Gold and Silver in Tapestries

The best argument for the timing of the spread and use of DRS spinning technology is the use of gold and silver in tapestry yarns.

Spinning such yarn is difficult to produce with good quality using the various kinds of spindles, or single drive flyer/bobbin assemblies, but is easy to produce using differential rotation speed controlled spinning equipment.  This can be easily demonstrated experimentally using the wire manufactured for wire wrap prototyping.  It is not cheap, but it is less expensive than real gold or silver wire, and has many similar physical properties to well annealed silver or gold (see for example https://www.hooverandstrong.com/bezel-strip-specifications).

Spindles and single drive flyer/bobbin assemblies tend to accumulate twist on a stop and go basis depending on the fiber's capacity to accumulate and distribute twist.  Metal wire does not accumulate twist.  The properties of  wire require a continuous process with no periods of yarn lock.  This is very difficult to achieve with spindles or single drive flyers, but is the normal and standard operating condition of DRS controlled flyers.

Thus, where we see industrial quantities of tapestry yarns being produced containing gold and silver, we can presume that DRS spinning technology was available.  This is reasonable, as such tapestry yarn production also used silk, which provides a direct link back to origins of the DRS technology in the Italian silk industry.

Anywhere you see gold or silver as part of the material in a tapestry, you can be sure that DRS spinning equipment was used to produce or wind the yarn.

Certainly wire can be core spun with fiber as in  http://myspinculture.blogspot.com/2012/10/fiber-wire-how-its-done.html or

Intertwined: The Art of Handspun Yarn, Modern Patterns, and Creative Spinning

 By Lexi Boeger.

However, one purpose of gold and silver in tapestry yarn was to provide more luster to the textile. Frequently, the gold or silver yarns were prepared by wrapping a silk core with a spiral of a flattened band of the metal.  This is the opposite of the modern "fiber-wire" craft.

Producing such yarns with a single drive system requires the takeup from hell, and some kind of a braking device on the silk core. However, once the width of the metal band is defined and whorls made, with DRS, the process is easy and fast.  Both the silk core and the metal band are supplied from reels. The metal band is wrapped around the silk with no twist inserted into to the metal band upstream from the point where the metal is wrapped around the core.  Twist is inserted into the core and must up run up stream from the point where the metal is wrapped around the core.  If the metal band is ~2 mm wide, then about 12 tpi are likely to be inserted into the core. The twist issue limits the use of short fibers such as wool and cotton.  With silk, one can start with -6 tpi, add 12 tpi and end up with 6 tpi which is reasonable. Short fibers cannot go through 0 tpi and remain competent. And a short fiber core with enough twist to be competent, will be over twisted if 12 tpi is added.

The elasticity of silk with the extensibility of the metal spiral make the metal wrapped, silk core lighter, stronger for its weight, and more weavable than solid metal or twisted filigree metal wire constructions. The need for elasticity for weaving limits the use of the bast fibers such as linen or hemp (a spiral metal band around a no-stretch core results in a rigid structure.)

The next time you see a "history of spinning", ask yourself if the history is consistent with the manufacture of yarn for tapestries.  The history of  tapestries with their known provence, industrial scale of production, and severe technical challenges are a good test for any history of spinning.

Do you really think some contract spinner in her cottage is going to have large amount of gold, silver and silk sitting around for making tapestry yarns?  Any history of spinning that does not include the production of tons and tons of tapestry yarns is incomplete.

Why 5,600 ypp?

The old knitting yarns were constructed of many fine plies.  Lace was 2 or 3-ply. Sport weight was 5-ply.  Worsted weight was 6-ply.  Aran weight was 10-ply.

Why?  Why not just go 2 or 3-ply as in the modern mill spun?

Because at about 5,600 ypp, vegetable matter (VM) drops out.

Latter, mills learned to take out VM with acid.  Then they did not need to drop out the VM, and went to 2-ply for everything, because acid treatment and 2-ply was cheaper than spinning fine plies.

If you are spinning acid treated fiber, you can spin any grist at 2-ply because you do not have to deal with VM.  The 2-ply will not be as elastic, but that is a different issue.  (Do you like the texture of mill prepared fiber?  Some do, some do not!!)

However, if you are prepping your own fiber, then spinning fine singles is a part of the easy way to deal with VM -- if you can spin fine and fast.

And, there is the rub.  This approach is only useful if you can spin fine and fast.

The bottom line here is that I come to this as a knitter seeking better yarn at a reasonable price. By and large, I think the mill treated fibers are not as good as the less treated fibers that I prepare myself, so I buy fleece and scour it myself.  I card it myself, and if necessary, I comb it myself.

From prepared fiber to high quality yarn, the easy path is to spin a lot of fine singles and then ply up the grist yarn that I need.  And, I like these yarn better than 2 or 3-ply yarns.

I spin what I like.

