Bronze Age! Yes, that's a bit before my usual time span, but I'm getting more and more fascinated by these very early textiles. First of all, I wonder how much of a difference the fibre makes - would you be able to tell, from the touch of the finished cloth, whether the fibre has 15 micron 0r 22, or 30?

I'm also fascinated by an oddness in the weaving technique. The surviving blankets were huge - the one from Egtved was 190 by 258 cm. That is a width that would be hard to handle for a single weaver. Add to that the fact that there are weft crossings in the fabric - there's just one weft per shed, but it's not the same one all the way through. Weft A comes from the left, weft B from the right, and at some point roughly in the middle, both go to the surface of the fabric and cross each other. Then weft A continues its journey to the right in the next shed, while weft b goes to the left, and they turn normally at the selvedge. This sometimes occurs with three weft threads instead of two.

Thanks to the wonderful image database of the Danish National Museum, you can have a look at this weft crossing thing in the Trindhoj blanket here. There's some crossings in the area left of the hole - you can download the image and then go hunting for these oddities with your image viewer of choice.

My suspicion is that two (or even three) weavers worked together on these superwide fabrics, and the crossings are where the spools or sticks or whatever they used changed hands from one weaver to the other.

This is really fascinating, and I'd love to try this out. The only tiny issue is that this requires a superwide loom (with the corresponding large number of weights, and large amounts of yarn), and some other people willing to have a go at weaving... Though a bit of testing might be possible with a loom and fabric with less width, to get an idea of the method, at least.

 

Yay Friday! I'm looking forward to the weekend, even though there might be some work necessary this time - we're nearing the end of the month, and lamentably, I still have not finished my tax paperwork. Sigh. (I think there's not much left to do, but it's been a while since I did the prop work I already did, and thus I need to catch up on the status and do the rest of it.)

If you are looking for something to fall into during the weekend, not tax-related, you could try... Folgerpedia's digital resources. Folger is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, and you can explore a lot of related topics there as well. And from Shakespeare, you can venture off into the world of manuscripts, and early prints...

There's also EMMO - Early Modern Manuscripts Online - where you can browse all kinds of different transcribed books, for instance. These have been transcribed by volunteers, and you can actually become one, too. That's your opportunity to learn early modern scripts... and get a glimpse into letters from back when. Or recipes. Or... well.

 

Resources! Stuff to read and watch!

I always enjoy stumbling across repositories or book lists where you can download fresh, juicy research. (Admittedly, I do download more than I actually read. I'm trying to get everything sorted into my library database, at least, though I'm eternally not caught up with that. The reason? See above - stumbling across repositories... resulting in a little search-and-download splurge.)

My newest discovery is the DiVA portal. That's short for Digital Vetenskapliga Arkivet, a Scandinavian site where you can search for theses and papers from 49 university and research institutions. It looks like it's very well tagged in English, too - searching for "textiles" and either "history" or "medieval" yields a number of results, some of them in English, most in Swedish. Also nice: you can limit the search results to things with full-text available.

Many of these are student papers, so it's research that you don't get to so easily otherwise - delightful to have the possibility to see these via the portal. And if you don't read Swedish (or Norwegian), most should have an abstract in English. Plus you can look at images in any language.

Definitely in English is the upcoming series of the British Library in their Food Season, where there's a number of online events about different aspects of modern and historical food and food culture. If you're a foodie, it's definitely worth checking out.

I've been doing some more sniffing around on the 'Net for a work project, and I've come across this very nice project: The Rode Project, featuring two altars by the late-medieval artist Hermen Rode. One of them is in Lübeck, the other in Tallinn, and both are absolutely spectacular - and you can have a really close look at them in the Rode Project.

Both are from the late 15th century, and you can virtually open them to enjoy the altars in all their aspects - plus see the paintings in infra-red or in normal light. And, of course, marvel at the wonderful things that all the people are wearing!

I've done a little research work these past days, and I've stumbled across, the title might be a hint, free books!

The University Publisher of Kassel University offers books (dissertations, but other types as well) both as printed volumes and as pdf downloads, the latter being entirely free. You can see the whole programme of the publisher here.

Two books that I came across that may be interesting for you, too, are Presche, Christian: Kassel im Mittelalter and Wolkewitz, Ursula: Die gravierten Messinggrabplatten des 13. und 14.Jahrhunderts im Bereich der norddeutschen Hanse - ihre Herkunft und ihre Bedeutung.

There might be more, but unfortunately there is no good search function for the catalogue, and I have not had the time (nor the inclination or patience) to click my way through the long list. In case you find something interesting, too, please let the rest of us know in the comments!

It's Friday, the cat is sleeping, and everything is "back to normal" as in "I thought I'd get much, much more done this week".

At least we have proper winter weather here at the moment, with temperatures below zero and a nice snow cover on the ground. That makes cycling a bit slower, and somewhat both more exciting and more exhausting, but it is feeling really good to have season-adequate weather for a change. (It's also really, really good for the bees, who need colder weather so that the varroa mite situation can be kept under control in the hives.)

So while I'm trying to catch up a bit, here's some links for your delectation and procrastination possibilities!

British History Online is offering all their research free online until April, to make things a little easier for everyone during the lockdown. The online content includes the Calendar of Close Rolls, covering the reigns of Henry III to Henry VII (1244 to 1509).

If that's not colourful enough for you, here's a textiles, garments, and dye glossary. It's an ongoing project for terms from the 17th century.

There's a seminar series called "The Silk Road seminar series", run via Zoom, on several Mondays and some Fridays. It's hosted by the UCL Institute of Archaeology; find out more about it here.
Finally, here's the archive of the Zeitschrift für Lübeckische Geschichte.

Have fun, and a nice weekend!

I've stumbled across a mention of an upcoming deadline for the Janet Arnold Awards - that is a grant given out by the Society of Antiquaries of London. The current awards will focus on dress in colonialism and its legacy; deadline for award applications are in January 2021.

If you think that might be interesting for you, or if you know someone with a project that might be given a grant by the foundation, check out their info page about the awards. And in case you apply: Best of luck!