[Regia-NA] Ruggs (shaggy cloaks)

[Carolyn Priest-Dorman]

Tracie wrote:

>Did the lady who wove the shaggy cloak tie those
>fleece tufts in after weaving it or while weaving it?  I did
>a similar project but I latch-hooked the tufts into already
>woven fabric.  I haven't done in-depth research on the
>subject (indeed, some of the relevant archaeology hadn't been
>done yet), but I gather that the effect could have been
>achieved using a weaving technique similar to velvet weaving,
>but with much longer nap.

I've written two articles on this topic.  The short version goes like this....

Structurally, velvet is a supplementary warp pile weave for which there is 
no evidence in Europe until well after the Viking Age.  But there are 
extant pre-Viking Age examples of pile-woven textiles from several English 
and Frisian sites as well as at Valsgarde, and there are a number of Viking 
Age examples in locations from Iceland to Sweden and Poland.  In the Viking 
Age, technologically speaking there are three classes of pile-woven 
textile.  Two of them have pile woven into them, and the major difference 
is that one class uses yarn (a la rya rugs) and the other uses locks of 
wool (a la shaggy cloak) as the pile.  The third class uses pile (unspun or 
loosely twisted fleece) that has been darned into the textile with a needle.

Putting pile in with a latch hook sounds closest to the "darned pile" class 
of textile, to me.


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