Minotaur/ St. Martin’s Press has a wonderful Graphics Arts Department.They have produced another fabulous book cover for the third Will Rees: Cradle to Grave.
Author Archives: Eleanor Kuhns
The Industrial Revolution and the Loom
The Industrial Revolution mechanized the entire process of cloth making. According to Brouty, prior to the invention of the flying shuttle in the 1750’s, three to four spinners were needed to produce enough yarn for a weaver. The statistic I’ve read other places is nine. Anyway, many spinners are needed for each weaver. The flying shuttle, again according to Brouty, quadrupled the weaver’s output. If you think that then people would try to find a way to increase the yield of the spinners, you would be right. The spinning jenny was invented in the mid 1700s and the first spinning factory was set up in 1761 by a gentleman named Richard Arkwright. Samuel Compton invented the spinning mule ten years later (unfortunately for him, he was a talented inventor that had his life threatened several times and died in poverty) and now handweavers were hard pressed to keep up. Pressure mounted for a mechanical loom that could keep up with the spinning machines.
Hand spinning and weaving, a honored and important job (primarily done by women) became a ‘craft’. Most people don’t even think of the connection between the clothing on their backs and the process by which it got there.
The Jack Loom
The jack loom is a horizontal loom; i.e. the warp runs horizontally and most of the size is front to back, not up and down. The weaver can sit on a bench. With the vertical looms, like those still used in Scandinavia and previously in Greece, the warp threads hang down and the weaver must stand on a stool or the floor itself must be lowered to provide enough room.
A loom this size could easily be put into the back of a wagon and transported from place to place, as I have my main character/detective doing in my historical mysteries. This is a back view, by the way. The white canvas is for the back apron. I prefer to have my finished cloth roll up on the back beam so i tie on the warp threads to the back and then thread them through the heddles and the reed.
Heddles; what are they? I’ve mentioned them several times and then someone emailed me and said I don’t know what heddles are. Well, mine are long metal wires with an eye exactly like a needle. Mine are made of metal, but the looms I saw in Greece had thread heddles. I think I would find weaving with those confusing.
In the first photo, it is possible to see three of the four sheds. Each one has its own set of heddles. Threaded and tied up to the treadles, these sheds make it possible to weave many patterns.
And finally, the reed. The dents, or spaces, determine the fineness of the fiber and is another mechanism for keeping each thread smooth and untangled. I hope you can see the spaces here. Weaving with silk, for example, requires a reed with many many slots,
More about treadles
My husband and I just returned from Greece. Partly research, partly vacation. Anyway, I spent some time looking at looms. The vertical loom seems to have disappeared. At least I didn’t see any. The looms I saw were similar to the jack loom I own, except less sophisticated. Instead of metal heddles ( the needle like things that the warp threads go through), these looms used string. Instead of a castle, or upper frame that holds the heddles, posts were erected on each side. And instead of five treadles, these looms only had two. Only simple weaving could be done with these. Like my loom, however, these treadles are tied up to the sheds so that the threads are raised and lowered in turn.
Adventures at Bouchercon
Had an appointment to talk with my editor at Bouchercon. Sounds simple, right?
Well, let me tell you about driving in Albany. The Hilton was not on any of the maps I had and the GPS sent us to a Hilton on the other side of the city. Mapquest and the GPS both send the driver along Washington Ave – which just stops!
Once I got to the Hilton I roamed around outside looking for the door in. Finally, some kind cleaner let me in the back door. The hotel is so modern it is difficult to find unnecessary items like doors.
After my meeting, I walked over to the Egg for my panel discussion. Very interesting and fun and I was really impressed by my panel mates: M. E. Kemp, Leslie Wheeler, Simone St. James, and Mel Bradshaw. After the panel I wandered around, ate lunch, went to the book room, and discovered to my horror that I had a line waiting for me to sign books
Yipes! Memo to self: always be prepared to sign.
I hope I do better next year in California!
Bouchercon
One of the new experiences that came with my new status as a published writer is writers’ conferences. Been to many librarian conferences but these are new. This is my second Bouchercon and I greatly enjoy them. Yesterday, before the opening ceremonies, I attended the annual party given my Minotaur (St. martin’s Press/Macmillan) for the authors. I cannot fully describe the thrill of seeing some of the rock stars of the writing world. Julia Spencer-Fleming, Louise Penney, Charles Finch. I met for the first time some of those who’ve reviewed my books: Lourdes Venata, Oline Coghill. The party was held on a veranda overlooking the city of Albany, and what a beautiful view it was too.
All in all, a really great experience.
Dyeing with indigo
I’ll return to looms next blog. But I wanted to post about the indigo dyed sweater. Indigo loses strength with repeated dyeing I like the marbled effect but if one dyes the fiber in successive batches, as I did, the later skeins of yarn are lighter. See the sleeve? Still a few bits of darker dye, but overall the color is a lot less intense. Just FYI for all the dyers out there.
