Tablet Weaving 225

CHAPTER VII. TABLET WEAVING 225 CHAPTER VII TABLET WEAVING Tablet weaving is a method of weaving bands with the help of a collection of tablets - usually of wood, but horn, bone, leather, cardboard, etc., may also be used. The shape and size of the tablets differ: the most usual type is square, and in folk tablet weaving the specimens usually measure about 6-8 cm along each side. The tablets have rounded corners, and in each corner is a hole through which the threads of the warp are threaded. Some sets of tablets are to be found in Danish local history museums, the Danish Folk Museum has also a little collection of tablet weaving looms but little is known about them, and their provenance is often uncertain or not known 1). The number of tablet-woven bands to sur- vive in Denmark is not large, nor do the more recent examples bear witness to a particularly highly developed technique. Their significance lies in the fact that they show that tablet weaving has a long tradition as a Danish folk handicraft until the present day, and has undoubtedly been carried out in this country and in the rest of Scandinavia since prehistoric times. Admittedly medieval tablet weaving is not as yet represented among archaeological finds, and we have to go back to the 10th century A.D. to find a Danish tablet. A square bone tablet with a hole in each corner was excavated in Lund in 1909. Its measurements are 4.8 x 4.8 cm, and a number of runes incised along one edge have been dated to the close of the 10th century on the basis of their shape2). Tablets from the same period have also been recovered elsewhere in Scandinavia, for example, the excavation of the Norwegian Oseberg ship-burial, usually dated to the mid-9th century, yielded several tablets: three were found in a box and a number elsewhere in the excavation, some of which still had threads in when found3). Birka in Sweden4) has also yielded a tablet. Earlier evidence of tablet weaving than this in Denmark takes us far back in time to the Dejbjerg carts5) excavated in Ringk0bing county and dated to the Celtic Iron Age (c. 200 B.C. - Anno Domini). This famous find included two wooden tablets, only one of which is com- 3 t plete, it measures 4 /4 x 5 h cm, and is 3 mm thick, the other was in fragments (Fig. 223). These tablets are not only the oldest known examples in Scandinavia, but as far as we know the oldest four-hole tablets in existence. Technique. A brief description of how tablet weaving is carried out will be given in the fol- lowing6): The manipulation of the tablets limits the number of tablets used, and the product is therefore always a relatively narrow band. A thread is passed through each hole. When the weaving is to take place the tablets are placed on edge with the mounted warp, as the threads are tautened they divide into two layers with a gap between, a weft thread is then passed through 226 MARGRETHE HALD: ANCIENT DANISH TEXTILES FROM BOGS AND BURIALS Fig. 223. Tablets found with the Dejbjerg cart. Celtic Iron Age. 5/6. Vrevebrikker fra Keltisk jemalder fundet sam men med Dejbjergvognen. 5/6. this gap, called the shed. In four-thread tablet weaving a fresh shed is made by giving the block of tablets a quarter turn either backwards or forwards, i.e. there are four shed openings through which to pass the weft: four wefts to a full turn of the tablets. When the tablets are turned in the same direction at once, the four threads through each tablet twist round each other, and as work proceeds they form warp cords which hide the weft entirely. I call this type tablet weaving with cording?). But the warp threads twist into cords as the tablets are rotated at the same time as they bind the weft, therefore their course is slightly oblique and pattern effects may be obtained. For example, if all the tablets are threaded in the same direction, say from the right, an even diagonal effect is produced. If, on the other hand, the threading method is alternately from the right and left through groups of tablets, the resulting ornament is zigzag. If the change is made at every other tablet, we describe it as the method where tablets are threaded alternately in pairs (Fig. 224). The result shown in Fig. 225 is if tablets I and 3 stand on their right edges and tablets 2 and 4 stand on their left edges. Another combination interplay is also possible, in that the tablets need not necessarily be turned in the same direction, i.e. by changing the twisting direction from Z-wise to S-wise an identical pattern is produced in reverse. A little groove is