13th century

Advent calendar December 2 2019

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The second post in our advent calendar is a distaff found in Nyköping, Sweden.
Distaffs are rarely labeled as “distaffs” in the museum data bases. So is also the case with this one. The are often labeled as “wood fragment”. We understand if it’s difficult to tell one wood fragment from another, but the notch usually give them away.
This one is dated to 13-15th century.
It is broken and today it’s approx. 30cm long. The thickness is approx. 15-18mm wide.

Today it can be found in the collections of Sörmlands museum.

/ Amica and Maria

Photos: Historical Textiles- pease cred us if sharing

Advent calendar December 1 2019

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This years first calendar post is some lovely scissors and timbles from the medieval city of Nyköping, Sweden.

They are all found in the centre of the medieval city and are dated 13th-15th century.

Today the scissors can be found in the collection of Sörmlands museum and are exhibit in the medieval exhibition at Nyköpingshus / Nyköping castle. The castle have a very interesting history. Check it up if you wanna know where George R.R Martin got some inspiration when writing GoT.  

Here are the post in the data base. 
The one in the middle
The one to the right

/ Amica and Maria

Photos: Historical Textiles- pease cred us if sharing

Medieval belt buckle from Kalmar, Sweden

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Sometimes you find a find that you haven’t seen before, and you get really exited about it. This is one of them! This belt buckle is found in Kalmar, Sweden. It was found in the famous excavation Slottsfjärden, the castle bay, where the city of Kalmar emptied the bay of water during 1933-1934 and the bay got cleaned up. A pile of things were found but unfortunately a lot of the things are still very anonymous. And we don’t think they get the attention they deserve.

Today this lovely buckle is in the collections of Historiska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.

According to the information the buckle, it’s dated to “medeltid” meaning Medieval 1100 – 1500AD . We guess that the dating could be a bit more narrow, we think it belongs in the time frame 1350-1500. Please share your thoughts on the subject too!

The metal is copper alloy. And the buckle measures:
Length- 6,4 cm
Width front- 6,7 cm
Width back- 5,8 cm

It still have some small pieces of leather, that probably was the belt, still attached to the metal. It has also a lightly ornamented decoration.

We really like it and hope that someone, that works with metal, would like to make a copy of it.

Happy weekend!
/ Amica and Maria

When sharing pictures please cred us. CC-By-SA

A glove from Kalmar

/ Maria / 6 Comments

We would like to wish you all a happy weekend with a glove from medieval Kalmar, Sweden. It was found in Slottfjärden, the castle bay, during the cleaning of the bay in 1932-34.

The glove is made in nålbinding/ needlebinding technique. The yarn is wool and might be mixed with some fibres from cow or/ and goat. We can’t tell what stitch that have been used. And we are more then happy to take new close up photos if anyone might have a good eye for analyzing stitches.

The yarn is two plyed. The dating of the glove is “medieval”- possibly 13th- late 15th century. 

Today the glove is in the collections of Historiska museet in Stockholm.

Sorry for posting an old photo from the database, but we have misplaced our photos of the glove. We will add them when we find em again.

/ Amica and Maria

Advent calendar December 23th 2018

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Our twenty-third advent calendar post is a relics purse from Troyes, France. This relics purse is connected to the Comtes de Champagne. The whole surface of the purse is filled with counted embroidery made in filament silk. We don’t know what is underneath the stitches, but we guess at a very evenly woven linen.

We were really surprised bu the size of the purse, it’s quite large. Approx. 20- 25 cm in the bottom of the purse.
It’s in great condition and the small lovely turks head knots around the bottom and the lid are super cute and impressivly even.

This piece is dated to 13th century.

Now in collections of the Troyes Cathedral
/ Amica and Maria
Photo: Historical Textiles 

Advent calendar December 19th 2018

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Our nineteenth advent calendar post is a small fragment of a wool fabric item. The fabric is something quite unusual. The warp and the weft have very different colours, warp lighter and weft darker. This is not something common, at all. The fabric have gone brown after years in the ground, but even before it must have been a clear visual difference of the warp and the weft. It’s woven in 2/2 twill. The fragment also have some seams. It was clearly sewn into something before it ended up in the ground in the city of Enköping, Västmanland, Sweden. 

They fragment is dated to 13-15th century. 

