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Warp Weighted Loom
Last year I planned an archaeology and history day at
the Rural Life Centre, Tilford, as part of the Surrey Archaeological Society's
150th anniversary programme. Craft demonstrations were to be an important
feature and Guild members kindly agreed to take part, with spinning, weaving
and indigo dyeing. For this occasion, it seemed appropriate to have a
warp-weighted loom, of the type used from the Neolithic period onwards and up
to Saxon times in England (and into the 20th century in parts of Scandinavia).
So I approached Tony Reid, a Shere farmer who has been running a farm museum in
the village for many years and is known to many members of the Guild for his
interest in textiles. He said he'd been wanting to make a warp-weighted loom
for a long time and when could we start?
The loom is upright but leans backwards at a steep
angle and the warp hangs from a beam at the top. Alternate warp threads hang
down vertically and are tensioned by being tied in bundles to weights. The
other set of alternate ends are similarly weighted and hang over a beam at the
bottom, called the shed rod because it produces a natural shed. The other shed
is obtained by having the first set of ends going through string heddles on a
heddle rod. This is brought forward to rest on a pair of brackets attached to
the posts at the sides. The weft is beaten upwards.
Considering the materials and skills Tony and I had
between us, we agreed on a freestanding frame about 6ft 6ins high made with
rustic sticks lashed together with string. We used purchased handrail for the
top and bottom beams, a broom handle for the heddle rod and forked sticks from
a hedge for the heddle supports. Tony lashed it all together and drilled holes
through the top beam to attach the warp, which I made. It is 4 feet wide and
consists of a tablet-woven braid, known as a starting border, of which the weft
is extended on one side so that it becomes the warp of the big loom. We decided
on a linen warp and a woolen weft. Whether this is successful remains to be
seen (we have only woven a few inches so far) but we thought that wool warps
might break and cause friction and that it would be better to avoid those
problems in our first attempt. We were given some old lead sheeting for weights
and my husband Alan cut them up into 64 half-pound pieces and rolled them. I
made 32 cloth bags to put them in - a pound for every 12 warp ends.
The loom was ready for the event at Tilford on 22
August and shortly afterwards Tony set it up again at a medieval fair at Shere.
It works wonderfully but the skill to use it to good effect will take some time
to acquire. Also it was a major job to dismantle it and lash it together again
every time it had to be moved. I certainly would not be able to do it myself.
So I was delighted to hear that there was a
warp-weighted loom, craftsman-made in planed wood and easy to put up and
dismantle, which needed a good home. It had belonged to Ro Bailey, a tapestry
weaver, who had refurbished the reproduction Saxon loom in God's House Museum,
Southampton, and had written a paper about it in the Journal for Weavers Spinners & Dyers in June 1992. She had been working on a project with
Dr Michael Ryder, a specialist on the history of fibres and textiles, and the
loom had been commissioned for this work. Sadly Ro Bailey died some five years
ago and her husband Brian was now looking for somewhere to place it. Alan and I
went to see him at his home in Farnham. He had established that his wife's
colleague would be happy for him to give it to someone who would make good use
of it. He offered it to me and I accepted it on behalf of the Guild. Alan
helped Tony Reid and me to bring it to the Members' Forum on 6 December. We put
our existing warp on it, improvising by tying our beam to the new one and our
heddle rod to the new one, because ours don't fit the supports, and this worked
- which shows how adaptable it is.
What I would now like to do is find somewhere to set
it up where members who are interested can come and try it and explore its
potential. Ro Bailey identified two questions about it: First, why did the warp-weighted
loom last so long historically - what was so good about it? She lists its many
advantages in her article in the Journal and it seems the only disadvantage is that
it takes a long time to weave on it. But since it takes two people to operate
it comfortably it is quite a sociable activity. Second, how can good quality
cloth - and the achievements of antiquity are very impressive - be made on such
a loom. That is now a challenge for us!
The loom is now in our house, dismantled with the warp
rolled up, because the only empty wall space has a door in it (we did keep it
there for a week). It can be transported and set up without too much difficulty
for special occasions. If members who would like to be involved (weaving or
just feeding it with weft and, more ambitiously, perhaps a future warp) would
contact me, I will let them know of any developments, and will report progress
in the Newsletter. I have found that there is currently a lot of interest in
the subject so I have a growing collection of papers and pictures and plan to
compile a folder for lending.