made across the band when the turn of the tablets changes (see Fig. 60, the Corselitze band). The advantage of this kind of change is that the threads behind the tablets, which become tangled in the course of weaving, have a chance to untwist themselves again. Tangling is otherwise quite a handicap in the long run. In the following I will use the term 4-ply tablet weaving to describe tablets threaded with four threads thus producing 4-ply cords. Not all holes need be threaded though, one or two may remain unused in which case the terms are 3-ply and 2-ply tablet weaving. This kind of weaving is very distinct from that produced by other implements because of the curious corded effect, however there is another form of tablet weaving which is more difficult to distinguish from ordinary weaving. We have seen how patterns can be made by changes in the turns of the tablets, either backwards or forwards. When the changes are made at fairly long intervals the cording is clearly visible in the band, but if in 4-ply weaving the tablets are alternately given two quarter turns forwards and two quarter turns backwards with a pick inserted at each turn, the result is one in which the warp and weft are at right-angles to each CHAPTER VII. TABLET WEAVING 227 other and there is no cording because its commencement upon the first and second turns is cancelled out at the third and fourth turns. Figs. 226 and 227 are examples of this. Tablet weaving as an auxiliary technique. Tablet weaving is not always carried out on its own; on the contrary, it has played a far greater part in conjunction with ordinary weaving and seems to have played its most important role in this respect. In any event, there are more examples among ancient Danish textiles of tablet weaving as part of a loom-woven textile, than on their own simply as a separate band. -- - ::- - ---=~~. Fig. 226. See text at the top of this page. Se teksten !!Iverst pi\.denne side. Fig. 224. Diagram of four-th read tablet weaving with cording. Tablets J and 3 stand on their right edges, 2 and 4 on their left edges. The tablets are threaded alternately in pairs. Skematisk fremstilling af firtd'ldet brikvrevning med snoredannelse med parvis modstillede brikker. Brik I og 3 rejses pi\. h!!ljre kant, 2 og 4 pi\.venstre. Fig. 225. Weave produced by the Fig. 227. See text at the top of this page. method shown in Fig. 224. Se teksten !!Iverst pi\.denne side. Produktet efter den ved Fig. 224 anviste metode med parvis modstillede brikker. 228 Figs. 228-229. Wool tablet-woven band from Mammen: a. right side, b. reverse side. (Museum no. C 136 a-b). 2(1. Brikvrevet band af uld fra Mammen: a. retside, b. vrangside. 2(1. The usual form is as a tablet-woven border along what has presumably been a starting border, here it served a purely practical purpose as the basis of the whole warping arrangement. First of all a band warp is laid which corresponds to the loom width of the textile to be woven. Into this warp, usually fairly narrow, are inserted as wefts those threads which are to comprise the warp of the textile to be woven. Obviously these threads are tied to one edge of the band but the other ends are looped to the length intended for the completed fabric. An extremely interesting semi-finished product that provides conclusive proof of this technique as a starting border is among the finds from Tegle in Norway dated to the Migration Period8). PREHISTORIC MATERIAL Detailed studies of tablet weaving products with a bearing on Danish prehistoric examples have been published by Bj¢rn Hougen9), Agnes GeijerIO), and Grace M. Crowfootll), therefore in the present context a systematic description of all the archaeological material is super- fluous and I will confine myself to the Danish finds, referring to other sources when these are of direct interest by way of comparison with the Danish materiaJl2). 229 The Danish Iron Age finds of tablet-woven bands with cording are as follows: Br<ende Lydinge (second half of the 1st century A.D.), Kannikegaard (3rd century A.D.), Donb<ek (3rd century A.D.), Corselitze (3rd-4th centuries A.D.), Thorsbjerg and Vrangstrup (Migration Period), Vejen Mose (presumably Migration Period), Hvilehl"j and Mammen (close of the 10th century A.D.), Siotsbjergby (9th-11th centuries A.D.). Most of these examples are without exceptional details, but a few features deserve to be mentioned. For example, one of the tablet-woven bands from Kannikegaard is so finely woven that there are 19cords side by side to 1cm, i.e.

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