[Regia-NA] Cloth width (was Re: featherstitching)

[Carolyn Priest-Dorman]

Vara wrote:

>and the 30inches bit for width of cloth is practical

So it's a practical recommendation rather than a specification based on 
historical precedent, then?

>I and other hand
>weavers find any wider d**m near impossible to do unless there are two of
>you at the loom.try it your arms don't reach:)

When I weave on my 4- or 8-harness floor-looms I don't enjoy working a warp 
any wider than about 28", that's true.  (That's one reason I mostly 
concentrate on weaving linens, which can still be useful textiles at narrow 
widths.)

But I don't have any problem at all working wider widths on the 
warp-weighted loom.  When you weave on a warp-weighted loom, you don't 
fling a shuttle through the shed from one side to the other and catch it 
all in one go the way you do on a floor loom.  For instance, if you go look 
at the archival films on the Norsk Folkmuseum website of ladies weaving 
blankets on the wwloom, you'll see they work their way across the loom bit 
by bit rather than in one big fling.  (There are descriptions of women 
performing this movement across the wwloom in ancient Greek textual sources 
as well.)  Or two can easily work side-by-side, passing the weft from one 
to another; this is the method I prefer, since it's more fun.

So the limitation of needing to catch the shuttle in your other hand 
doesn't exist on the wwloom. It's the warp-weighted loom that likely would 
have woven the clothing in this period, with the exception of Mediterranean 
imports such as silk.  Accordingly, I don't think the specific technical 
limitations imposed by the later introduction of the harness loom should be 
part of the thought process for Regia period.

>and I have had this confirmed
>via the spinners and weavers guild over here. widths increased with the
>introduction of the flying shuttle

Cloth widths ballooned again (from the narrow widths of the early 
one-person treadle loom) with the introduction of the broadloom by the 14th 
century.  This loom was operated by two weavers sitting side by side, which 
effectively doubles the span of weaving possible in one throw of the 
shuttle:  each operator throws or catches only with his outside 
hand.  Guild regulations specified a type of cloth approaching two meters 
in width in this period, the eponymous "broadcloth" of medieval 
records.  (This, of course, coexisted with other typical cloth types in the 
vicinity of 18" in width as well as several other widths, which 
demonstrates the point I made earlier about there not being one standard.)

The "flying shuttle," as I understand it, was a post-medieval 
invention.  (This could be another vocabulary mismatch, of course.)


Carolyn Priest-Dorman              Þóra Sharptooth
  http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/thora.html