This year looks much better for in-person, on-site conferences than last year - though there's nothing really secure still at the moment. However, not only the Textile Forum is betting on everything being good enough, EXAR is also planning a conference this year.

It will take place in Perl-Borg, in a Roman villa museum; I've been there several times for Reenactment fairs, and it's a really beautiful place with lovely people running it. The EXARC conference is scheduled for September 23-26, and the topic is "Experimental Archaeology in Science and Education 2021". The Call for Papers is open until July 31, and registration for the conference is open as well. You can find out more about the conference here, and also register for it.

Talks will be in English and German, with a yet unknown ratio of the two languages. The board asks that slides for the presentations should be bilingual or in the other language than the one used for speaking so that everyone can follow along somehow.

I'm absolutely delighted that EXAR is using this as their current solution to the language dilemma - the society has developed into a larger, more international one from a purely German start, and a lot of the older members struggle with English as a conference and conversation language. Mind you, some of that struggle is probably due to the fact that Germans often underestimate their abilities in speaking and understanding English, and are a bit shy to use a foreign language because they feel self-conscious for all their mistakes.

I'm a proper German in that regard as well, by the way. I like to get everything right, and I do have to tell myself all the time that making mistakes is not bad, not speaking or writing to practise the other language is bad - and if that means making mistakes, that's good. It has gotten better recently with my wholesale slaughtering of the poor Finnish language, and the medieval French lessons where I also enthusiastically threw around interpretations that turned out to be, um... not quite matching the original content of the text. There was lots of learning that way, though.

It did help that the others in the study group also ventured forth with things they were not sure about, too. So offering up tentative solutions, or trying to talk about something where you might be a bit creative with vocabulary or pronounciation does not only help yourself to learn - it also helps others to maybe be more courageous. Good things all around!

One of the lovely things about doing the Textile Forum organisation is that I'm always learning new things, and getting to know more from other, quite far-away bits of the textile world. Case in point? This article about Tutankhamun's Collar.

I wasn't aware of the fact that a lot of textiles were found in Tutankhamun's grave - though I will mention right now that Ancient Egypt is quite a bit away from the European Middle Ages, which are my main field. The article about the reconstruction shows very, very nicely some of the many different methods that can be used to re-create or re-construct something, for different purposes. It also shows that it is well worth to repeat a process, after comparing the outcome of the work with the original and maybe looking at some additional sources again.

Also: What an ingenious piece of weaving! I'm already looking forward to seeing more of this at the Textile Forum!

Here are a few more pics from the making of the dyeing experiment card...

It took me a while of thinking on how to best present the results. I wanted them to be comparable across both the different metals and the different runs of the experiment. Because of the lack of a reference in the add-on 2013, there were exactly three different samples for each data point, which made things nicely line up in the end.



The cardboard strips were labelled on the back, I wound the threads on and fixed them temporarily with sticky tape, then glued them into place with PVA wood glue. I tried to line them up as perfectly as possible, and in the end, there were only very slight variations from the perfect line.



Another thing I pondered for a while: whether I would write the info necessary by hand, or  print it on. I decided, in the end, to do it by hand - there were bits that I would need to do by hand anyways, as I had not printed the metal name on the strips before winding the threads on, and now it was too late. Because I thought it would be weirder to mix than to do it all by hand... well, there you go.

I chose pencil for the writing - because that is very lightfast, and I didn't have a pen that I was sure would be appropriately lightfast. (Yes, I could have used iron gall ink - in theory, but I am not practised at handlettering with that, and, well... perfectionism, anyone?).



As the final thing, I added a blue card - because I could. Because the exhibition and the light exposure of the samples might just as well serve as a fade test; for that, the strips with yarn are layered so they are half exposed and half protected. The blue card is also half exposed and half protected.

