It's been way too long since I've had a proper session of tablet weaving, trying some more to figure out a good method of weaving twilled pattens without a written pattern... but somehow, there's always too little time. (Saying "yes" to too many requests, trying to organise some more workshops, going to fairs plus having to keep up and to cope with all the current bureaucratic bullshit the EU tends to throw at people does not help either.)
There's some links for you at least, though, related to tablet weaving:

Lise Raeder Knudsen has a pdf book about Gotlandish Tablet Weaves on her website, free to download. It's in Swedish, with a very short English summary, but might still be interesting to you for the (slightly grainy, black-and-white) pictures of the originals. You might also want to check out her other publications in the list, which are partly available to download.

Tablet weaving, being slightly different from "normal" weaving, is a fascinating thing all around, and I always find it interesting how differently people approach the topic, and from how many different aspects it proves to be... complicated. Case in point: the attempt to write a tabletweaving simulation, published on the Penelope blog. If you are intrigued by how tablet weaving works, check out Sarah Goslee's explanation on the String Pages, she does a wonderful job at explaining the nitty gritty inner workings. (She also has an article about this, with pictures, in Ancient Textiles, Modern Science.)

Amazing how long my bookmarks list is... the unsorted end of it is getting shorter, though.

A large collection of images, although not very searchable and not very straightforward to use (in my opinion, at least) is the Digital Imaging Project with art and architecture (mostly architecture) from North America and Europe, from prehistoric to modern times.

Kornbluth Photography (documenting the Luxury Arts) has photographs from a multitude of objects. The site is not searchable, and it was last updated in 2014, but does have spectacular images of objects from different periods, places and cultures.

The Database Machine Drawings is exactly that - you can search for machine drawings from 1235 to 1650. There's even a carding machine and several spinning mills in there, if you are textile-inclined.

 

After getting sidetracked from getting sidetracked, here we are again - a few more sources for pictures, and this time, I actually have another proper picture database for you. Yay!

It's the Bildindex für Kunst und Architektur, a German-language database that lets you search in the Marburger Bildarchiv (well-known to architects) as well as the image archives of a lot of museums, institutes for heritage conservation and universities. That means oodles of images. Gazillions. No, really, it's lots. Bonus trackback: If you search for "Spindel", you get an image of Mary and the child with spindle by Luis de Morales, featuring a grasped probably perpendicular-armed yarnwinder.

Free1000s has selected artwork from the Middle Ages and more modern times. It has no really good search function, but is nice for a bit of a browse, and there's not too much to browse through if you are looking for medieval art. There's also a link to a newer version of the site, which has different pictures from this one.

Another good database is the Rijksstudio, the image database of the National Museum of the Netherlands. You can even search in English, though using Dutch search terms might be the better choice - as usual.

A collection of stained glass from Britain is available at the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi website. The advanced search allows to look for a specific subject, but my trusted trial search for "spindle" turned up weird results, so it might not be very reliable.

Arachne is an object database for objects of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI) and the Archäologisches Institut der Universität zu Köln. There's predominantly really old stuff - we're talking Antiquity here, so Greek and Roman things prevail.

Europeana is an art and object database that searches collections from various places in Europe. It's available in several different languages, and thus it's possibly worth it to try searching in more than one language for what you are looking for. Not so cool: There's a possibility to use some filters, but I haven't found a filter for the date yet, so you will get all kinds of things from all times.

REALonline is one of my favourite databases, one of the first places I search for stuff, and generally just wonderful. It is mainly a database for artwork, with some objects thrown in for good measure. The site is available in both German and English.

A last one just for the sake of completeness - archREAL is an object database with archaeological small finds; unfortunately this project sort of petered out, and has lain dormant since about 2004. If you want to use the database, you have to ask for a login (due to copyright reasons). It's only available in German.

 

And on we go! Or on I go, and you are along for the ride. Well. Whatever.

We'll start today's list off with another online collections database - that of the National Museums Scotland. If you're looking for things from the Orkneys, among other finds, it's the place for you. (There are spindle whorls and spindles, by the way.)

Not an image database, but a links collection, and a nice way to start off an image serch are the pages from Larsdatter (which you will probably know, but I am listing them here as they have just turned up in the bookmark list, and they are worth a look).

Theoretically an image/object database, but the search function does not work for me, is the Kult.Doku database. (Probably the php scripts are outdated, as the site is from 2003). It collects treasures shown in Austrian Landesausstellungen (big national exhibitions) in a database, with information taken from the exhibition catalogues. You can browse the catalogue entries, though - "Ausstellungen" gets you to a map of Austria, where you can select a federal state. That gets you a list of all the exhibitions there, some of which have their data online and if you click these links, you get the list of objects. A little awkward, but a nice way of getting an overview on things.

A proper database, with tagged images, is Mandragore. It searches images from manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, provided you know the French word for what you are looking for. You will see a thumbnail and can see a slightly larger image as well, but the ones I took a closer look at were usually too small and/or too low in resolution to make out details properly. There is a remedy for that, though, at least in some cases - armed with the knowledge of what image you want to see, from what manuscript and on which folio, heed over to Gallica, the search engine for the BNF, and search there for the manuscript to enjoy the digitised page in very good resolution. You can also use Gallica to search for other images and books.

Did I mention that my list is long? Really, really long? Here we go on, with more links to picture databases and manuscripts:

The Utrecht Psalter, dated to 820-830. There's also a newer, annotated version, where you can get exact inforamtion about which bit of the illustrations corresponds to which bit of the text. No searching for picture contents, though, in either version.

The Harry Ransom center database is called "image database", but it is more a manuscript list - at least my two standard searches for "spindle" and "yarn" yielded no resuls. Searching for "Mary" did - so texts or titles are in the database, but not detailed image contents. (This, by the way, is how I test.) Oldest MS is the Tegernsee Miscellany from around 1000. If there is adigital facsimile available, you can download it as pdf, no previews of the MSS online.

You can also search the collections at the V&A London, which will yield images of objects. No manuscripts, though.

Both texts and images from a number of German museums and libraries can be found via the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek. Obviously search results will depend on how well each participating institution as tagged their items, but you will get results for at least some image content.

KiK-IRPA in Brussels, the Belgian Royal Institute for art, has a search engine called Balat. It will search image contents, but is best used with Dutch or French terms on the appropriate pages - at least my impression is that the English terms are patchy at best.

That's it for today for you. For me, the list has shrunk a bit more than just by those items - I had a few obsolete ones, and a few doubles. So there is actual visible progress - which is really nice! And I can tell you that I have glimpsed at least one more proper picture database further down the list...

And on we go. Still lots left...

Here is an alternative gateway to browse images from the Bodleian Library. There's a thumbnail overview for each of the individual manuscripts, and the mss themselves are sorted by century and area of origin. The pics seem to be in the main database as well.

Heinrich-Heine Uni Düsseldorf has a digital catalogue where you can browse individual manuscripts. So has the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe. So has the Uni Darmstadt.

Individual manuscripts can also be found at the British Library in their Turning the Pages section. Manuscripts include the Luttrell Psalter, the Bedford hours, a Medieval Bestiary and the Sherborne Missal. No image search though, and you really have to leaf through the books.

Most of these lists don't allow for a search on image content, which is sad, but rather easy to understand - tagging all the images is a huge task! Makes me wonder why I filed them under "image databases", though, and not under "manuscript lists". Ah well. I'm correcting this now.

To finish off for today, here is the Gebetbuch Karls des Kahlen, a prayer book dating to the 9th century.