Tag Archives: warp-weighted loom

Pitt Fest (Video)

Pitt Fest is the Pitt Rivers museums annual festival. Each year has a theme and 2015 was: Handmade!

We were demonstrating natural dyeing, drop spindle spinning and the warp-weighted loom. it was really exciting to be able to relate our crafts to objects in the museum.

A video about the event has been published by the Pitt Rivers, we are featured from 02:07.

Pitt Fest: Handmade! 2015 from Pitt Rivers Museum on Vimeo.

Hopefully Pitt Fest will continue for many years to come!

http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/

Our stall and dyeing area on the lawn outside the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Silchester Excavation Open Days

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It was an honour to be invited to the last Silchester excavation open days. This Roman and Prehistoric excavation is a fantastic place for us to show some of the textile production techniques available to those people. We brought back the warp-weighted loom which we built for this event last year, and the students were very appreciative of an example of how the archaeology they were finding would have been used. We also modelled our new loom weights on finds from Silchester and Salisbury Museum.

Also many thanks to Kevin Standage Photograhy for giving us use of photos from his Silchester series.

www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/visit-the-roman-town/sil-visit-silchester-roman-town

Wood Festival

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Wood is a wonderful first festival of the season. Small, family-friendly and very varied, they’re always very kind to us.

With spinning and weaving in the mornings and dyeing in the afternoons, we had a busy time. A lot of interested spinners and many children who mastered weaving on both the modern and Iron Age looms in a suprisingly short length of time! Weaving seems to have the power to transfix many children, and some returned to our workshops both days to get as much weaving done as they could!

The dyeing demonstrations and workshops were especially popular this year, many people got an opportunity to be on the our side of the rope and dye some wool themselves. We also dyed the new range of silk scarves, which will be on sale soon!

www.woodfestival.com

New Aquisitions

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Wehave a set of quern stones, from Tewkesbury, and some grain to grind. They proved very popular at both Silchester open days, helping the Students understand how labour intensive food preparation was in the Iron Age and the Roman period. We also occasionally meet people from other cultures who remember growing us using quern stones. We’re really glad that we can help people keep in touch with their personal histories, not just the history of this country.

Between the first and second Silchester Open Days, we made a replica Iron Age warp-weighted loom. This was to demonstrate the use and context of the Iron Age loom weights found by the Reading University students at the Silchester excavation.

Our fire stand / grid made by Cobalt Blacksmiths has been finished for Herstmonceux, where we were demonstrating natural dyes for all three days, as well as using our loom. It keeps the fire off the ground, so we can demonstrate dyeing at sensitive historical sites.

Silchester Open Days

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We were honoured to be invited to Silchester for both of their Archaeological open days in July and August.

Silchester is a Roman town in Hampshire, which has been excavated for the last 17 years by Reading University. They have discovered both the layout of the town and the Iron Age settlement which was there before.

At the first open day we took our new quern stones, as well as some grain, and helped the visitors use them to make flour. We ground all the grain we took in just the morning, the stones never stopped turning. It was brilliant to see the opportunities families took to educate children about the origins of bread they eat every day. The archaeologists were also exhibiting a Roman quern from Verulamium (St. Albans), and having ours for demonstration really brought it to life for the visitors.

Before the second open day, we made a replica of an Iron Age warp-weighted loom. We set it up and started weaving at the open day, demonstrating how it worked. This helped to put the finds of loom weights into context for both the public and the students.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/