Why am I so fascinated with looms? Well, partly because textiles themselves fascinate me. I quilt, dye fabric and have tried my hand at weaving. Some hand weavers I know also spin. For most of human history, spinning and weaving were core to, not just the production of cloth, but to a central experience of living. Every culture has some form of weaving. Egyptian paintings, images on Classical Greek pots, excavations in Greenland all speak to the ubiquity of looms and the equipment by which cloth was made. Some times fragments of clothing are discovered as well, clothing that was worn by people of that era

.Looms, in other words, developed in some form everywhere in the world. All looms must hold the warp threads straight, must be able to form sheds (the opening that is formed by lifting alternate threads and allows a space for the weft thread (or shuttle if one has been invented) to go through, and a beater that presses the weft threads together to form the cloth.

Broudy suggests that basket weaving predated weaving with fibers. That makes sense since the reeds or other vegetable matter are intertwined in much the same way as the warp and weft. No loom necessary. Early looms were probably a cord strung between two poles, or trees and the weft is woven from the top. It must be hard to weave this way. But it is easy to see how the warp weighted looms developed. The hanging threads, especially of some softer fiber, would need to be weighted to maintain the necessary tension.

One type of early loom that I find fascinating is the ground loom. Two pegs are driven into the ground at either end. The weaver sits on the floor. Primitive right? Nonetheless, the Egyptians managed to weave sheer  linen in this manner.Sher linen, I might add, that the mechanized looms do not seem able to duplicate.  And linen is a difficult fiber to weave since the linen yarn has no give or stretch.

Anyway, back to the warp weighted loom. Pictures on Greek pottery clearly show looms with weights at the ends of the threads. Weavers were able to weave tapestries on these looms and both Barber and Broudy suggest that the cloth Penelope was weaving while she waited for Odysseus was a story tapestry. (This makes sense. If it were straight weaving, the suitors would have to be idiots not to realize she was ripping out the rows she’d woven during the day. ) Warp weighted looms have also been found in Scandanavia.

I had a question put to me this past weekend. How do looms work? Looms are sophisticated pieces of equipment. In the book Women’s Work, the First 20,000 years, Barber makes the point that the first cloths were actually made of twisted fibers. The process of weaving had not been invented.  There have been a variety of looms (more about that later) but all looms share a few characteristics in common.

First, the primary job of a loom is to hold the warp threads taut. For those of you who are non-weavers, warp threads are the length-wise threads. The weft go crosswise.Unlike knitting or crocheting, in which interlocking loops form the cloth, the warp and weft cross each other at right angles. Different methods of holding the warp taut has been employed through history.

The other important feature is the ‘cross’. If one thinks about cloth, it is easy to see that the various threads don’t just lie upon one another. Each weft thread goes over and under the warp threads.Also, in a block of three weft threads, the middle one goes over and under  a different warp thread. So, there must be some way of lifting the warp threads to insert each one of the weft threads. Now handweavers use a shuttle, but this is a relatively recent invention. Backstrap weavers use their fingers to lift the threads so that the finished cloth is woven in a memorized pattern. Without the cross,(I.e. where the warp threads and weft threads cross) there would be no cloth. Heddles and shed sticks (or the sheds in, say the jack loom) make it easy to lift the appropriate warp threads.  Every other warp thread is lifted and then the alternate threads the next pass of the weft. This is how one ‘weaves’ the threads in and out.

Most of the other inventions connected with a loom basically provide some way to weave a pattern. Modern looms employ heddles (which look like long large eyed needles) and reeds (big comb- looking pieces).The more the slots (or dents in weaver talk) o a reed, the finer the cloth. These separate the threads and by connecting the treadles to the appropriate threads  various patterns can be constructed.

As looms grew more sophisticated. they went from the basic warp and weft (2 sheds)  to multiple sheds. A shed is simply the space between the warp and weft. More sheds mean more combinations for lifting the warp threads and so more patterns.

From out modern vantage point, we think of ourselves as sophisticated and worldly, and the eighteenth century as primitive and insular. Well, that may be partly true. But international trade during the 1790’s was extensive. Salem Mass, as the city that sent out the first American merchant ships, was especially cosmopolitan and affluent to boot.

We learn in school about the search for spices. And spices were a big part of the trade. The first merchant ship that went to India and environs in 1783, the Grand Turk, returned to Salem with pepper and made a profit of 700%.

But spices, although important, were not the only cargo. Ships went out to Russia and traded furs and iron, to India for spices, cloth and opium, and finally to China. One of the trade goods that became such a part of American culture that no one recalls the origin is the humble bandanna. Yes, these simple cloth squares were imports from India and became an essential part of, first, a sailor’s wardrobe, and then a cowboy’s. The fabric used was bandhini (hence the name) which means tie and dye.

Sailors, primarily whaling men. brought back the art of tattooing from Polynesia. This is why early stereotypes of sailors mark them as tattooed; they adopted the practice before it became popular in the wider American culture.

Moreover, People in Salem saw merchants from these exotic countries. Salem is home to one of the first colonies of immigrants in the US.

Salem declined in importance as a shipping port during the 1800s as the harbor began to silt up and Boston took over. But the East India Marine Society established a museum (and a library as well as a number of other institutions) which included artifacts from India and numbered some Indian gentlemen among the donors.

In this image of a child’s sweater, (what I decided to use the indigo dyed yarn for), the different shades of blue are clearly visible. Although I chose to wad up the skein of yarn, so that the strands dyed at different intensities, indigo is usually used in a vat. In a large container like a vat, the fiber can spread out and every part dyes equally.

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hough indigo is a pain to work with, and will dye your sink, your hands, the vat and practically anything it touches, it produces such a wonderful blue that one can’t help but love it.

Besides the silk scarf I dyed, that came out a pastel, I also dyed lambswool. It is intended for a young boy’s sweater. I prefer the tie-dyed look and that is what I got. Usually the fiber is spread out in a vat so that it dyes evenly.

It is easy to see the variation although these strands are primarily lightly dyed.

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Some of the strands dyed the dark indigo, so familiar to denim wearers.

And the skein overall demonstrates the variation, from very light to very dark.