone happens to be interested in one of the items here let me know and I'll provide the text and/or picture(s) of the item in question. It's a bit long so it's after the jump. Sorry for any oddities in the translation. Items in italics come with pictures. While writing this up I found a few more mentions of tablet weaving, which I'll write up separately.

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.

Warp: Dark green silk Brocade: Spun sterling silver (Devere) Pattern: Birka 6 Cards: 21 Width: 1.2cm Length: 2m This band is for Bjorn, in return for the replica Viking beater in the previous post, as well as a bone pickup stick and some antler bobbins which I will blog about shortly. It is very similar to the other Birka patterns I have done. Bjorn supplied me with some 28 gauge sterling silver wire to use for the brocade, but I couldn't make it turn corners sharply enough. You can see my attempt to use it at left in the picture below. When that failed I turned to Devere's sterling silver metalic thread around a cotton core. It is very nice to work with, my favourite brocade thread so far. I used it double stranded. Bjorn liked the band, originally intended for cuffs around his tunic, enough to commission more of the same- this time to go around the neck- in return for a chest, so I'm about to start on a second metre of it.