Goal:
Recreate an 11th c 2/2 Twill from and extant piece discovered in Shekshovo using period methods.
Period methods require using period tools. I want to avoid modern tools as much as possible with this project, so my first item of business is finding extant pieces with archaeological dating. There have been some amazing discoveries of complete sets of spinning tools to come out of Poland, so I have chosen to recreate those tools for this project.
Distaff
Spindle
Whorl
Weaving Knife
Pin beater
Comb
Loom weights
I wish I could add "loom" to that list, but only fragmentary pieces of looms have been discovered, no complete looms, so I'll be building a "wild" warp weighted loom for this project. (See my earlier post about harvesting the wood from Spotted Sheep Farm with Finna and using beeswax to seal the ends before putting the wood in my shed to cure.
Reference Book:
The Early Slavs by P.M. Barford (Shows an entire tool set from Opole, and what they're calling an "oar" but I suspect is a distaff based on other extant examples from Poland)
I'm trying to get my hands on another book via inter library loan at the moment - we shall see if I can obtain it. It is referenced in one of the papers below and contains information on a textile with a tablet woven selvedge that was created during the weaving process using 2 tablets.
https://www.worldcat.org/.../wokiennictwo.../oclc/4794324
Papers that I will be using as reference:
An 11th-Century 2/2 Twill from a Burial in Shekshovo in Russia (interestingly the fabric is not made of native wool so most likely not a domestic product to Russia)
Wooden Textile Tools from Medieval Poland by Malgoratza Grupa
When did weaving become a make profession? by Ingvild Oye
Early Medieval looms in Poland in the light of archaeological finds by Antosik L. and Slomska J.
Step 1 - Choosing wood for the tools.
The reference I am using to guide my wood selections is the following article:
Trees and shrubs used in Medieval Poland for making everyday objects by Katarzyna Cwya
That said, after a discourse with Miloslav who will be helping me with a lot of the woodworking on this project, we settled on Oak as our wood of choice for its durability for the Weaving knife.
On a side note about the weaving knife and flat oar shaped distaffs - if you're familiar with flax production these tools could do double duty as a flax scutcher and scutching board. I will not be testing this hypothesis. If anyone does, I would love to see your results.
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