The two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum

Hmm, I forgot to post a follow-up when I finished the two-hole band from the Brooklyn Museum.

I finished it in about a week, definitely before starting the next band.  It's about 7/8" wide, about 67" long.  As a reminder, it's a 32-card band, two 4-threaded edge tablets (one on each side), and 30 2-threaded pattern tablets.  I think it's a little bit wider than the original, not that I care about that.  The pic above is unblocked and shows both sides.

I didn't change the weft tightness at the other end to match my experiments at the beginning, mostly because I was tired of the band and just wanted to get it done.  Also, with a band this long, it's not hugely noticeable.

I am totally fine with turning edge tablets every other time rather than every time.  I think it might make a little bit of difference in how firmly I can beat the weft, though I don't think it's a huge overall impact.  It did mean that I didn't have to work out excess twist all that often.  The pattern area is twist neutral, so twist only accumulates in the edge tablets.  With turning each edge every other time, twist accumulated half as much.

The band is cute enough.  I rather like the little one I did better, though (the one from the bands in the Louvre).

Other than that, I don't have much to say about it!

Next up -- I don't know.  As usual.  Maybe I'll chart out several possible Coppergate bands (i.e. make charts that are consistent with the evidence I have, which may not be fully accurate).  Or maybe I'll do something entirely different.

I am doing more reading about pre-medieval Anglo-Saxon tablet weaving -- there are a few other papers written by Penelope Walton (Rogers) about cemetery finds.  There's quite a lot of variety in the techniques that were used.  Interesting...  I'm still trying to match some of her terminology to my understanding of what those terms refer to.  But it's all very cool, and I hate that it's so hard to do good internet searching these days to find out more.

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!

Brocade Sampler, 8th and maybe the last post -- it's finished!

Done!

Here are the last few in-progress pics:

The top photo is a 13-tablet pattern taken from Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstances, p.120.  It's the border from band "2. Band on the chasuble attributed to St. Wolfgang, Bishop of Regensburg, 11th/12th century".  I did two repeats.

The middle photo has two motifs.  The one on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from the Saxon Rabbit handout, from Grave 44 mid 6th century, Lyminge, Kent, pattern 10 in the Crowfoot paper.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The longer one on the right is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, No. 76 (fol 79v), p.56.  I did 4 pattern repeats.

I ran out of background weft at this point.  The new stuff is the same color but maybe a bit thicker and softer.  It doesn't matter.

The bottom photo has the last two motifs.  The motif on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #214, p.179.  I did 2 repeats.  (Hmm, it would look nice with a pearl or pretty bead in the spot between motifs.)  The motif on the right, the last one, is a 13-tablet pattern, a motif adapted from EC&AC, p. 134, pattern "17. Bands on a pontifical skull cap, 11th/12th century".  I did the little diamond motif on the upper left part of the chart, 2 diamonds and then one more row to close up the upper diamond.

I maybe could have gotten one more small motif in, but I decided that was enough, and so endeth my first brocade sampler band.

Fresh off the tablets, unblocked, the band is about 5/8" wide and about 63" long.

There are 25 different motifs.  Wow.  I didn't even get to all of the charts I'd printed out, and also didn't end up making up more of my own patterns.

Many of the motifs look better in person.  The brocade weft is shiny enough that it affects how the pics look.  Not surprisingly, the later motifs tend to look better than the earlier ones I did.

I'm still working on consistency though I'm getting better.  Adding a brocade border stripe, as many of the historic patterns did, probably helps with that since then the slight angle difference at the turning points will be in the edge stripe rather than in the main motif.

I really like the interplay of positive and negative space -- both the brocade and the tiedowns (in the background warp) make interesting patterns.

I'm pretty sure I managed to not accidentally weave any swastikas.

Brocade is pretty easy as tablet-weaving techniques go, at least for the basics, and really about the same, time-wise, as other fiddly tablet-weaving techniques.

I'll definitely do brocade again!  It'll be interesting to do it with silk and/or metallic threads, similar to the materials used for many of the historic bands.

Now to decide what project I feel like doing next.  So many possibilities but nothing is screaming at me.  So I'll do some thinking and browsing of books and websites and what-not to see what appeals.

Brocade sampler, sixth post

Wow, I'm really spamming my own blog with every little bit of progress on this sampler brocade band!

This is the brocade motif from the 10th-century Chernigov, Ukraine band.  I used the chart from Aisling's website.  Here is where she discusses it (with a link to the chart): https://aisling.biz/index.php/galerie/historisch/fruehmittelalter/262-chernigov-ukraine and here is the chart: https://aisling.biz/images/brettchenweben/Anleitung/Chernigov.pdf

This is a fairly popular band -- I found a good half-dozen or so examples of it that people have woven.  What is interesting to me is that most of the ones other people have done use a thinner brocade weft that lies flatter, so that the background-warp tiedowns are more prominent and noticeable.

Hmmm.  That is something to ponder for future bands.  I know that the interaction of background warp and brocade weft threads are one of the issues people deal with when weaving brocade.  I might not be doing those kinds of experiments with this sampler band since I don't have thin metallic thread lying around.  But I wanted to note this specifically so that I am reminded on future tablet-woven brocade projects.

The ones I see online also have the extra strip of brocade as part of the edge pattern (19 tablets total rather than the 11 needed for the center motif).  I have no idea if or how that affects things.