Now in collections of Historiska museet, Sweden.
/ Amica and Maria
Photo: Historical Textiles 

Advent calendar December 16th 2018

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Our sixteenth advent calendar post is a selection of spindle whorls. They all comes from various archeological excavations from different Swedish cities. The whorls are made out of clay, lead, and bone. 

The whorls have different shapes and weighs differently. 

They whorls are dated 13-16th century. 

Now in collections of Historiska museet, Sweden.
/ Amica and Maria
Photo: Historical Textiles

  • Clay
  • Approx. 3 cm Ø
  • Lead – 42,2 g, approx. 3,5 cm Ø
  • Clay
  • Approx. 3 cm Ø
  • Clay
  • Approx. 2,5- 3 cm Ø
  • Bone
  • Approx. 3 cm Ø

46/2018- A good quality wool fabric from Uppsala

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Denna textil är hittad vid utgrävningarna i kvarteret Rådhuset i Uppsala. Textilien är daterad till 1200-1500. Idag är den en del av samlingarna från Historiska Museet.

Fragmentet är ett ylletyg, vävt i  2/2 kypert och är av en relativt fin kvalité, även om den i dag är mycket tunnsliten. Varptråden är tunn och jämn, den är Z-spunnen med många snoddvarv per cm. Inslaget är lite tjockare än varpen. Inslaget är S- spunnet och har inte heller lika många snoddvarv per cm, detta medför att inslaget är lösare och fyller ut mer än vad varpen gör, i tyget. Därför är det också färre inslag per cm än det är med antalet varptrådar per cm. Att förhållandet mellan inslag och varp är så här pass olika är mycket vanligt under medeltiden.

Tittar man noga längs kanterna finns det på sina håll tydliga lämningar av tidigare stygn. Dessa stygn syns idag som ett antal runda små hål, och de är placerade på rad efter varandra. Jämnt fördelade.

Fragmentet räknar vi till grupp 3 – fragment av utslitna klädesplagg. Det skulle mycket väl ha kunnat varit ett klädesplagg ursprungligen. Vilket plagg tror du att det kan ha varit en del av?

Trevlig helg,
Amica och Maria


Photo: Ola Myrin, SHM

This textile fragment was found at the excavations at Rådhuset (City Hall) in Uppsala. The textile is dated to 1200-1500. Today it is part of the collections at The Swedish History Museum.

The fragment is a woolen fabric, woven in 2/2 twill and of a relatively fine quality, although today it is very worn and thin. The warp threads are thin and even, they are Z-spun with a high twist per cm. The weft is a bit thicker than the warp. The warp is S-spun and does not have as many twists per cm, which means that the warp is looser and fills out the fabric more than the warp does. Therefore, there are also fewer weft threads per cm than warp threads per cm. This kind of sett is very common during the Middle Ages.

Looking closely along the edges, remains of previous stitches are plainly visible. These stitches can be seen today as a number of small round holes, evenly spaced in a row. We classify the fragment as group 3 – fragments from worn-out garments. It could very well have been a garment originally.
What do you think it may have been a part of?

Happy weekend!
Amica and Maria

40/ 2018- The hard core metal

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As some of you may already know, Amica Sundström  from Historical Textiles, works at the Swedish History Museum as textile curator. Today, together with Thomas Neijman, she held a guided  tour for a group of people with a special interest for medieval metal works. The armourerAlbert Collins, Via Armoari, celebrates 20 years as a professional armourer this weekend and he has a big party to celebrate this. Plenty of people have travel to Stockholm just for this occasion. The group that came to the museum took the chance to visit the special tour today when in the neighborhood.

Albert also, as many of you may already know, just had a kickstarter campaign get help with the funding, in order to reintroduce armourer as a official craft in Sweden. The last master armourer we had in Sweden was during the late 18th century. After the last master died the craft was official gone.

Albert’s kickstarter campaign has been fully funded and it is incredibly pleasing that it will once again be possible to reintroduce this craft to the Swedish craft council.

We are incredibly happy about this and therefore deviate from our usual theme of displaying textiles. We will this weekend display a mix of photo on various types of medieval (and some older) metal items that are parts of the collections of the Swedish History Museum.

Hope you can forgive this textile free Friday. <3
ps. There are of course some pictures of things that are related to textiles such as scissors, pins etc.

Happy weekend!
Amica and Maria