Initial Musings on the Anglo-Scandinavian Band from Coppergate (York, 10th century)

Long and boring rambling about something I've been reading about lately:

I've been thinking about weaving a version of the Coppergate tablet-woven band.  It was found during an excavation in York.  The actual find is a group of eight tied cords, but the appearance of the cords and how they are arranged imply that this was once a tablet woven band, and that its weft has long since rotted away.  It is artifact 1340 in the report The Archaeology of York The Small Finds 17/5, "Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate" by Penelope Walton, 1989.

Some of the cords have a space for a missing ply, and that is interpreted to have been a vegetable fiber, also rotted away.  The rest of the cords are silk.

The original colors are hard to determine.  "Most of the cords are now dark brown, but one is a lighter shade, and adjacent to this is the 4-ply cord, consisting of two black and two light brown warp threads. Originally the darker threads were probably red and purple, as dyestuffs madder and ?indigotin plus madder were detected."  Later in the report, it is stated that actual madder (Rubia tinctorum) was used based on properties that make it distinct from other local possibilities such as wild madder and lady's bedstraw.  Indigotin is interpreted as woad (Isatis tinctoria) based on the local presence of woad and also on historical reasons why imported indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) would have been unlikely.

Yellow dyes, if present, would be gone.  The archaeological dig did discover Genista tinctoria (dyer's greenweed) in addition to woad and madder, so yellow is entirely possible as one of the dye components.  Red + blue does seem likely to have been purple.  But the threads that are merely light brown warp threads?  Or the ones with madder?  Were they dyed with yellow or dyed with yellow in addition to the detected dye colors?  If so, the ones with madder could have been red or could have been orange.  Also, madder itself has a range of red-toned colors, including pink, salmon, coral, red, orange, and even brick red.

The light brown silk could have once been yellow or green (if there's some blue left in it).  It's possible that the light brown silk was undyed and thus a golden yellow, but why would they have done that when linen would have been a reasonable substitute?  Or maybe it was a light tan or otherwise some kind of brown, which is also relatively easy color to achieve.  Or a madder or indigo exhaust bath, with a lighter color that has since deteriorated beyond detection.

The missing warp thread, if indeed linen or another similar bast fiber, might well have been white.  I know the Coptic bands tended to use linen for white and dyed wool for colors.  Other Anglo-Saxon bands such as the chasuble for Sts. Harlindis and Relindis mix dyed silk and undyed linen.  Linen is cheaper than silk and makes an easy white, I suppose, especially when bleached.  Dunno if it would have been dyed -- doesn't indigo stick to pretty much all fibers without needing a mordant?

The cords are twisted  ZSZSZZSZ, but in my opinion, it's certainly possible that they might not be in the original order any longer.  Given that there are five Z and three S, it is obviously not as simple as an alternating S Z configuration. 

Here is what the entire band looks like.  This pic is taken from another publication by The Archaeology of York 17/11 The Small Finds "Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate" by Penelope Walton Rogers.  I'd provide something larger, but alas, the resolution isn't quite good enough to see enough details.  The light-colored cords are definitely light-colored in comparison to the dark ones, though.  And the number of cords varies along the length as, one supposes, some of the disintegrate over the years.  The remaining bits are 1.47m in length.

Here is a section near the top, blown up to almost the limits of reasonableness, which shows the two brown shades that remain in the band after all these years underground.

It might be possible to put some of the cords (i.e. tablets) in order since some of them do seem to be in approximately the same place for the entire length of the band.  But this could be from how it was excavated, preserved, and displayed, I suppose.

I've found some references online to people who have made a plausible re-creation.

https://eoforwicproject.com/2021/09/20/a-10th-century-tablet-woven-band-of-silk-from-york/ wove a band based on the known information.  She credits Alicja of Hrafna Norse Crafts, who did some interpreting and also provided a chart here: https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A1411484119062360%2C%22entry_point%22%3A%22MOBILE_POST_ATTACHMENT%22%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&state

Hrafna interprets the cords as follows:

1 tablet -- 2 threads of madder + indigotin, 2 lighter colored, all silk

1 tablet -- 3 threads of lighter colored silk, 1 missing (linen?)

