Medieval Textiles Coordinator: Nancy M Mckenna 507 Singer Ave
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Issue 30 December 2001 Complex Weavers’ ISSN: 1530-762X Medieval Textiles Coordinator: Nancy M McKenna 507 Singer Ave. Lemont, Illinois 60439 e-mail:[email protected] In this issue: Some Medieval Linen Weaves Oriental Carpets p.1 © Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 2001 Some Medieval Linen Weaves p.1 A Weaver’s Compendium p.5 While the most common linen product in the Middle Upcoming Events p.10 Ages was tabby-woven, weavers also produced many Sample Calendar list p.10 types of figured linens. The rippenköper and Wabengewebe described in previous articles represent some early medieval examples. This article expands the scope of medieval cultures and techniques produc- Oriental Carpets ing simple figured linen weaves. The interlacements © 2001 Nancy M. McKenna presented here are both like and yet unlike modern linen weaves, and they can be woven on four to eight Mention Oriental Carpets, and usually knotted carpets shafts. (A future article will address some more come to mind. However, the flatwoven or Kilim complex multishaft linen weaves.) All drafts were carpets are the older variety. Anatolian knotted produced by the present author from drawdowns by carpets are seen from only the 5th or 6th century AD the authors noted in the text. although they may have been known earlier. Anatolia is singled out primarily, as the Turkish people in that Based on the available textile evidence, a variety of region were the first rank of contributors to the true looms created medieval figured linens. Some were development of style in carpets. The Seljukes, ejected likely produced on upright looms using several shafts. from their ancestral homes in Turkestan, achieved Others could have been produced on horizontal looms sovereignty over the entire Near East in the 11th with a number of shafts that lifted by hand rather than Century and brought carpets into vogue. Marco Polo with treadles, the so-called métier aux baguettes. Yet who visited the realm of the Seljukes at the end of the others came from treadle looms. A fifteenth century 13th century makes mention of the fact that there is Italian miniature depicts a woman weaving at a six- where the finest and most beautiful carpets were shaft counterbalance loom, just right for weaving produced. “Perugia towels” and similar six-shaft linen weaves (Cardon, Fig. 127, p. 316). Yarns: Huck- or barleycorn-type weaves existed fairly early. The hillsides of the Anatolian plateau are the natural Number 7409 from the habitat of the forbear of the modern sheep, Ovis Vatican’s Pfister collec- orientalis and for thousands of years the use of the tion is a Coptic linen with sheep and goats has not changed much if at all. The alternating groups of wool is sheared: the spring shearing being considered three long floats in warp the better for carpets. The wool is then combed and and weft on a tabby made into roving. This roving is carried by women background. Although it using a drop spindle to create the lustrous yarn. While only requires three shafts spinning, the roving is usually wrapped around the to weave, it has a lot of spinner’s wrist, tucked into their sleeve, or attached to textural impact. A later a knobbed or forked stick used as a distaff. Whereas relative of this weave, the the spinning wheel was adapted throughout much of “Sluier van Maria” the world, handspinning with a drop spindle continues (Mary’s Veil), dates to vatican textile #7409 even today in this region as great volumes of wool are the eleventh or twelfth cont’d on page 2 Cont’d on page 4 1 Complex Weavers’ Medieval Textile Study Group Oriental carpets cont’d from page 1 millennium BC & possibly the fifth. However, the still prepared for weaving while attending to pastoral horizontal ground loom and its vertical variation duties: spinning cannot be limited to a fixed period of displaced the warp weighted loom in Anatolia through time or a set place. Although multi-ply yarns can be being adapted from regions to the South and East. used, weft yarn is often single ply. The warp is These looms along with their shed and heddle bar customarily two ply yarns. mechanism seem to have existed in the Middle East and Egypt from at least the 4th millennium BC. Six Indigenous dyestuffs: oak galls, weld (Reseda Exactly when the horizontal ground loom displaced luteola) & other yellow producing plants, alum, iron the warp-weighted loom is unknown. sulphate, madder root and indigo were used to create a palette of between six and thirteen distinct colors. Carpets: Madder (Isatis tinctoria) contains up to nineteen different dyestuffs and depending upon mordant Although use of Kilim and knotted style carpets early material and time in mordant, quantity of madder in on are well documented in archeology and art are