I already did a lightfastness test with samples from the last experiment run, in that case fabric samples, but there was none yet with the yarns from that or the previous runs. This will be remedied now! It is, obviously, not a really perfect and proper test as the yarns have seen a few hours (unknown amounts...) of indoor light before in their existence, but it's better than not doing the test at all, or than not adding the bluecard for the reference... so. There you go.

The whole assembly was then glued to another carrier layer of cardboard, and then everything went into a parcel and on its merry way to the exhibition. I hope it will be interesting for the visitors!

The MAMUZ, the museum in Asparn/Zaya in Austria, is preparing an exhibition about experimental archaeology (more about it here, in German). The exhibition will then move on as a wandering exhibition, showing objects from archaeological experiments and explaining the objects, and the experiments, in video clips.

So I've been busy doing video stuff, including the cutting and editing, and doing all the other bits and things necessary to prepare. What ate a lot of time - much more than I had expected - was making a colour sample card as the object to go in there to represent the Pompeii Dyeing Experiment.  This started in 2012 with a first run, and there was an add-on made in 2013, followed by two more runs of the experiment in 2016 and 2018. The aim was to find out how a metal kettle would influence the results of the dyeing process, both due to the presence of metal in the mordanting bath, in the dyeing bath, and in both.



For the exhibition, I wound the samples onto strips of cardboard, grouped by kind (mordant, dye, both) and by metal. Nine turns of the thinner wool, used in 12/13 and 2018, and six turns of the thicker wool used in 2016. All neatly in the same position on each strip...



...and it's amazing how much of brain such a simple task can eat.

My personal main takeaway from this experiment, by the way, is the importance of repetition - plus a much higher appreciation of just how much variation natural materials can introduce, and how much of a role sheer luck plays in even the best controlled experiment.

In the 2012 run, we ended up with a reddish colour on the yarn dyed in the copper and the clean lead kettle - which made a kettle made from lead with an oxide layer on the surface the neutral kettle, very close to the actual control dyed in a glass jar with no metal plate added at all. In the following runs, we were never able to reproduce that reddish colour - apart from the iron, our samples all turned out pretty yellow, and much the same across all kettles. If not for that chance aberration in the first run, we would have thought that there is no real difference between the kettle materials, at least not when using madder or birch leaf as a dye.

I'm actually tempted to run the experiment again next time that the Forum will happen (2021, I'm looking at your autumn with a critical eye!), with weld as a dyestuff instead of birch leaf, and see if results are giving us a clear difference there.

Anyway - the card has been finished, which involved lots of glueing, and the use of some of my bookbinding equipment, and now it will go on its way to Asparn!

[caption id="attachment_5775" align="alignnone" width="169"] Pressing with weights until the glue has set...

Another thing that happened while I was away: The interview that Alex Makin did with me and Margit from Alte Künste went live!

In that post, we talk about the process of finding and dyeing the threads for the Cuthbert maniple project that Alex works on, including some details on the problems and decisions made. It was a lovely, exciting, wonderful sub-project for the Maniple Project, and I'm very proud and very happy to have been part of it.

[caption id="attachment_4346" align="alignnone" width="300"] Some of the silks dyed for the project, still in skeins.


You can read the full interview (and see the pictures) here on Alex' blog Early Medieval (Mostly) Textiles. Enjoy!

I'm beyond delighted to be part of an event this coming weekend: The Open-Air Laboratory Lauresham has made their Experimental Archaeology Weekend go digital!



Originally, this was planned as a weekend event at Lauresham, but due to the Corona closures of all museums, and the restrictions on meetings of people outside one's own household, this was of course not possible.

So instead, the weekend event will now take place online, and Lauresham has taken the opportunity to make it more international as well, by having English presentations and German presentations with English subtitles. My contribution will be on as a part of the presentation "Made with gentle hands" on Sunday, 11:30 to 12:30 German time. There will be a discussion on Discord afterwards - all very new and exciting for me!

Go check out the schedule, and maybe I'll see you virtually on the weekend!