Twist and grist in Chaucer's time

From the nomenclature in commercial trade, I expect that in the 15th century spinners could consistently and routinely produce hanks of singles with a tolerance of 3% to 5%.   That is, a commercial spinner (in Flanders) could be expected to consistently produce hanks that weighed between 11.5 and 10.9 grams (e.g., the weight of singles in the 40 - 41 class). The spinner would aim for a weight of 11.2 grams, and a variance of ~3%  would result in a 40 - 41 class.   Overall, it seems clear that weavers on the continent at that time were ordering yarn with grist specified at a precision of plus or minus 3%.

I do not see many modern hand spinners that can do that. It requires a high level of craftsmanship, and I think doing it on a commercial basis indicates the use flyer/bobbin assemblies controlled by DRS, If you do not think that DRS controlled flyer bobbin assemblies were available, then show me how else such control of grist could have occurred on a commercial basis.  That is, show me that you can consistently spin hanks that weigh between 11.5 and 10.9 grams (e.g., 40s - 41s) without using DRS!

This tells us that the flyer/bobbin assembly had moved out of Italy and into France and Flanders, but perhaps not all the way to Yorkshire.  This would explain why Edward III was still seeking to induce textile craftsmen from Flanders to come to Britain. He wanted England to learn the secrets of better spinning.

In Chaucer's time, Italy, France, and Flanders still had a competitive advantage in spinning.  Now, that is a hard thing to explain away.


For back ground see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/how-the-middle-ages-reall_b_5767240.html

and look at Fiske's work on the Dutch.

The end of another chapter in this blog

Using only bushing bearings of bronze-steel, wood-steel, and leather-steel available in 1500, a spinning wheel using DRS can run at 4,000 rpm on a sustained basis. This is based on multiple 6 and 8 hour trials.

In contrast, contestants using spinning wheels at SOAR spinning contests operated their spinning wheels at ~ 500 rpm for 15 minute race periods.

It is clear that a motivated spinner that understands the craft can spin 8 times faster than the average wheel spinner in a SOAR spinning contest. In the 2009 contest, the spindle spinners spun 2.4 times faster than the wheel spinners. However, a motivated spinner that understands the craft and has an appropriate wheel can spin 3.3 times faster than the spindle spinners can spin for 15 minutes, then the wheel spinner can continue spinning at that same rate for another 7.75 hours, so this is not at all a fair comparison.

Working with a wheel running at 4,000 rpm, a spinner circa 1500 could spin about a million yards per year of worsted single with a grist of 10,000 yards per pound.  That would be about 2 pounds of yarn or  40 hanks per week.  Many spinners would require between 44 and 48 hours of to spin 40 hanks, so it would be a long, hard week.  Twenty -two hanks of 40s or or 48 hanks of 10s would be a similar amount of labor.

With that, I am moving on to ball bearings, and other marvels of the 20th century.  With ball bearings the wheel is quieter at 4,500 rpm than it was with bronze bushings at 3,500 rpm.

Commerical Rates

The theme of the last year has been, "How fast could a professional spinner in the 17th century spin?"

My answer at this time is about 30 hanks (of 560 yd) per week of 10s (5,600 ypp), or 10 hanks per week of fines (finer than 30,000 ypp).  This assumes steel against bronze or steel against wood bearings (either with lard oil) .  And, it assumes small flyer/bobbin assemblies with accelerators.

Here are my tools for spinning good yarn at a commercial rate under the apricot tree.

And, a closeup of the ~2 pounds of  sport weight 5-ply produced in ~4 days of spinning:

Note that I use an arm chair for spinning. With DRS, I do not have to wave my arms around.  And, if you are waving your arms around, you cannot spin fines.   I know that Northern Lace does sometimes spin 30,000 ypp singles using long draw, but it is done as a tour de force rather than as a routine.

The new 50 mm whorl for 17 to 20 tpi has been dialed in, and it allows me to spin 5 or 6 yards per minute   of yarns in the range 22,000 to 33,000 ypp.  It is a "kick"!  A hank of  40s only weighs ~10 grams, so I can put the whole hank on a small spinning bobbin.  This saves 10 minutes per hank.  In theory, it will allow more than 2 hanks of 60s per day, but I have not achieved that.

 It is something I was told could not be done.  My practical speed is much greater than the theoretical speed of mass produced lace kits, and I never even come close to the theoretical speed of the Ashford lace kit.  DRS provides productivity that is simply not possible with a single driveband, or double driveband with slippage.

I have been told that I spin thick and thin. Of course, when I am spinning 30,000 ypp and it does not drift apart or break off, the difference in between the thick and thin sections is not very great. I challange my critics to spin 560 yards of worsted single that only weighs 7.5 grams.  When they can do that, then they can talk about my thick and thin.  It is not a big deal, at a relaxed pace, it is less than 3 hours of spinning.