Fine wool fabric from warp weighted looms

Those old timers made nice fabrics.  We see small samples of fabric where the were protected from decay by to toxic effects of metal buttons.

I see the fabrics, and I ask, "How did they make them?"  What tools and skills did they have?

The archaeology field reports say they had loom weights, and the published papers go on to conclude that they actually had the entire loom.  :  )

OK, but was that loom used for that sample of fabric, or some linen or hemp or nettle or other material that has been lost?  Hard to say.

The fabric was traded great distances, so they made a lot of that fabric, and were really good at it.  Did that sample of fabric come from that set of loom weights, or did that set of loom weights support another trade network, or was that loom used for a local product that was not traded?

So, I sit there and I look at the picture of that Bronze Age stone floor with its little piles of loom weights, and I note that no Bronze Age organic artifacts were found in the structure.  The user's manual for the loom was missing. There was no artwork, no jewelry, no potsherds, and no fabric samples. The fabric samples are from a grave of the same period, but many miles away.

And she wants me to prove that they had sectional beam and tension box.

I had spin some replica yarns.   I trie them on various approaches to warping, and I come away with a new appreciation for the skill of the weavers of that sample of fabric.  It is easier if I block the yarn, so I worked on blocking the yarn for a while (months),  but that changed the nature of the fabric. 

There are only so many ways to warp a loom.  One can take a sample of proposed warp and see how it behaves with each approach to warping.  If there are several approaches to warping that work with that single we cannot say, they likely did it this way or that way.  However, if there seems to be only one way that is plausible given the technologies of the time, we can say they likely did it this way.

Do I care how they made that fabric? No, I just want to make fabric that is as good or better.  Is this a scholarly journal? No!  Am I being paid for my research? No.  I just want to reverse engineer a way to make fabric as good or better.  Along the way, I am going to announce my conclusions and observations.  I am going to throw out any ideas that I have.  And I think like Sherlock Holmes.

By a process of reverse engineering and elimination, we get to warping the loom with a sectional beam, tension box, and bobbins.  This is for a fine wool warp, not silk, not linen, not hemp, and not nettles.  My understanding is that only way to get the fabric that I want is to use unblocked singles.  So, I need some way to keep the singles under tension at all times.  If they get loose for a minute, they are likely to tangle, and if they tangle, they are likely to break, or at least burn daylight as I untangle them.

Data and  lack thereof

Note discussion of  Body Wrapping 3 on page 26  et seq of http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25731/25731-h/25731-h.htm  

And note the discussion on Roman and Greek art related to weaving on pg 33 of the same text.

Note that Roman looms do not survive, but that the Romans are presumed to have had 2-beam horizontal looms because of some of the fabrics that do survive.  However, these are not mentioned by any Roman authors, and the first depictions are in the middle ages.

Note discussion of Roman looms and lack of documentation at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/cr_16.pdf  page 552.  Note the problems with the draftsmanship on one of the depictions as finished cloth appears where we would expect the warp weights to be. This is pretty typical of art and technology. 

If we look in; The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Volume 1, we see on page 121 that an advanced type of loom (horizontal, 2- beam) was in Germanic Europe as early as the Sixth century.

What we do not have; is good documentation of that South Asian loom that made Body Wrapping 3 above.  What we have is a very fine, very early fabric from some loom in Southern Asia for which we have no description or depiction. The depictions of Egyptian looms are all of weaving linen.

Let us return to the excellent depiction of Telemachus and Penelope in front of Penelope's loom. It was done 1,100 years after the Trojan war (and time of Telemachus and Penelope) . Hardly a depiction of current loom technology.  And, we note that the loom contains an extra beam to hold extra warp. That extra beam was a prototype of a sectional beam.  By its nature, the beam can be divided into sections and yarn wound on each section. They were making carts and know how to make axles, rotating wheels, and beams.  

 If it is the traditional loom that Penelope would have used in the Bronze Age, then it is not likely the loom in use in Classical Greece at the time of the depiction. If it is the loom in use in the Classical Greek Era, then it is not likely the loom used in the Bronze Age. This is not what I would call good contemporary documentation of a loom.  So it is with the other Greek art related to weaving.  Basically we have a gap in western loom documentation from the Middle Kingdom to the Middle Ages.

That is exactly how I would make a vertical, weighted-warp loom.  I would wind the warp on a back beam, and run each thread through a weight and  and tie it to the top beam.  Then, I set my beam holding the extra warp behind the loom with the weights hanging down to provide tension. Then, I could wind finished cloth onto the top beam, and unwind additional warp from the additional beam.  The weights do not even have to be tied to the warp, but can slide along the warp providing continuous tension to keep the warp on both sides of the weight from tangling. Do I need to make you a model of such a loom?  

There is no reason in the world why a sectional beam can not be used with warp weights on a vertical loom to manage long warps when weaving bolts of cloth.  And, it greatly speeds the work.  It is how a professional weaver would do it.  No, it is not in the record, but it has been a thousand years since an industrial weaver has used vertical, weighted-warp loom technology, and we may have forgotten some things.  I expect a weaver's  loom to be constructed with the same skill as a miller's water mill or a blacksmith's trip hammer.  I see a weaver's loom as a capital investment that was expected to generate income for a very long time, and some care would be taken so that the weaver could work as fast as possible to generate as much income as possible.  I am not talking about subsistence weaving.  I am talking about a tool for a talented professional weaver turning out cloth that appeals to the rich and powerful, thousands of miles away -- as in Body Wrapping 3 getting to Egypt from South Asia.