Strikingly often, textiles are found where you might not have initially thought they would be. So in case with these three jousting shields. The core is made of hard wood and in order to create reinforcement, stability and a base to paint on, all three shields have been covered with a woven fabric. The fabric has been glued to the wood with an animal glue, over this a pigskin parchment and then coated with gesso and painted.
The fabric that can be seen where the gesso has cracked and fallen off is a relatively coarse linen/ hemp woven in plain weave. The shields are called burial shields in the database but show all the identical features of jousting shields. The question of whether they were ever used for jousting may not be proven.
The shields date from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 16th century.
Today we were looking for a saint. Saint Lucia, since we celebrate her in Sweden today. But…. she is rarely seen on textiles items. So we just went with an awesome double weave instead.
This double weave is from Hälsinglands museum and has no proper dating but…. it has a lot of in common with other textiles from the 16th century…. So we believe it might be. It’s labelled coverlet.
The warp is in 2-plied wool yarn, very uneven, yellow and natural brown. And the weft is a single wool yarn, also very varied, red, blue and yellow. Please cred us if sharing photos
Today we will talk about a kind of medieval textile that often have been falsified and many fakes are found in museums all over the world. Printed linen fabric. These pieces are believed to be originals. They come from the medieval church Södra Råda. 2001 the wooden church was burned down. And 2003 a reconstruction started to rebuild the church. Happily all medieval textiles was already at museums when that happened.
The printed in is printed in black and appears to have been painted red and yellow in some places. We don’t know what kind of pigment that were used. The fabrics have been sewn together before the motif was printed. It’s believed to be a work produced in the west of Germany.
Agnes Geijer dated the print to mid 15th century.
Today in the collection of Swedish History Museum. Read more here
Not all bands are woven with tablets. Some seems to be woven with rigid heddles too. Like this on from 15th century. Woven in silk. As you can see, the blue fades faster than the madder dyed red. The long floats gives the band a nice pattern too. Around 12-14 mm wide.
Since you guys clearly liked the tablet woven band from Falun, we toss you another one. This one a lot older… This one dates to the 10th century. From Valsgärde boat grave no. 15.
Valsgärde is situated not far from Uppsala, Sweden, and is a place with many Viking burials and therefor a lot of excavations have been preformed there.
The band is woven in silk or wool with a silk weft and a brocading weft in a metal thread wrapped around a textile core. The patterns are the same kind of geometrical patterns as we see on the tablet woven bands from Birka. The edges have fallen off and was originally attached to the side of the band.
The Middle Ages have been very represented here during this calendar. But today we will show a lovely tablet woven band from the Swedish city of Falun and from the 17th century. Falun was a copper miner town during this time and of great importance. And the band comes from an archeological excavation dug in 2019.
The band is in silk and tablet woven. We add photos of the original and the reconstruction (yellow), made in sewing silk and button hole silk. But we also like to share the description so you can weave a Falun band yourself! 10 tablets, treaded z-s, 1 in each hole of the tablets considering the thin thread but only 2 of the thick once, treaded diagonal in the tablet. Turn 1/4, change directions when needed.
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“Silk Among the woolen textiles was also a small fragment of 6 x 0.6 cm. This turned out to be a small tablet woven silk ribbon. The band is woven in a stitch effect and has 10 tablets. Six tablets are threaded with thin filament silk and four tablets are threaded with coarser filament silk. The thin threads are threaded with four threads in each tablet and the thick threads are threaded with only two threads in each tablet, they are threaded in each corner placed diagonally from each other. The tablets are placed, in pair, thin, thick, thin, thick and thin. Which gives a striping and structure to the band. All tablets are turned a quarter of a turn together. As the thick threads are not twisted a quarter of a turn with each twist, as they are threaded into every other hole in the tablet, a pattern is given along the length where the thick threads get one weft on the same surface as the thin threads get two. As the ribbon is short, the weaver has not reversed the twist added by the technique, which otherwise needs to be done after a certain length so that the shine of the silk is not adversely affected. The band probably originates from the personal costume. It is not possible to tell whether the ribbon is woven locally or imported in finished condition. Similar bands are also found from Stockholm.”
Happy weaving!
Please cred us if sharing pictures. /Amica and Maria
In Italy there is a privat collection of medieval textiles. In this collection one can find a linen coif from 1470-1540. It’s beyond cool and we have written about it before, here you can find that.
We just wanna lift the fact the the tie bands and not made from fabric but from braided linen threads, and then attached to the coif. It’s started with a knot on the braid.
Today’s post is about dyes. Or in fact dyed wool fabrics that are from the beginning of the 14th century and STILL in great condition. Check out thees seal bags, protective bags in fabric for wax seals on legal documents, written 700 years ago.
They have been stored in archives from when they were written until today. And they are dated on the exact day they were created and is by far the best source we have come across when it comes to textiles.
Now in the collections of The Swedish National Archives. Please cred us if sharing photos!
Spangles or sequins? This sudarium is believed to be a Vadstena work. Vadstena convent was founded by S:t Bridget. The convent is known, among other things, for its fine textile work, and many that were produced there in the Middle Ages are still in existence. This sudarium is one of two existing in Sweden from the Middle ages.
It’s not easy to see what the motif is supposed to show, but it resembles a helmet ornament. The small pearls are very small and we don’t understand how someone have been able to make a hole though them. And we don’t know of we should call the metal decorations for spangles or sequins… Help!
The sudarium is dated the the first quarter of the 16th century.
Now in the collections of The Swedish History museum. More pictures here
/ Amica and Maria Please cred us if sharing the photos
Recycling. Perhaps the most obvious within the life cycle of a historical textile. Made, worn, mended, remade and used til all was gone…. And here we have a great example. A chasuble.
The embroidery of Jesus was probably made during the 17th century on a gold and silk relief velvet fabric from the 15th century. To consider during the 17th century that a then 200-year-old fabric was perfectly acceptable as a basis for the embroidery, is an attitude that is quite far from today’s ideas. We are both shocked by it, but also know that’s the use of such habits probably is the reason why they are still around… Ney but yay, in a way…
The velvet was probably already quite worn in the 17th century but didn’t stop the creator. We love the fact that Christ’s two legs are a recycled linen table cloth or a towel, a very rare kind from this time. Enlarge the picture for full visibility!
Dated 1350-1699
Now in the collections of The Swedish History museum. More pictures here
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