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| The Sampler. How dare I?? |
notion; and those who say, "Gee, I never looked at it that way. That's pretty interesting." History is full of examples of pre-conceived notions, and what happens when they're challenged: those clinging like limpets to the notion are willing to fight to the death to preserve it; the people who are willing to re-examine it are perturbed by the limpets; and the messengers that the pre-conceived notion might not be the whole story...well, we all know what happens to messengers. I'm currently one of those messengers, all because of a little-known German manuscript and a lot of white 8/2 cotton on Bertie.
Bertie is back together, and I need to do something with the remaining 484 ends x 25 yards of white 8/2 cotton on the warp beam. I also needed to check that Bertie was running properly, with no more "missed" picks because the shafts weren't behaving as they should. I settled on a simple 16-shaft point twill, added a couple extra shafts for some plainweave selvedges, and pulled 15 drafts from handweaving.net with some basic parameters:
- Point twill
- 16 shafts
- No floats longer than 7 ends/picks
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| Five of Morath's 16-shaft designs. All point twill, all tromp as writ. |
After eliminating the boring ones and the duplicates, I was left with 15 drafts: 13 from A German Weaver's Pattern Book: 1784 - 1810, and 2 from 16-Harness Patterns: The Fanciest Twills of All by Irene K. Wood. (Both are available as pdfs from handweaving.net.) The pattern book was of particular interest: I have a longtime interest in historic cloth and cloth-making. I have a decent collection of books on the topic, and I use a lot of historic weave structures in my weaving. Of particular interest right now are hin und weider ("back and forth") patterns woven by primarily German and German-American weavers: using up to 24 shafts threaded for straight or point twill, and treadling "tromp as writ" (i.e., the threading), these weavers could create a number of different designs in the same warp simply by changing the tie-up. Since I don't have to climb under the loom to change the tie-up, it was a pretty easy task to create a sampler of all 15 patterns, each separated by a narrow band of plainweave. I have a lot of dark blue 8/2 cotton on hand, and it's dark enough that I can see the patterns (important if I'm going to pick out floats that might be too long for towels). I got the draft loaded into Bertie's brand and wove off the entire sampler in less than an hour.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results, so I decided to "share" photos of my sampler with members of an 18th century costuming group, letting them know that these are woven from 18th century drafts. That was a mistake. This is a group of people who, while they know some of the most picayune details of how an 18th century petticoat is constructed, don't know jack about how the cloth they're using is made. Add in that their knowledge base is limited to examples in museums (which have only the most precious, most spectacular examples of textiles and fashions), and the few extant swatch books, and someone coming along with something out of the ordinary is rather like proclaiming that the earth is round when everybody knows it's actually flat. Example:
Online Pompus Pundit (OPP): Those designs are for coverlets.
Me: Uh, they're weaving drafts. They can produce a lot of different fabrics, depending on the yarn. A lot of these are for fine linens.
OPP: No, those are only for coverlets. Show me proof that they're used for something else.
Me: They're from a German master weaver's pattern book. The manuscript is dated 1784.
OPP: That doesn't prove anything. Your research is garbage and you're a terrible person for even suggesting that these might be HA (historically accurate) fabrics.
Me: ...
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| Another five of Morath's 16-shaft designs. |
At that point, how do you explain to someone that these are drafts and tie-ups from the manuscript Christian Morath, a master weaver from "Offeringen" (Ofteringen?) compiled and sold to his employee, Joseph Murilman of "Endingen" (Eggingen?) for 5 coins in 1784? That Morath, who was probably a really good master weaver--and the only weaver in the village--knew this "arcane knowledge" of weaving well enough to write it all down for his employee? And that Morath probably knew, as most weavers do, that fabric is fabric is fabric, and it's the yarns that determine what the end use is as much as the design does? In the end, you don't. Ultimately, it's like trying to teach a pig to sing: a waste of time and irritates the pig.
Ironically, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has an extensive textile collection, including some 18th century German linens. They were purchased by the museum in 1909, and one of them, probably a fragment from a tablecloth, depicts the story of Joshua and Caleb, two of Moses' "spies" who investigated Hebron in Canaan. It's an elaborate weaving, with the names of people and places woven in. Oddly enough, the names appear correctly, then mirrored, across the fragment. Only one threading "mirrors": hin und weider, or point twill.