well the dyebath, acidity or alkalinity of the water and the documented in the middle and far East, use in Europe temperature of the dyebath contribute to create a large is less obvious. On the other hand, Persian painters variety of shades: pink, rose, apricot, scarlet, brown- seldom painted rug designs accurately, and often it reds, purple, and brown-purple. Although dyeing with appears that they invented rugs rather than paint what madder to obtain a large range of shades requires was before them. Carpet historians, even when considerable time, lore, and skill, it is believed that looking to Eastern use and design of carpets, often madder dyeing was carried out domestically. In look to European paintings to see a truer representa- contrast, it is believed that professional dyers did tion of progression in carpet design innovation. indigo dyeing. Although woad (Isatis tinctoria) is Because of this, at least in a couple cases “types” of locally available, indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) was carpets are named after European painters (i.e. imported from India and Eastern Iran in the form of Bellini, Holbein, etc). blue cakes. The use of indigo dyes in the Near East has been traced as far back as 2500 BC in Egypt. Giotto, in a fresco in the Arena Chapel in Padua Surviving records show that indigo was historically painted in 1304, we find a ‘Konia Group’carpet used important commodity on the ancient trade routes of as an altar cloth. It is similar to one found in the the Near East. Museum of Islamic Art, Istanbul. Through church documents, this image is believed to be one of the It is believed that Anatolian weavers may have rugs, which were placed at the disposal of the local fermented their yarns before dyeing. It is know that authorities by Venice for the consecration of the this is one of the first steps in indigo dyeing. In the chapel. Comparable textiles are pictured as wall yarn fermenting process, skeins of yarn are soaked for hangings in several of Giotto’s earlier paintings in the a period ranging from three to ten months, usually in Lower Church in Assisi. However, there are no known a solution of wheat bran, sour dough, and mordant documents linking these painted images with actual salts. Supporting this belief is the results of examining textiles. Konia textiles are often distinguished by a fibers from antique textiles under electron micro- border of extremely stylized and eccentric, sometimes scopes. However, because of the length of time heavy, Cufic script, or of star rosettes in a linear required for the process as well as the unevenness of setting. The central field is often staggered rows of tribal dyed yarns, it is suggested that this fermentation octagons containing floral ornament or a uniformly process was limited to professional dyers working continuous interlace or trellis pattern set out as to with urban or court weaving workshops. form stars or lozenges. Looms: Domenico de Bartolo’s paintings incorporated another type of oriental knotted carpet. His image features In Anatolia the loom called the istar evolved into its repeated octagonal panels with narrow borders. optimum form in pre-historic times and has required Within each is an image of an animal or animals. very little refinement since. The warp-weighted loom Such images show a close relationship between the was the established loom technology by the 4th Persian illuminations of the 14th and 15th century and 2 Issue 30 December 2001 Oriental carpets, cont’d Venice. Hispano-Moresque weavings. One such rug was It was not until the 16th Century that these carpets found in Rome and is now in the Islamic Department became popular in the Netherlands and other Western of the State Museum in Berlin. Bartolo features such European countries. a carpet in his painting at Sienna: The Wedding of the Foundlings. Other carpets in this style are found in Sources: paintings by: Lippo Memmi; Madonna (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, No. 1072 c. 1350). The Bieber, Manfred. The Kavacik Project: A Contribu- panels show in heraldic manner pairs of long legged tion to the Conservation and Advancement of the eagles with a formalized tree; the framing and borders Carpet Tradition in the Istanbul Region. Oriental carry swastikas and ornaments. Niccolo di Carpet and Textile Studies III 2:175 Buonaccorso: Betrothal of Mary (national Gallery in London, No. 1109, painted c. 1380) shows eagles in Bierman, Irene A. Medieval Flatweaves in the Urban yellow or red on a ground of red or yellow. Ambrogio Middle East. The Arthur D. Jenkins Collection Vol. 1: Lorenzetti: Madonna (Helbing Auction, 1933) shows Flatwoven textiles, ed Cathryn Cootner (Wash. DC: a carpet featuring stalking beasts of prey. Simone The Textile Museum, 1981) Martini: St Louis (S. Lorenzo at Naples, c. 1317) features a rug in which pairs of eagles are repeated.