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.
In the collections of Swedish History museum.
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/Amica and Maria
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.
Today in the collections of Gustavianum museum.
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/ Amica and Maria
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!
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/Amica and Maria
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
/ Amica and Maria
Since I had the advantage of being able to take part in not just one but TWO brigandines in the collections at the Livrustkammare, I feel that it would be wrong to withhold you the second, when the first one seemed to be so appreciated.
This brigandine is a supposed to be a war booty from Warsaw 1655-08-30 when the Swedes brought a number of booty home to Sweden. It’s dated to the 16th century. The brigandine consists of a very vivid deep red silk velvet and on the inside there are a large number of overlapping steel plates riveted to the velvet. The plates are small and thin, ca. 3 x 2 cm. They are homogeneous and finely worked. There are also traces of a linen fabric between the velvet and the metal. The rivets that join the plates together are round-headed brass rivets. The brigandine ends at the bottom with cut tabs. The flaps have raw edges and are very coarsely sewn, with what appears to be a yellowish silk thread. The closing device has been on the side of the garment, but this is now missing. The front piece measures in length 64 cm and in width 81 cm.
I only had the opportunity to see the front of the brigandine, the back part was in another box. But since there are pictures taken on this for the database, I have chosen to also include these. Sometimes it turns out that the older pictures can tell that an object has changed a bit over time, even since it was first photographed.
The brigandine deserves a more thorough review later on and there is every reason to return to it. Feel free to collect your questions here in the comments so I can look at it on occasion.
Link to the front in the database and link to the back
Please cred us if sharing pictures.
/ Maria
Today I had the pleasure of getting a quick look at an exciting object in the collections at Livrustkammaren. Here are therefore a few short observations that I noted and you must be forgiving since it’s far from a complete article. It is an object that is entered in the database as brigandine or as it is called in Swedish “liv-jacka” where liv means upper body. In short, this is a protective garment to wear on the upper body. The brigandine is constructed in one piece and buttoned at the side and over the shoulders.
The outer layer is a grass green silk velvet. Under this velvet fabric is a thin layer of goat or sheep skin and on the back of this, a large number of steel plates. These are overlapping and the entire inside of the brigandine is covered.
The edges are covered with strips of linen. The strips are cut at an angle, there may also be some straight cuts of the linen strips. The rivets are beaten through both the fabric and the leather and there appear to be leather washers under the rivet head on the front. However, these are today very small, either they have been damaged and fallen off or they have always been small, it is not possible to determine.
The tablet woven belt in silk is unusual for it’s time and has had patterned borders. 23 tablets are required to weave this.
The bottom part is incomplete and it’s difficult to know the original shape. According to the database the brigandine seems to be produced in Arboga, Sweden in the 1560-ies.
The brigandine is a fantastic object and I hope we have the opportunity to return to it and analyze it more carefully in the future.
It is also available to read about here:
Please cred us if sharing the pictures.
/ Maria
Our twenty-fourth and 2021’s last Advent calendar post 2021 is:
Silk fabric. This exclusive item was a long-distance import item for us up in the northern part of Europe. But still there are many goods just produced by Bombyx mori. Silk fabrics and silk yarns. Today we turn our attention to the silk fabrics. Silk fabrics can be woven in brocades with weft of gilded threads or only with silk thread as weft. The fabrics with silk and silk is the once we are looking at today.
These often appear as bottom fabric in various embroideries. They can be in different colors but also appear in natural white.
Here we can see a thin silk fabric as the base for an embroidery. The embroidery from Söderala church is today broken and little remains of the yellow fabric. The same goes for the embroidery with Holger Knutsson’s grave coverlet. Here the silk fabric is thin and in a green-blue shade. Söderala is dated to 1350- 1499 and Holger Knutssons fabric is dated to the same period.
Both embroideries can be found in the collections of the Swedish History museum.
Silk fabrics can be used for many things. If we look at how some fabrics are depicted in art, we can assume that silk fabrics have been used. A wavy veil could very well be made of silk. Like the one depicted in the Lutterell psalter. Or those depicted in sculptures, thin as paint. Like this one from Lincoln Cathedral. Here we can see the mouth marked under a very thin cloth. So thin that we suspect that the sculptor intended to show a silk fabric.
