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!

These are crazy times. Crazy, with a capital C, or maybe with all capital letters. But anyway, even though it's all crazy, and even though we don't know how things will develop from now onwards (at least not in the medium run, it's pretty clear what will happen here in Germany in the next two or three weeks), a bit of optimism might be what we all need.

So. I'm very, very excited to announce that we will try to have a European Textile Forum this year! If all goes well enough, we will meet in Tilff-Méry, Belgium, from August 9 to August 15.

Our focus topic this year will be "Sticks and Stones May Make a Loom", and we will explore weaving techniques and possibilities on "primitive" looms during the Forum week.



If you're a weaver, or a researcher, and that sounds interesting for you, you can find out more about it on textileforum.org, where there's the Call for Papers and the registration form online now.

After thinking about it for weeks turning into months, and trying to put off the inevitable, I've finally succumbed and faced the facts: There will be no European Textile Forum in 2020.

I'm really, really sad about this, as this week of absolute textile research craziness is one of my highlights each year, but the situation worldwide is still insecure, and there's no way to predict where we'll be in November, and what things will be allowed, or possible, or sensible. In addition, though it's a small conference, it is one where we are a very international crew and work closely together - including physically close. This, together with the shared space to eat, sleep, and work, are part of the charm of the Forum, and play a large role in making it as effective and special as it is.

With all the tools and materials, sometime quite exotic, that are brought either by myself or by other participants so that everyone can work together on a project, and with the hands-on approach to so many things, there is no good way to just lift this over into virtual space either (as many other conferences have done). My own personal ample experiences with video meets and webcams have also shown that they won't be really suitable to showing things in high detail, which means that sharing ongoing work with each other would be much harder than just handing over the thing, or having someone else come over and take a look.

So rather than bending our concept and trying to make something work that is not suited well for the virtual space, we'll take a break, and hopefully everything will be under control enough for a normal Forum in 2021.

I'll miss it, though. A lot.

 

I'm back home, and I am trying to catch up - there's a long list of homework I have brought from the Textile Forum (as always), plus the usual things that are on the list, so it won't get boring here soon.

The Forum was amazing - we had weaving, and tablet weaving, and there were tours of both the monastery grounds and the Lauresham Open Air laboratory; there was a museum visit; there was incredibly delicious poppy seed cake, and of course there was chocolate and coffee, coffee, coffee. My gran kindly lent me her large coffee-machine, so I could make four to five litres of coffee in the morning - enough to tide the group over until about lunchtime.

It was actually the tenth European Textile Forum. The tenth - our first one was back in September 2009, when I ran the Spinning Experiment. I have a hard time believing that it's been that long, and that often. We only had one single gap year since 2009, and that was in 2011, the year before we found our longtime home at the LEA in Mayen. It does look like we did not completely misbehave in Lorsch, as we've been offered to come back - which might be a smart thing to do for topics where we need looms for our Forum explorations.

Speaking of looms - one of the things I found out during that week: I can do a decent starting border, but I am not very good at tying loom weights securely to their threads; while I am comfortable making the warp crossings needed to weave tapestry inserts, my actual weaving of the ground fabric was not looking good (and I quickly stopped, so I wouldn't ruin the beautiful work that Tracy and Florian had done). So I'm probably a good minion to have in the workshop for the related works, but I'd need some training to be an actual weaver. It was great fun to minion, though, and I did learn a lot about warp-weighted loom work.

I'll tell more stories from my adventures, both at the Knitting Symposium in Leiden and from the Forum, during the next days...

Here's more impressions from Lauresham:

First of all, the vinyard:

This time of year, everything was full of wild flowers, too.

Of course it's not only fields and pastures and vinyard - there are the houses as well, which I have mostly omitted until now. Here they are, finally:

As you can surely guess, one of these houses was much more important for me to see than the others - the weaving house. We spent a little time inside that, so I could get an overview of the looms, tools, and loomweights available.

The house has three looms that are permanently installed there, plus a mobile loom that can be taken to wherever it is needed and used there. The looms are used for showing weaving technique to visitors, but also to test out things.

There's also a bunch of differently-shaped loom weights available, as well as some other textile equipment. I am already looking forward so much to working with all this at the Textile Forum.

Friday before last, I had a Grand Day Out - I hopped onto the train early in the morning to go to Lorsch, or rather to Lauresham, in preparation for the European Textile Forum.

Usually, we have this little conference in Mayen, at the Lab for Experimental Archaeology, but this year, LEA is due for some construction works. As it was not entirely clear in time when those works would be finished, we had to find an alternative place to hold the Forum, to be on the safe side.

To my great delight, as I have fond memories of working on archaeological digs in Lorsch, the good people at the Open-Air Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology Lauresham offered us their place to be. Because going to the venue for a visit is always a good thing (you don't want to plan a conference blind!), after figuring out most of the things that needed figuring out via mail and phone, off I was to meet with Claus Kropp, the leader of the Lab.

The place where we will be for our conference (at least mostly) is the Visitor Info Centre, which looks a bit like a glass house:

When you are closer, you can see that it's actually not a glass house to grow plants, but to grow knowledge:

There are rooms in the blocks inside for working, and things such as conferences, or school events, or small exhibitions. There's also space for exhibitions in the corridor, which - with all that glass - is very light and spacious-feeling. We will be a very happy group in that place!

There is, of course, also a little museum shop where you can get all kinds of things: honey made by bees on the location (bees are important in Lauresham, not least because there is a manuscript with a bee-keeping prayer written in Lorsch in the 9th century), mugs with an artistic rendition of Lauresham, ceramic mugs and music instruments and piggy banks...

...and you can even buy a reproduction of a pin found directly in Lorsch, dating to the 8th/9th century:

Besides checking out this building, I also got treated to a tour of the grounds of Lauresham proper. It was absolutely beautiful - there's a small vinyard, there are fields tilled with reconstructed ploughs using the working animals in Lauresham. The grains that are farmed here are of course old and often very rare kinds, such as this special type of rye, Waldstaudenroggen:

There are also Valais Blackneck goats, a very old breed:

Lauresham, as an ideal-typical reconstruction of an early medieval manor farm also has a small chapel, with a door modelled after an original 8th century find from Germany:

More from my visit tomorrow!

The thing I have to say today is short and sweet: The European Textile Forum registration is open!

I'm already looking forward so much to the conference. It's promising to be another lovely week full of textile research, networking, and exchange of knowledge and information. There will be warp-weighted looms. There will be really old architecture. There will be so, so much coffee... and probably almost as much chocolate...