6 tablets -- 3 threads of madder (silk), 1 missing (linen?)

She believes that this is an asymmetric band, with a 2-tablet edge on one side (both Z oriented), and alternating SZ red-and-white stripes for the rest.

Other possibilities (I'm just noodling around here):

The 6 tablets with madder could be in the center, and there is one edge tablet on each side.

The 6 tablets with madder could be aligned into chevrons (ZZZSSS or vice versa) rather than alternating S and Z.

The 6 tablets with madder could be aligned to make horizontal stripes, or they could be some other pattern such as diagonal lines or chevrons or spots.

The other two tablets could be somewhere besides the edge(s).

There are definitely bands out there with horizontal stripes and asymmetric bands, so Hrafna's interpretation is perfectly reasonable.  There are also bands out there with chevrons.

Anglo-Saxon brocaded bands I'm aware of are variable, with arrows and diamonds and patterns that I'm not sure what they're supposed to be.  Those are from a different part of the island, though, possibly a different culture, possibly a different time, and of course brocaded rather than threaded-in.

Also, I believe that Hrafna's interpretation is that the madder-and-missing-thread tablets consist of 3 S and 3 Z, with the other two both being Z.  But it's not clear from Walton's text whether this is actually what's going on.

Also also, Hrafna points out that the drawing in Walton's paper only shows seven cords even though the text refers to eight tablets.  So who knows?  Hrafna's interpetation calls for eight tablets.

Additionally,  Walton and everyone else interpret the missing thread in the cords/tablets to have been a bast fiber.  What if it actually is an intentional missing hole?  It's not that likely, I don't believe, but it's not impossible.

Here is the Hrafna interpretation (in natural-dyed wool and undyed linen).

And here is the Eoforwic interpretation that uses the same chart but different colors for the edge tablets (I'm not sure if this is wool/linen or silk/linen).

Added later -- here's a version that is sort of based on the chevron interpretation, from Purple Cat Textile's (aka Katherine Bell's) instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSPkSRPDCO6/

All of these are lovely.

I'm playing around on one of the charting apps, trying out various possibilities.  I'm not sure yet what I'll do.  After going through the above ruminations, I feel comfortable with pretty much anything I decide to try.

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Also in Walton's report is a little bit on cords.  There are no obvious fingerlooped braids or anything, but there are 3-strand plaits (the same one people usually use to braid their hair).  The ones that were excavated were made from hair moss or a mix of hair moss and flax stems (i.e. the bast fibers not specifically removed and then spun).  Twisted cords (both plied cords and cabled cords) were also made, from bast fibers and from wool.  There's also a picture of some "knotted wool yarns" that sure looks like a weaver's knot.

Other dyes found in various textiles include kermes and lichen-purple.  The identified species are more likely to have been from the eastern Mediterranean, so chances are that either the dyes or the dyed thread/textiles were imported.  But neither of those was detected on the tablet woven piece.

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Internet searching is REALLY awful these days.  I had downloaded the various reports and stuff long ago, luckily.  I was trying to find the links today using a search engine, and well, no luck.  AI decided I meant something entirely different and would only show me links related to what it thought I wanted.  Or would show me citations in other websites, but not the original article, even though I had bookmarked them as well as downloading them.  It is very sad.  Hopefully I'll have more luck with google scholar and maybe even archive.org, though google scholar does tend to route me to sites where I'd have to pay to access an article/website, sigh.  I mourn the Internet that Was and hope that some enterprising company will resurrect a working search engine that doesn't try to "help" me with AI garbage.  I also hope that the once-free archives that were purchased and put behind paywalls become free to access again.

Another colorful Oseberg band

A friend was admiring the colorful Oseberg band I did a while back.  Another friend has been experimenting with making tablets.  So....  I made another Oseberg band using the new tablets.

The band, fresh off the tablets, is about 1/2" wide and about 66" long.  It really is rather cheerful, cute, and entirely adorable.

