In the European Textile Forum 2024, we explored edges and embroidery - two things that may not have too much in common at first glance. But if we look closer... there are connections!
For 2024, we were asking for papers, presentations, and workshops that look at edges, whether those of clothes, fabrics, or fabric parts, and at embroideries. Of course we wanted also to consider the intersection of these two - such as the treatment of cut edges by decorative stitching, or the treatment of the edges of embroidered elements that are applied to another fabric.
From the humble plain selvedge in weaving and the problems it may pose to elaborate edges of bands worked in a tubular structure or including fringes; the treatment (or non-treatment) of cut edges in garments; embroideries worked on to edges or embroideries in the middle of a base fabric, all aspects of edges and embroideries were welcome.
Contributions to the Forum in 2024 were:
Katrin Kania, Germany: Pretty and Strong. Different edge solutions for different purposes.
Many different edge solutions have been used on historical textiles - some of them clearly also designed to be decorative as well as functional. A little overview on some edge solutions will be given, followed by a workshop to explore some of the techniques and try out how to make them.
Veerle van Kersen, Belgium: (Re)constructing ancient Egyptian edge weaving technology: experiments with discontinuous selvedges and supplementary weft fringes
Fringes were an integral part of the Pharaonic Egyptian weaving tradition(s), and can be seen in many depictions of clothing, whether in statues or in paintings. However, no systematic study has investigated exactly how these fringed selvedges were achieved, although numerous examples have survived in the dry Egyptian desert sands.
In recent research, several hundred woven edges have been studied on textiles from excavations and museum collections dating back to the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom.
Close examination of these has revealed the wide variety of methods used to construct the edges, including various forms of fringed edges constructed with a discontinuous weft and/or a supplementary weft. These weaving techniques are difficult to recognise at the small scale of the surviving examples, but become much easier to interpret with the aid of experimental reconstruction.
This paper will present the most common weaving techniques used in ancient Egyptian selvedges, and shows how experimental reconstructions can help in the study of ancient textile technology.
The paper will be accompanied by a workshop in which participants are encouraged to try out these selvedge weaving techniques in different materials, and test their gained practical knowledge by interpreting each others results.
Anne Kwaspen, UK: Selvedges of the Pre-Columbian Mantas of the Muisca and Guane Societies.
In the period prior to the Spanish conquest of Colombia, the Muisca and Guane, societies living in the Oriental Cordillera of the Andes, made cotton cloths called mantas. Mantas are large rectangular woven cloths. The ornaments were woven-in using the complementary warp technique as the basic structure. I have studied two types of manta. The first are large, plain white woven mantas or white mantas with wide side stripes woven with the complementary warp technique using dark brown warp threads next to the white ones. After the weaving is finished, these mantas are painted with geometric figures. The selvedges of these mantas are wave-like due to the subsequent use of several weft threads instead of one continuous weft thread. The other type of manta are smaller woven rectangles, with ornamentation ranging from narrow brown stripes near the edges to mantas with almost an all over design, again in complementary warp technique, or more complex derivatives of this technique. The main colour may be white or red. The selvedges of this second type of manta are simple selvedges or tubular selvedges. The tubular selvedges again show that these textiles are woven with several successive weft threads. This paper will describe the selvedges in detail and explain what information about the weaving is included in these selvedges.
The presentation will be followed by a workshop to test weaving the different tubular selvedges on vertical two-beam loom and on backstrap loom.
Mirjam Kaufmann, Italy: Artificial Pearls on a tablet woven band from the grave of Siegfried von Westerburg (+1297)
Several textile fragments were found in 1946 during excavations at the St. Kassius Stift in Bonn in the grave of Siegfried von Westerburg, archbishop of Cologne (+1297). In preparation for the exhibition of the textiles at the LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn, they were recently examined, documented and conserved in the textile conservation workshop of the Abegg-Stiftung (CH).
In addition to silk brocade wefts and gold threads, beads were woven into a tablet woven band from the find: blue glass beads and artifical pearls form a cross ornament. These artifical pearls are probably the earliest surviving ones, although instructions for making similar pearls can be found as early as the 3rd century, in the Papyrus Holmiensis and in recipe collections from the 15th and 16th century. The numerous recipes could indicate the more frequent use of artifical pearls, which have not yet been recognized on preserved textile objects or have been lost due to their poor ageing properties. Only on later textile objects similar artificial pearls are present, for example the so called “Römische Perlen” in reliquaries from the 18th century onwards.
Only a few, heavily degraded remnants of the artificial pearls are preserved on the tablet woven band. FTIR-analysis show that the pearls consist of a gypsum core with a coating of a gelatine material. Based on the material analysis of the preserved pearls and instructions from surviving recipe collections, the aim is to try how the manufacture of such pearls could have worked and how they might have looked like originally.
Katrin Kania, Germany: Before the Embroidery.
From embroideries with missing stitches, we know very well that inks have been used to pre-draw on light fabrics, such as bleached linen or undyed silk. But what about darker fabrics? Soap and chalk will only give a temporary mark and are not very well suited for this task. During the last analysis of the cloaks from the Diözesanmuseum Bamberg, traces of a light-coloured substance used for pre-drawing for the embroideries was found. The basic ingredients could be determined via FT-IR-Spectroscopy, but their relation to each other is, unfortunately, unclear.
During this year's Forum week, there will be a "test cooking" done to see how the three detected ingredients (protein glue, bone ash, and gypsum) might be combined into a paint or pencil to be used on fabric.
Janet Levi, Israel: Edges, Embroidery and Embellishments of Fabrics from Nahal Hemar, Israel c. 10,000 Years ago with a Broad Regional Fibre Technology Continuum into the late 20th Century CE
Nahal Hemar, Israel an isolated cultic cave in the Judean Desert dated late 8th-early 7th millennium BCE features the earliest fabric assemblage in the Old World. The fabrics all of plied linen yarn created on the thigh without a spindle were manufactured in knotting, looping, interlinking and weft twining techniques. Finely crafted weft twined fabrics, c.30 x 17cm, 11 warps per cm, of unknown function feature non-functional edging with buttonhole/blanket stitch, a recognized embroidery stitch, apparently worked with a fine bone needle. Also recovered were 2 tassels made from continuous loops of yarn bound together at one end. Pastes of powdered red ochres and green dioptase were impressed into the surfaces of the yarn. The tassels were not terminal ends of a fabric but specifically made as tassels for attaching to a fabric. La pièce de resistance of the assemblage, recovered from the deepest level, is a conical, head-hugging mesh cap, the earliest known item of dress, created from symmetrically arranged conglomerates of reef knots. It is reminiscent of intricate macramé. This artifact crafted in 3 techniques was further embellished with perforated shells from the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea and a bead of blue-green chrysocolla sourced to the copper bearing region 200 kms to the south of the site.
The diversity of the Nahal Hemar fabric assemblage and fine workmanship attests to a fibre tradition developed and transmitted over generations. Fabric techniques attested at Nahal Hemar continued to be transmitted throughout the region, albeit in spindle-spun wool, amongst both settled and nomadic populations from the Persian Gulf to the Nile Valley until the late 20th century CE. Buttonhole stitch was the favoured stitch for joining two edges, albeit in a developed mode, stitching simultaneously with two needles each with a different colour thread. Bands of hand-manipulated patterned weft twining appear on most woven textiles…furnishings, rugs storage bags etc but not clothing and specifically manufactured tassels adorn most textiles but particularly camel gear accentuated by motion.
Micky Schoelzke, France: Fake Purple Experiment
As an ongoing project, work on the "fake purple experiment" continued, with more test dyeings by Micky Schoelzke.