Text sources show that silk fabrics were used as banners on the battlefields as markers for various army commanders.
A thin hand hemmed fabric of silk can serve as: the bottom of an embroidery, a bottom fabric for painting a banner or as a wavy silk veil. Or for that matter – perhaps like a shawl in modern life.
We hope you have enjoyed our Christmas calendar this year. For those of you who have also bought the physical calendar, we hope that we have also offered some inspiration on what you can do with all the different yarns, fabrics, tools and necessities. Since we have received questions about how to buy next year’s calendar, the answer is: email us at historical.textiles@gmail.com if you want to know when we were going to release next year’s calendar.
Thank you to all 12,354 readers of Historical textiles Christmas calendar 2021! Merry Christmas!
/ Amica and Maria
Photos by: Historiska, British Library
Our twenty-third Advent calendar post 2021 is:
Bees wax. Sewing wax to be precise. It’s difficult to know people used sewing wax during the Middle ages, but a small lump of wax have been found at Läckö, Sweden. It’s both calming a charming to see that the historical person that once slid the linen thread over the wax created the same trace in the wax that we do today. This piece of wax shows in a wonderful way a contact with a human hand, even if the time elapsed is at least half a millennium.
The wax is from the collections of the Swedish History museum.
1- sorry for mixing days up for all you advent calendar people.
2- wax is an absolute necessity in the sewing box. Waxing linen thread before sewing starts is important so that the thread does not wear out more than necessary. That is why wax is very important in our sewing kit.
/ Amica and Maria
Photos by: Historical Textiles CC-by please cred if sharing the pictures
Our twenty-second Advent calendar post 2021 is:
A lovely long legged cross stitch, again. Also this time the Fogdö wall hanging. Check out the boys in blue and green with a contour thread in blue linen. The wool thread is 2-plied.
The wall hanging is dated late 15th early 16 century and are from the collections of the Swedish History museum.
The wool thread is dyed with weld/reseda and over dyed with indigo or woad.
/ Amica and Maria
Photos by: Historical Textiles CC-by please cred if sharing the pictures
Our twenty-first Advent calendar post 2021 is:
A mix of slightly different things with the common denominator “a thin two-plied wool thread”. First in our batch is a tablet woven band from Gotland. Dated 800-1100 AD. Today the band is exhibit in the new exhibition The viking world. The exhibition text says: “Tablet woven ribbon of wool with individual turns. Woven with a two-plied wool yarn where the thread’s high twist gives the pattern a certain depth. The ribbon is woven with twelve tablets. The two edge tablets on each side are threaded with four threads in each tablet, while the pattern tablets are only threaded with two threads in each. The lack of threads causes a relief pattern to occur during weaving. The pattern is obtained by turning the tablets individually so that the missing threads end up in a specific pattern. Width 0.8– 0.9 centimeters, preserved length 28 centimeters. This ribbon from Gotland differs from the ribbons found in Birka as the latter have silk in the warp and picked pattern elements in gold or silver thread. Part of depot finds “in pasture”, from Lilla Ringome, Alva parish, Gotland.”
The second find is a find that is interpreted as a cushion. Grave find from Birka, Bj739, Adelsö parish, Uppland.
Hhere we can see something as unusual as clear colors on an archeological textile. Both red-purple, blue-black and yellow. The weaving technique is tapestry and soumak. Dating 800-1100 AD
The last picture is from Lödöse. Here we can see a small piece of a finger loop braid. Made with two different colours on the wool yarn. Dated to 13-14century.
The viking age finds are from the collections of the Swedish History museum.
The 20/2 wool thread is versatile and can be used in many projects such as, tablet weaving, embroidery, sewing, braiding and more. It dyes really good and we always try to have a range of colours when working. The pigments we use are madder, cochineal as a kermes substitut, indigo and woad, birch, weld, tansy, walnut, gall apple. Together with alum, cream of tartar, iron and pH-modifier we can produce countless nuances.
/ Amica and Maria
Photos by: Historical Textiles CC-by please cred if sharing the pictures