Some of my tablet-weaving tablets

This isn't all of them.  People give them to me.  Or they are samples.  Or I like them and want to buy them and try them, or maybe just admire them.

They are posed against a ruler to show the variation in sizes -- from about 1" to about 3.5" (or maybe 3.25").  In age they range from the 1980s/1990s to 2026.  (I'm not sure where my meter stick is, but the foot-long ruler gives a pretty good sense of size no matter what the units are.) 

When I first started tablet-weaving, I bought a few packs of tablet-weaving tablets from Robin & Russ Handweavers.  Those are 3.25"-ish, I think.  That was a very common size for tablets then, and in fact, still is a very common available size.  I used them exclusively for many years since I didn't know any other sizes existed.  I mean, sure, I could have bought the same size tablets but with different company logos on them, but why bother?  I still see some Mary Meigs Atwater tablets around on the used-sales sites -- I wonder how old those are, and if there are older branded tablet weaving cards around?

When someone gave me some smaller tablets several years ago, it was something of a revelation.  Wow, so much easier!  I have small hands.  The smaller cards are easier for me to hold and manipulate.  The threads are easier to release if they get caught up in the corners of adjacent cards.  And there's also a bit less waste at the end of the warp.

The 3D printed tablets were made by a friend.  They are incredibly adorable and fun to use.  At some point, I'll try to get a bunch that all match in their design but are different colors, since different color tablets would be excellent for identifying groups of tablets at a glance.  (i.e. which tablets are numbers 16-22, when they end up needing to be turned in a different direction from their neighbors?)

The Lacis tablets are pretty nice because they are fairly small, and because they are plastic of some sort.  The holes don't wear out as quickly.  I expect someday that they'll become brittle with age and start breaking, but for now, they're nice to use.

I haven't tried the wooden tablets yet, mostly because the sets are fairly small and I've mostly been doing patterns lately that require more tablets than are in the wooden sets.

For some of these tablets, I only have 1.  Or 8.  Or 10, or 25.  I can use them but only for some patterns.  It's nice to have several dozen tablets of a particular type so I can make wider bands.

Someday I'll drag out more of my tablets to photograph.  By then I might have even more than I do now.  I don't buy every brand I see, but I do acquire ones that are cute and interesting and/or different from what I currently have.  I also make them myself, especially when teaching others to tablet weave.  Old cereal boxes have cardboard that works pretty well for that purpose.  I can easily get a set of 12 tablets per box.

I guess I'm a collector of tablet-weaving tablets these days.  Oh, well, could be worse!

Another little distraction -- the tablet-woven band from the Brooklyn-Museum, New York, Inv. No. 15.445

I've been thinking about this rather charming 2-hole pattern for a while.

So I warped it up and decided to use it as a vehicle for exploration and learning.

As you can see, the left side of the band (near the beginning) is narrower and the diamonds are more elongated.  I've been playing with how tight I pull the weft to see the effects on the aspect ratio of the diamonds.  In the middle or a bit to the right, the weft is so loose that it's leaving little bloops along the edges.  Dunno if the band will spread out more or it that's kind of it.  However, the diamonds are not nearly as elongated.  The far right of the above shows how tight I'm currently pulling the weft, which is still loose-ish but not so loose as to have big bloops.

I like the wider band with diamonds that are not as elongated, so that's what I'll keep doing.  I'll probably do a bit more experimenting before trying to settle down to one width.

Dunno if I'll make the far end of the band do something similar (i.e. narrow down) to pretend I meant to do it that way.  Probably not, though I'll see what I feel like doing when I get there.

Another thing that I'm experimenting with is only turning the edge tablets when the weft is about to go through it/them.  That means they turn once every other row, alternating right and left edges.  It's supposed to help with being able to beat the weft in harder.  I think it does that -- the first pattern repeats on this band have the edges turning every row, with the later ones being every other row.  I think there's a bit of a difference.  So that will be useful for a lot of future projects in various techniques.

