Yesterday's blog post fell by the wayside - I was away all day going to set up the loom for the exhibition in Bamberg... and it was great fun. (I also learned a lot! Including a new knot, which is actually a big deal for me, as I seem to be a bit of a knot dyslexic sometimes.)

The loom standing in the exhibition now was the result of a lot of thinking, planning, and the effort of many people. Our idea was to show something about weaving in the era around 1000. Now... that's the time when there's already an inkling of the horizontal loom, but we have next to no good evidence for that (as in "good enough to build a reconstruction from"). So we decided to make a warp-weighted loom.

The original plan was to have a regular one, but the building (which is old) does not allow for a loom to touch the walls. (That's also a possible security issue in an exhibition, as a loom only leaning might fall, and attaching it to the wall was out of the question, as the building itself is under heritage protection). The second plan, having an iron/metal holder for the loom, was out because of budget reasons, so we did end up with a free-standing wooden loom.

It's a proper, nice one, though, not looking as if somebody went collecting a few sticks in the wood and cobbled them together.

(The curious thing is that you can build a functional loom from mostly odd sticks from the woods, provided you make sure that the essential bits that need to be straight are straight. That's harder to do nowadays, though, than making one from cured, available, straight bits of wood, though. So that's what we have.)

The main thing that we wanted to do with the loom was to show that textile production at that time was a high-standing, important, and highly developed part of production, and the resulting objects were of high quality. So we found an expert in warp-weighted loom weaving in Sweden - Marie Wallenberg - who worked together with us to get the idea across to the woodworker, who made an almost perfect loom. One of the folks from Kaptorga made the loomweights (scaled down a little to be lighter, because that helps to not wear out the threads over time - the normal fitted loom is not intended to stay for months or years with the loomweights hanging), and Marie wove a fabric to fill the loom.

If you've seen warp-weighted looms in exhibitions, they are often a crooked thing, with a crooked bit of coarse weaving on them. While that may have happened occasionally, it is not what we would expect them to be in general - after all, they were used to make fine, straight, high-quality fabrics in the past. And that is exactly what we wanted to portray.

So once the loom had arrived from the woodworker and the fabric had arrived from Sweden and I had finished making the Rod of Many Holes to attach the weave to the loom's top beam, I set out to set things up in Bamberg, with Marie coaching me through the process. 

In the NS era, archaeology was used for a lot of propaganda things, usually to show that Germans are The Best Thing Ever and everybody else was, at best, second grade, and that from the Stone Age onwards. Or so. (This, by the way, is said to be one of the reasons why German archaeology after the war became this hard-facts-only science that is rather sparse with interpretations, if compared to how things are done in other countries.)

The Kreismuseum Syke is working on a case that will give some information about archaeology in that era, and while doing the prep and research for that, they stumbled across an interesting history surrounding a Thanksgiving present to Hitler. If you read German, you can follow that story in a digital exhibition on the museum website. (If you don't read German, you're welcome to look at the pictures and old letters there, but the whole thing is heavily reliant on the texts - and it's quite interesting how the writing styles changed over time.)

I think it's a very good idea to do that exhibition case, and the digital exhibition too!

There's an exhibition in Kalkriese in the Varusschlacht-Museum called "Dressed - Rom Macht Mode. It's running until November 24, 2024, and looks at dress and textiles in Roman times. The exhibition includes a lot of hands-on as well as the possibilty to try on garments.

If you're interested, there's more information on the (German) webpage of the museum. 

If you're looking for an excuse for a trip to Switzerland, the exhibition at the Abegg-Stiftung might be just the thing for you. Their special exhibition "The Deceived Eye – Textile Effects and their Simulation" will be shown until 10 November 2024.

The illusionistic depiction of textiles was an expression of consummate artistry even in ancient painting. The same can be said of weaving, tapestry, and embroidery, in which other textiles are simulated with great skill. Examples from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries vividly illustrate their artful play of materials, techniques and the viewer's expectations. 

You can find out more about the exhibition and the opening times on the website about it.

 There's an exhibition opening this weekend - in Lauterbach, about the everyday life on Burg Wartenberg. The exhibition includes some finds that have never been shown before and are not published anywhere as images, plus some finds that have been newly evaluated.

Alas, I won't be able to go there, as I will be in Kamenz demonstrating spinning - but I do hope I'll be able to see the exhibition at some point! 

That's the title of a new exhibition in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, starting October 15 with the opening at 11:00 - so if you are interested in colourful papers, that is definitely something to visit!

The exhibition is about "Buntpapier", coloured papers with a variety of motifs until about 1880 - things that are usually not appreciated on their own, only seen as part of book bindings or other papery items. I am definitely planning to go there while the exhibition is running!

Here you can see a glimpse of what awaits you:

It's paper with floral and architectural elements dating to the first half of the 18th century. Definitely adding some bling! 

If you're interested in the exhibition, here you can find more info (including the extra events going with it). The exhibition itself is free, so if you're in the Bamberg area at some time until January, go check it out!

In the last years, I had the pleasure of doing demonstrations and having museum cooperations that involved quite a bit of travel. There was work to be done in Brandenburg, Lübeck, Emden, Berlin, just to name a few of them. It's lovely to travel there, get to see those places, meet the people and (important part of any travelling I do) sample the local delicacies. 

I'm just as delighted, though, to have a museum cooperation just in front of my own doorstep for a change, though. 

So I am very happy to share with you the  news about an exhibition coming up in my local museum, the Stadtmuseum Erlangen:

I will be doing demonstrations of early textile techniques on the vernissage of the exhibition on May 21, starting after the official opening. There will be additional demonstrations on September 10 and on October 22, starting at 14:00 - plus one for the "Long Night of Science" on October 21, starting at 20:00.

I'm very, very much looking forward to this already. Almost no travel time! (There might still be sampling of the local delicacies, though. I will take any excuse for having delicious food of both the sweet and the savoury type... and Erlangen does offer nice specimens of both. Bonus: No exploring and luck necessary, I already know places to go to for the good stuff!)