textile

Bast, Ferns, and Mud: Experimental Recreation of a Kapa Kaha (Barkcloth)

Author(s)
Avalon Paradea 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/3
#EAC12 World Tour 2021
***Kapa (Hawaiian barkcloth) was the ubiquitous fabric of historic Hawaiʻi, used for everything from clothing to bedding, from swaddling newborns to enshrouding the deceased, and all things in between. This textile is crafted from the bast (inner bark) of several plant species...

Book Review: Weaving a Realm, Vietnamese clothing from around 1500 AD

Author(s)
Roeland Paardekooper 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/2
What a pleasure it was when this book landed on my coffee table! The book is bilingual Vietnamese – English, well designed and covers over 200 pages with hundreds of full-colour images. The book is a joint project by several Vietnamese from around the world who wished to add to the awareness of Vietnamese identities around the world. Viet Nam is so much more than what people remember of the Vietnam War...

A Shared Warp: The Woven Belts of the Lao Han People, China

The set-up of the warp showing the threaded tablets and the positioning of the warp threads to give two open sheds for the top and bottom layers of the tabby tube. (Image: Dominique Brocard)
Author(s)
Celia Elliott-Minty 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/1

The renowned weaver Peter Collingwood briefly mentioned such belts in his book The Techniques of Tablet Weaving (Collingwood, 1982, pp.219-220). Not long before he died in 2008, he contributed a couple of pages on these belts to the book Minority Textile Techniques: Costumes from South-West China (Collingwood, 2007, pp.28-29). 

What was *platъ and how Did it Work? Reconstructing a Piece of Slavic Cloth Currency

Author(s)
Jan Kratochvíl 1,
Jakub Koláček 2 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/4

Introduction

There is rare but clear evidence that at least some early medieval Slavic communities used pieces of textile during the exchange of goods. The written sources (transcription of the notes of Ibrahim Ibn Yaʻqūb and a short notice made by Helmold of Bosau nearly two hundred years later) entitle us to believe that it was some kind of currency and not a local predominant commodity.

The Shroud of Turin and the Extra Sheds of Warping Threads. How Hard can it be to Set up a 3/1 Chevron Twill, Herringbone on a Warp-weighted Loom?

Author(s)
Antoinette Merete Olsen 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/4
On the 10 May 2020, Mr. Hugh Farey sent me an email. He introduced himself as “a researcher into the weaving of the linen cloth known as the Shroud of Turin”. Then he described the size of the Shroud and how it looked. His question to me was this: “If you had a piece of cloth as described and looked at it closely, could you tell if it was made by a warp-weighted or treadle loom, or would there be no difference?”...

Conference Review: A Weekend in Leiden: Knitting History Symposium, 2019

Author(s)
Christine Carnie 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/4
This Conference was organised by the TRC Leiden and the Knitting History Forum in Leiden. On the 2nd of November 2019 I had the opportunity to visit Leiden to take part in the Knitting History Symposium. What follows are my notes and observations and therefore may not accurately reflect what was said. I am very much hoping that the different papers will with time be published and made accessible...

Book Review: With One Needle: How to Nålbind by Mervi Pasanen

Author(s)
Emma Boast 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/3
In the modern world currently, there is an interest in and desire to understand ancient craft technologies, along with learning the practical side of these skills. Nålbinding is a craft which has been taught and demonstrated for the last 50 years, mainly within heritage and re-enactment communities. The cultural and social history of this craft has survived as a narrative better in some countries than others...

Working with Artisans; The ‘It Depends’ Dilemma

Author(s)
Christina Petty 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2019/4
We live in a world where scientific method is both the expected and accepted path to knowledge. With any scientific method, experiments based on detailed, well-documented, well-considered theories, and precise set-ups must be replicated exactly by others who come to the same conclusion to consider the information gleaned from them to be valid. This has become the accepted practice for most...