This band is from Tablet Woven Bands from Egypt by Silvia Aisling Ungerechts, p. 44-45, the tablet-woven band from the Brooklyn-Museum, New York, Inv. No. 15.445.  I recharted it, of course, to make sure I understood what I was doing.

The original band is here: https://brooklynmuseum.org/objects/9178.  The red is wool (almost certainly madder-dyed) and the yellow is linen and probably was once a lot closer to white.  It is labeled as being from Coptic Egypt, 5th-6th century CE.  The original is 3/4" wide but mine is probably a bit wider, not that I care.  I mean, I could get mine to be 3/4" wide, but that would affect the appearance of the lozenges/diamonds.  Chances are that I'd need to use a different material (either fiber content or thickness or how it's spun or what the weft is or some combo) to get mine to look more like the original.  Or perhaps stick it in the ground in Egypt for 1500 years or so.

Mine is the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton, both warp and weft.  There are 32 tablets -- 30 2-holed pattern tablets, and 1 4-holed edge tablet on each side.  The pattern is a basic F/B turning sequence, nothing fancy.

The pattern is cute enough but I think I like the little diamond band from the Louvre better, at least so far.  I do love doing (and admiring) 2-hole tablet weaving so I'm not complaining!

Lots of little pinwheels

That went fast!

The band is about 1cm wide by about 170 cm long (3/8" x 68").  It is, of course, reversible.  The photos show both sides of the band.

I'll keep this pattern in my repertoire, to do in various color combinations.  It's a remarkably cute little band.

Here's a quick pic of the chart I made since I'm not sure if I'll delete it, make it public, keep it private, or whatever.  I used Twisted Threads to double-check after drawing it on a bit of graph paper, but honestly, the notation doesn't matter all that much -- this is a very simple pattern that you can chart out using whatever your favorite charting method is, using whatever colors you feel like using.  Turn all forward all the time.

Time for some little pinwheels

This is the start of my next tablet woven band.  It's probably less than 1cm in width.  It's very cute!  And also very easy and relaxing to weave.

I was looking at tablet weaving projects on Ravelry to see what cool things other people were doing and saw a band with this pattern.  It's been on my to-do list for a while, and, well, I decided that today was the day.  I charted it from the person's photo, but also found it a few times in the public patterns on Twisted Threads, and it's also in Tablets at Work (by Claudia Wollny), p.118, and no doubt on other websites and in other books/mags/etc.  The motif looks like little flowers or pinwheels, in my opinion.  The band is reversible, too.

Anyway, I quickly warped it up and started weaving.  I don't need to think, just turn the tablets and throw the weft, repeat until it's time to advance the warp and work out the twist, and then continue.

The band calls for 9 tablets, alternating / and \  orientation, 4-threaded, all-forward turning.  As usual, I'm using big-box-store #10 crochet cotton.  I'm not sure what the weft is -- it's some kind of cotton leftovers that could possibly be the same thing.

Dunno what I'll do with it when it's done.  Dunno if I'll turn my Twisted Threads chart public or keep it private or even delete it -- it's not like this is any kind of unique pattern.

My previous tablet has been soaked in water and wound around a cardboard tube to see if that'll straighten out the slight twist.  Not that it's related to anything else in this post, but I just wanted to mention it.

One reason I'm doing this quick little pinwheels band is because I really am thinking about doing a sampler of various double techniques.  And, because the Universe works this way, someone else has been posting about Icelandic double cloth, which is one of the things I want to explore with the sampler.  I don't understand how or why there's some kind of Collective Subconscious about tablet weaving but I do seem to be part of the hive mind in my own little way.  Eh, probably there are always people posting about all kinds of things, but I mostly notice the ones I've also been thinking about lately. The existence of a Collective Subconscious seems more cool, though.

I'm writing the following paragraphs to remind me of what I want to explore in this potential Doubles sampler.

Double face.  I want to get a rough gauge so I can plan out a different project.  In other words, how long a warp will I need in order to include my planned inscription and related motifs?  Will the warp need to be longer if I want to include everything, or is everything sufficiently short that I will need to add more motifs to get to my minimum desired length?

