Historical Background
Finding tablet woven examples of extant pieces of band from the right time frame and geographic location proved to be somewhat non-trivial. I was only able to find evidence for a small number of fragments of tablet woven bands that are identified as Italian and dated to the neighborhood of the 14th century AD and none of them with bird motifs. Extending the search to brocaded fabrics with bird motives was more successful and one in particularly caught my attention: a silk fabric fragment in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with bands patterned with a row of peacocks facing each other in pairs (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Fragment with band patterned with peacocks.
The museum describes the medium and technique as “silk with alternating bands of weft patterned plain weave (draps d'areste), samite, and plain weave.” The fragment is classified as Italian or Spanish and dated to the 13th – 14th century AD.
The other piece that captured my eye was a fragment of a brocaded ribbon, classified as Italian and dated to the 13th – 14th century AD (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Fragment of a brocaded ribbon.
Technique, material and design
I decided to weave a brocaded band for three reasons: firstly, the fact that the most suitable fragment of tablet woven band was a brocaded ribbon (Figure 2); secondly, the relative ease of designing and brocading arbitrary motifs makes is possible to pattern the peacocks from the band in Figure 1; and thirdly, I simply enjoy brocading.
The first step in designing the belt was creating a pattern for the peacocks suitable to brocading. The extant piece is described as draps d'areste or cloth of aresta. Sophie Desrosiers et al. discuss a number of characteristics shared by cloths of aresta among which one is a pattern repeat of two units, one straight and one reverse, and another is the characteristic herringbone pattern so evident in the close-up of the band in (Figure 3) which gives the cloth its name (arista is Latin for an ear of corn, but was also applied to a fish bone).
Figure 3: Close-up of the band with the peacocks.
The close-up of the band with the peacocks was loaded into Photoshop and viewed at varying pixel resolutions to arrive at a good compromise between the quality of the image and the number of pixels across the width of the band. The resulting pixilated image served as the basis for the brocading pattern for the peacocks. The band with the peacocks was woven in silk. The thread used to weave the brocaded ribbon was not specified in the catalogue information, but it is a reasonable assumption that such an intricate ribbon would have been woven in silk. So I decided to weave the belt in silk as well with its high strength and beautiful appearance as a welcome bonus. A previously brocaded belt in 20/2 silk taught me that I should expect a warp count of about 56/cm. With 37 tablets for the pattern and 3 on each side for the stave borders (as drawn in Figure 4) this should result in a width of about 3 cm, which was close to the width desired by my friend. So I settled on 20/2 silk for the warp and a total width of 43 tablets.
Figure 4: Brocading pattern of the peacock.
Next, I created a sequence of geometrical patterns inspired by the extant piece of brocaded ribbon in Figure 2 and used that to define the ends of the belt in a similar fashion as the often used metal end tips on a leather belt. However, the extend piece is only 8 mm wide and woven on 25 tablets for a warp count of 125/cm. Thus not only is the number of tablets almost twice as small as the 43 that was settled on above, the warp count is also a little more than twice that what I would expect for 20/2 silk. Clearly the warp thread in the extend piece is much thinner than what I plan to use for the belt. I therefore scaled the pattern to fit on the same 37 tablets with an additional 3 for the stave borders on each side to match the pattern for the peacock motif.
Figure 5: Brocading pattern for the end tips of the belt.
Weaving the belt
The band was woven on a warp weighted tablet weaving loom that I designed and build for an earlier project. The loom is designed to use on the top of a table, with the warp ends weighted down and dropping freely over the fixed rod at the end of the loom. The other end of the warp is attached to a ratcheted rod, which stores the finished band. The length of the finished band needed to be ca. 80 inch (including fringes). I warped the loom with a 135 inch long warp, allowing for losses at the start and end and for shortening due to twist. This was more than enough to create the required length of band, a sample for future reference and some room for testing. During weaving, the initial surplus length of warp was braided or looped to keep the warp ends suspended freely above the ground.
The warp was created one tablet at the time, threading back and forth twice per tablet. The tablets were warped alternating S and Z (to eliminate fouling of the warp threads during turns), mirrored with respect to the center. After warping the loom, I experimented a bit with warp tension and the thickness of the weft threads to get a roughly square pattern. As is common for brocaded bands, I used a thinner structural weft thread (60/2 silk), which helps in getting a tighter more well defined pattern. After some experimenting, I decided to use three 60/2 silk threads combined (not plied) for the brocading weft instead of the more typical single 20/2 silk thread (the same thread as the warp). I found this to give a smoother more even pattern and a better overall look of the motifs. Note that using multiple thinner threads was commonly used when brocading with silver or gold threads to get more even coverage, so using the same idea in this project has historical merit. I ended up using one individual weight of ca. 31 gram (a little over 1 ounce) tied to the four thread of each tablet, resulting in a tension of ca. 8 gram/thread.
The brocading weft was passed under two of the four threads of the cord creating a smooth and uniform underside. As in the original bands, all cards are collectively rotated forward one quarter turn for each successive passage of the ground and brocading weft. The unfinished warp ends were periodically untwisted to eliminate the build-up twist. The finished band was collected on the ratcheted rod at the near end of the loom. The braids at the end of the warp that stored the surplus warp were periodically unbraided to feed more warp while keeping the weights freely suspended.
A test weave of a brocaded peacock gave me a pattern length in the warp direction of ca. 1¾ inch or a weft count of ca. 22/inch. Assuming the same weft count for the end tip patterns gives an end tip length of ca. 4¾ inch, very similar to the length of a pair of peacocks with about an inch between them. This led me to a design of peacock pairs separated by a space between them that is roughly equal to that of a pair itself, such that they appear evenly spaced along the band. Two additional requirements were a target length without fringes of 75 inch and a design that was symmetric with respect to the middle of the band. These design requirements can be met with seven peacock pairs with 4⅜ inch between each pair and ⅞ inch between the two peacocks within a pair. This design was matched well once weaving was completed. The end tips ended up being a little shorter at about 4½ inch each, but the other elements where very close to the designed values. The total woven length was essentially the same as the target length of 75 inch. I added 3 inch of fringe at each end for a total length of 81 inch.
Find a downloadable version of this post at:
https://www.academia.edu/36492594/A_14th_century_Italian_inspired_greenbelt
Bibliography
Burchardt, Silvester (2016) Who’s afraid of brocade (class handout)
Collingwood, Peter (1982) The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, Echo Points Books & Media (Vermont)
Desrosiers, Sophie, Vial, Gabriel, and De Jonghe, Daniël (1989) Cloth of Aresta. A Preliminary Study of its Definition, Classification, and Method of Weaving, Textile History, Vol. 20 (2) pp. 199-223.
Spies, Nancy (2000) Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstance - A Thousand Years of Brocaded Tabletwoven Bands, Arelate Studio (Maryland).
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