17/ 2018 The weekend picture- Fringe frenzy

We would like to wish you all a happy weekend with some  historical textiles.
We would also like to celebrate that we have over 10.000 followers in Facebook.
We could never have thought that there were so many textiles nerd’s out there. <3

This week we focus on fringes on various historical textiles.  All, except one, are woven in silk. The last one is woven in linen.

The fringes are attached to various items all related to church textiles.
The fringes  can all be found in the collections of Statens Historiska museum in Sweden.
The items are dated to 14-17th century.

/ Amica and Maria

SparaSpara

16/2018 The weekend picture

We would like to wish you all a happy weekend with a historical textile.

This week we focus on an embroidery on a chasuble. Wool application on wool. With details in gold thread. Some of the gold has fallen off and then you can see the silk core of the gold thread.

The chasuble comes from an unknown church in Jämtland, Sweden. Now in the collections of Statens Historiska museum in Sweden.
It is dated to 1350-1500 AD. We would like to place it to 15th century.

/ Amica and Maria

SparaSpara

15/2018 The weekend picture

We would like to wish you all a happy weekend with a historical textile.

This week we focus on a lovely silk embroidery from England. It’s a high class work aka Opus Anglicanum. The embroidery comes from Skå church and is dated  to
1250- 1350 AD. Now in the collections of Statens Historiska museum in Sweden.

Silk on linen. Here we can see a close up on a table cloth. Table cloths of the time were often depicted as woven in goose eye/ twill variation.

SparaSpara

SparaSpara

Moving the weekend picture

Since we like to things easy for everyone, including the people that haven’t got Facebook, we are moving our weekend picture.

This weekend we would like to celebrate with a lovely tablet woven band from Alvastra convent. Dating “Middel Ages” in the database. We are placing it rather late, probably to the 15th century. Material is silk and gold and/or silver.

Now in the collections of Historiska museet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Since we in Sweden are labelling the weeks with a number this weeks number is 14. So this post is 14/2018.

Happy weekend!

/Amica and Maria

Sytråd från Sigtuna/ Sewing thread from Sigtuna

Scrol down for English 

Vi får ofta frågor om vilken tråd man sytt sina kläder med under olika historiska perioder. Det finns inget enkelt svar eftersom det statistiska underlaget väldigt ofta är bristfälligt. Väldigt ofta saknas sömmar eller sytrådar i arkeologiska fynd. Men när vi ser sytråd i de textilier vi analyserat så blir vi givetvis väldigt glada och lägger till den informationen i vår samlade databas av sömmar och stygn.

Cellulosa bryts ner av fukt och klarar sig därför väldigt dåligt i jorden. Det är därför ganska ovanligt att hitta linne eller lintråd bland de arkeologiska fynden. Det finns dock både linne och lintråd i ett flertal textilier som bevarats ovan jord.
Ull bryts inte ner lika snabbt som cellulosa och därför är bevarandegraden högre för ull. Jordfunna textiler är inte representativa för de sorters textilier som har används under den aktuella tidsperioden på platsen.

Nedan ser vi en sytråd i ett av de textila fynden från Sigtuna. Sytråden är spunnen av ull. Detta fynd är daterat till första halvan av 1000-talet. Tråden är tvåtrådig och har en ganska hög snodd. Tråden är också grövre än tråden i väven på tyget.
Vad textilen har varit vet vi ännu inte men vi kommer att analysera denna närmare längre fram.
/ Amica och Maria

English: 
We often get questions about which sewing thread that have been used to sew clothes with during different historical periods. There is no easy answer to that, because the data is very often insufficient and can’t provide a good statistic basis. Very often there are no seams or sewing threads in archeological finds. But when we see the sewing thread in the textiles we analyzed, we are of course very happy and add the information in our overall database of stitches and sewing thread

Cellulose is degraded by moisture and survives therefore very poorly in the soil. It is quite rare to find linen or linen thread among the archaeological finds. However, there are both linen and linen sewing thread in a number of textiles that have been preserved above ground.
Wool does not decompose as quickly as cellulose and therefore  is the retention rate higher for wool. Archelolgical textiles are not 100% representative for the kinds of textiles that have been used during the period in question on the spot.

Above we see a sewing thread in one of the textile finds from Sigtuna, Sweden. The sewing thread is spun from wool. This find is dated to the frist or second quater of the 11th century. The thread is two-plyed and has a fairly high twist. The thread is also thicker than the thread in the woven fabric.
What the textile has been, we do not know yet, but we will analyze this further.
/ Amica and Maria