I want to do the \ / type double-face, and also the square-block double-face, where all the tablets have the same orientation.  For the square-block double-face, I want to see how many tablets I need to actually get squares -- 3? or 4?  Is my gauge/tension different for doing SZ vs ZZ double-face?

I want to look at different edge treatments and their effects on gauge -- all forward turning all the time, versus only turning the side where the weft is about to go through.

I want to explore the thing I've seen where tablets turn 180º to change colors.  Collingwood has a paragraph about this on p.199, I think, in a section talking about "working with half-turns between picks".  There's also something about hopsack using 4 threads per tablet on p.148.

Shelagh has a little something about turning tablets 180º in her pdf about doing one of the double-face Durham seal tags -- she calls it double-faced repp:  https://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/double_faced_repp/double_faced_repp.pdf but I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing.  Something to explore when I get there, I guess.

I want to do Icelandic double-cloth, and to see what motifs look like in this technique vs block-style double-face.  Claudia Wollny has a chapter on this method, and I think Collingwood's discussion starts on p.157, "warp-faced plain weave double cloth".  This too will be an opportunity to see if I need 3 or 4 tablets of each color to make a square block.

Collingwood talks about what might be a different method of doing double-cloth starting on p.129 in a section called "two-strand warp-twined double cloth".

I want to chart out a few capital letters for an inscription in my future different project, and maybe chart out a few specific motifs if I can't find something suitable that someone else has already charted out, plus maybe weave motifs where I have a chart but not what it looks like when woven.  I'll probably use one of Linda Hendrickson's charted alphabets which is why I want to come up with some capital letters to go along with the lower case letters.

I want to continue improving my set-up for doing continuous warping.

I have no plans to do 3/1 twill or Sulawesi or other related techniques for this sampler.  (everything is related to everything...)  The primary purpose is answering basic questions about SZ and ZZ double face and double cloth.

Maybe this is an entirely imaginary exercise.  But maybe I'll do it.

In the meantime, I'll be weaving little pinwheels.

I'm also feeling the urge to do some other things -- braids, slings, sprang, netting, basketry, and some of the simpler things in Collingwood's The Maker's Hand.  Plus all the non-narrow-ware stuff.  Plus I have a few other tablet weaving patterns that I might want to do before I start the sampler, of this same simple type (i.e. fairly straightforward and not requiring a lot of individual tablet manipulation).

Real Life is rather busy, though, and it takes precedence over all the just-for-fun stuff.  Hopefully I can get through enough Real Life things to squeeze in some time to play.

I like zig-zags

I was randomly looking at pics of tablet woven bands and saw one that I thought a friend of mine would like.  So I decided to weave a copy -- same pattern, same colors, etc.  I recharted it to make sure I understood what was going on, then warped and wove.

It's a very striking pattern.  Well, a simple pattern, but the three colors and how they're arranged make for a sharp and striking-looking band.

The pattern is from someone's project on Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Patrick-Zein/warp-6-lingonberry-belt

The little blips in the edging are kind of a medium sage/olive green color.  The other colors are red, black, and white.

This pattern is of course just like so many other zig-zag patterns out there, but the colors really help it stand out.  I'd like to try it in other color combos.  It could also be interesting as a 3-hole pattern.

I used the usual big-box store #10 crochet cotton.  I think the weft was leftover crochet cotton from previous tablet-woven bands rather than leftover doily-knitting cotton.  It was red to match the edges.

This band has a bit of torque to it, probably because the edges all lean in the same direction rather than alternating.  I think I'll alternate them next time I do this kind of band (i.e., / \ / for the three edge tablets).  There are 12 tablets total, 6 for the center and 3 for each edge.  The central pattern tablets are 10F/10B and the edge tablets always turn forward.

The unblocked band is about 1/2" wide and about 65" long.

I had thought my next project was going to be a sampler of "double" techniques.  I guess not!  Another exploration of zig-zags is always a fun thing to do.  I have no idea what my next project will be.