Some semi-modern looms
There are any types of looms other than those previously discussed.
The drawloom and the jacquard loom both allow a weaver to weave a complex pattern without manually lifting individual threads.
First, a description of harnesses. A loom that makes four sheds (remember: that’s the space that allows the shuttle to pass through )allows a weaver to construct more complicated patterns than one with two. An eight harness loom allows more variation than four. The compound harness loom, also described as a staggered harness loom, allows a loom to function as though it has many many harnesses. The invention has been ascribed to many different countries but it certainly appeared in China, allowing weavers to create silk brocade. Drawlooms required an assistant to sit on top of the harness and pull the heddles that controlled the pattern in the proper order. The assistant was call the drawboy (or sometimes the drawgirl Can you imagine this job? Can you imagine that job?).Pre-constructed patterns were required to produce the desired result.
The very thought of putting a child on top of a loom makes me shudder!
Treadles and Gas Pedals
My husband has nicknamed treadles the gas pedals. He is not far off. Treadles do have an important function in weaving. They enable a weaver to create patterns in the weaving. As I said for the backstrap loom, the weaver picks up the individual threads. Treadles remove this step (no pun intended). The weaver steps on the appropriate treadle, which picks up the threads that the weaver has tied on to the metal rings. As these threads are lifted, the pattern is created. This enables the weaver, in combination with the threading through the reed and heddles, to make patterns, and, even for a four shed loom, fairly complicated ones.
Usually, the pattern is repeated across the warp.Look at an antique coverlet and you will see what I mean.
Since I have a four shed loom, I mainly use four treadles.
Treadles are one of THE Main features of modern looms. According to Broudy, the treadles appeared in Europe about 1000 AD. The loom frame was not far behind. And, by the time silk reached Europe, weaving was already a highly developed art. Looms and weaving patterns developed in response to the fiber used and whether tapestries or other elaborate weaving would be done. Flax, although hard to process into linen, has smooth non-sticky fibers that lie together. Wool is a more forgiving fiber and takes dyes well. Silk is different from both. But whatever the fiber, and however the threads are warped and threaded, the treadles make the weaving of a pattern much easier than picking each strand up by hand.
Early looms – warp weighted
No discussion of early looms would be complete without mentioning warp weighted looms.
As I mentioned in a previous post, weights have been discovered in archeological digs. The earliest date from the seventh century B.C. in Anatolia. In Europe, this type of loom was used since Neolithic times ( and according to one of the books I read is still used in Norway!). It is thought that this is the type of loom used in Ancient Greece.
What makes this loom different? Well, most of the modern looms are oriented horizontally. The weaver sits on a stool or bench. The warp runs from a front beam through the reed and heddles to a beam at the back. The tension or the warp threads can be adjusted by tightening the beam. The warp weighted loom is oriented vertically. In a warp weighted loom, the weaver stands.Moreover, she must walk back and forth and she pushes her shuttle through the sheds. How did she obtain several yards of cloth? With the modern jack, the warp can be very long and rolled around the front beam, and unrolled gradually as the weft threads are woven through. From what I’ve read, the warp weighted looms were tall. From the descriptions, she would have had to stand on a stool for the first bit of weaving. And pieces of cloth would have had to be sewn together to achieve the necessary length.
Tension is very important. To achieve a closely woven cloth, the warp and weft threads must be tightly packed together. So, the warp in every loom is under tension. In the warp weighted loom, warp threads are tied around weights that hang to an inch or so above the ground. Sticks would have had to be put through the warp to form the sheds.
All in all, weaving with this type of loom would have been much more physical than with a more modern loom. And, as a weaver, I wonder how it would have been possible to create the different patterns possible to construct on even a four shed jack loom.
A word about Norway and the Norse. The warp weighted loom is the type that would have been brought to the Norse (and Viking) colonies. Think Iceland, Greenland, and even early North America. Remnants of these looms, as well as cloth and weights, have been excavated from digs in all these areas. Ostergard, in Woven Into the Earth, discusses the digs in Greenland and the artifacts removed from just such a dig. The colonies were originally established during the middle ages. I always thought that the name Greenland was a lie, chosen to lure colonists to a harsh and forbidding land. But the climate during this time was much warmer than it became later. In England, the climate was so warm grapes were grown and England had its own wine industry. But after the eleventh century, the climate became much colder. (It is call the Little Ice Age). So much for English made wine. And the climate in Greenland (and in North America) became too harsh for these colonies and they had to be abandoned. Or else the colonists died out.
An interesting study of the burials in North America shows that the bones, coming forward, show evidence of starvation and nutritional deficiencies. The dead also had to be buried in much more shallow graves since the permafrost line rose and graves couldn’t be dug as deeply as formerly.
Weaving and an interest in looms has led me far afield.