There are three repeats above, each 26 rows, and it's an 11-tablet pattern.  I messed up a bit on the first repeat, oops, but it's not too noticeable.  It's a cute pattern.  I like it, though I do prefer other people's versions, where the background tiedowns really stand out against the gold and silver bling.

This was another chart where the tick marks referred to the tiedown and blanks were brocaded squares.  This means I'll be confused for a few rows on the next motif if it's charted in the opposite way!  But again, it's interesting to think about positive vs negative space and how brocading can emphasize either the pattern of the brocade weft or the pattern of the background-warp tiedowns.

I'm probably more than half down with my sampler band.  It's not going to be particularly long or anything.  Most of these little snippets of motifs are a mere few inches long.  I believe all of them are fewer than 100 row, each with 2-4 rows of plain tablet-weaving between them.

Dunno if I'll do any more brocading today.  If not, then there will be another post after the next few motifs are done!  (or if there's something I particularly want to mention, as I did today)

Brocade sampler, fifth post

I might do another motif or two today, but just in case I don't, here's what I've done recently on my little brocade sampler band.

The one on the left is another 6th century Saxon band, from the Saxon Rabbit handout.  (I don't think it's in the Crowfoot paper.)  It's from Sarre, Kent.  I think I did about 6 repeats.

The middle one is Birka B18.  I used the chart on Aisling's website, not that it really needs a chart.  I did 5 repeats.

The one of the right is from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, pattern number 85 (fol 83r), the middle pattern on p.47.  I did 2 repeats.

Birka B18 is a 10-tablet pattern and the other two are 9-tablet patterns.

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Random free-association verbiage:

These Saxon patterns are still a bit hard for me to do well with this particular brocade thread.  The over-1-tablet vs over-3 tablet sections don't quite have the same consistency in the way they look, which obscures the pattern somewhat.  They look good at some angles but not all angles.  Looking back at the earlier ones I did, the little ones where most of the brocading went over 1 tablet are the most effective, at least for this brocade thread and my current level of competence (near-novice).

I like the Anne Neuper pattern.  The pattern of the background is interesting and sufficiently contrasting with the brocade.  And most of the brocade is over 2 or more tablets so the pattern appears more consistent.  A lot of the smaller patterns in the Modelbuch are these kinds of zigzags and diamonds -- they've very distinctive and self-consistent in their design sensibilities.  And yeah, it would have been cool to see the original patterns with their distinctive notation in addition to the modern charting.  I like that Claudia Wollny did that for the Col. Pad. Germ. 551 patterns.

The Birka B18 pattern is also nice.  Simple and easy, but effective.

I don't know how many Birka patterns I'll want to do (not now, but eventually).  Some people have a goal of weaving all of them.  Many of them are not particularly appealing/attractive to me.  Several have swastikas, which are too poisoned by modern political horrors, and I won't knowingly weave that motif.

I like the version of B2 I've seen, where there are interlocking braids separated by Xs, sometimes alternating with a stretch of the variation that is shown in fragment f (figure 19 f) in the Birka report.

B12 (figure 19 i) is something I've woven as a 4-threaded diagonals pattern, many years ago.  I didn't know it was originally a brocaded band from the Birka find.  I don't know if I'd want to do it again as a brocade.

B22 (figure 20 b) is kind of interesting, both the lower part (the interlocking brickwork) and the more elaborate upper part.  The lower part of B6 (figure 20 a) is cute, but the upper part has too many swastikas.

None of the others that are in the Birka report on p.82-83 interest me at the moment.  Hmm, I wonder where the other bands can be seen, since B18 is not in the sketches on p.82-82.  Oh, duh, they're photographed in the back of the book, in the various tables.  I should see if there are more motifs that look fun, though it's kind of hard for me to make out the patterns except for a few fairly clear areas.  I greatly respect the people who decipher and re-create the patterns in these archaeologic specimens.

There are some cool patterns I want to do from the Nancy Spies Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstance book.  That might be another warp, since a lot of the ones I want to try are a minimum of 15 tablet patterns and I only warped up 13 tablets.

There are other patterns that are on Aisling's website I want to try.  Some require more than 13 tablets, alas, but a few are narrower.  They're on my list...  And maybe I'll do more from her Egyptian tablet weaving book.

Now that I'm starting to feel comfortable with basic brocade, I'm thinking about "what next?"  Do I want to try anything else new with this band beyond a sampling of motifs, such as a second brocade color or a different brocade thread?  What kind of brocade do I want to make an entire band from, if anything?  Or should I do shorter sections?  Something that could be fun is a belt with occasional brocaded motifs, possibly made with little metal studs every now and then between the brocade.  Or I could do short lengths for cuffs or keychains or bookmarks.

Also, what do I want to tablet-weave next?  (and that's in addition to thoughts about sprang, fingerloop braiding, kumihimo on the marudai, spinning, knitting, and other semi-obsessions)  Icelandic double-cloth or pebble weave?  More brocade?  Some 2-hole or Sulawesi or 3/1 twill?  More cords?  Or something else entirely?

Here's a close-up of the Anna Neuper pattern no 85 again, just because:

No, it's not perfect, and yes, my cat has been sitting on it.  But it is cute.  And it shows that I am improving.

I'm glad that brocade is now something I've tried, that I'm comfortable doing, and that I'm willing to do again.