Weaving has started in earnest on this project and I'm thrilled with how it is turning out. I've found a high resolution image of the fragment and lined it up with my own weaving. The match up with the weave structure is almost exact and makes me really happy. It encourages me to try spinning my own yarn for a smaller project in the future using the same weave structure and pattern to really hit the extant dead on.
(my weaving on the left; extant piece on the right)
A little context for this piece: it was found in 1933 by Robert Wallace. The town was in a period of growth and they were building facilities for new buses. Wallace was working with a team excavating sand in Bell's Meadow and he structure what he thought was a rock at first. This article relays his experience with extracting the jar, recognizing the coins, and hiding them from his over eager coworkers. This tiny scrap of fabric was covering the mouth of a clay jar full of coins. The focus was very much on the silver coins, the latest minted was dated 230AD and worn down, suggesting it was in circulation for some time before being buried. (1)
I believe it is reasonable to conclude that the fabric was made around the time of the last coin's date, or earlier. I don't think it likely that the fabric was created to cover the jar. Instead, someone probably had a piece of some old blanket or dress that was too big to toss out, but no longer large enough to serve its original function. The finds in Falkirk include several other jars that do not have lids and these coin hoards were abandoned near round homes. The articles I've reviewed do not believe the coin hoards were part of a ceremonial burial, but more likely they were hidden during war while the residents escaped and hoped to return for them later.
My fascination with this tiny piece of fabric is the complexity of it. It's a chevron point twill. This isn't the most complex weaving pattern, but it does require planning. It is a 16 thread repeat against a 4 thread repeat. Because such little is left of the fabric, it's not obvious which was the warp and which was the weft, but from personal experience I suspect the 16 thread repeat was worked in the warp so that it only had to be set up once and then the weaving would be simpler. Having worked a chevron point twill that was weft driven, once was enough.
The original piece also has a deliberate pattern that highlights the differences of the natural shades of wool. There are 3 types of wool identified, and 8 colors of the wool. All of these can be attributed to the Soay sheep - a heritage breed that arrived Scotland as if by magic. A local Maine farmer is raising a flock of these and we giggled that it was those damn vikings again. The Soay sheep are "unimproved" and do not need to be sheared. They completely shed their fiber yearly and their wool comes in a wide variety of whites and browns, sometimes even on the same animal. I am eager to get my hands on a few fleeces for a future project.
(1) https://falkirklocalhistory.club/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/object-4-falkirk-tartan.pdf
Comments
Post a Comment