tribaltextiles.info

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

_________________
Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

_________________
Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Andrew

Many thanks for the responses to my questions. I am particularly interested to read your information about the use by the Bailing (White collar) Miao and their use of coffin covers. Your explanation is very helpful. My sense was that it would be the formal design covers which would be the coffin covers of choice rather than the ones depicting plant and animal life. The use of valued textiles to cover coffins appears in several southeast asian groups including the Tai ('Contexts and Meanings in Tai Textiles; by H Leedom Lefferts, Jr. in 'Textiles and the Tai Experience in Southeast Asia' by Gittinger and Lefferts.)

Yes please, Andrew, a 'show and tell' of some Bailing covers from your collection would be something very much to look forward to! I will try and put together into a photogallery my photos of my 2001 village visit in the Duyun area which I feel are now enriched.

I am very taken with the Rao Jia 'join detail' 88.2 which you have posted. It creates a fascinating optical effect. The outside circumference of dots has the same diametre. The outer surface of the inner highly squiggly rings are similar and yet the dots and squiggles are much smaller/more compact on one side than the other. Difficult to judge if it is the same wax artist at different times or two different people!

Your Ge Jia quilt 4. is very, very interesting. It has a completely different 'feel' about it and has echoes of so many things that are not at all related to minority groups in China. (Somehow I can hear trumpets being blown and these are giant earthworms jiving!) Passing swiftly on.... In the top 2 strips (pre-joined) there is so much more freedom with the design placement. Fascinating to see how the waxer has tried to squash up the designs against the join so that the break does not cut across motifs but falls in between.

I strongly echo Susan's wish to see a book containing photos and explanatory text of your collection. If money were no object it should be one of the lovely Taiwan produced coffee-table size big, heavy volumes in heavy sleeves. Any chance you can interest anyone in publishing?

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Bill, concerning the size of these covers, for the Rao Jia covers, the batik area is about 80cm x 130cm, with each width of cloth a fairly standard 40cm wide. The Ge Jia cover no.2 is 110cm x 160cm.

Pamela, can you tell me how much cloth could be made in a day on one of the wooden looms used by these folk, both for plain weave and for the White collar Miao’s diamond twill weave?

As far as a book is concerned, I too would like to see one, but time, family, and a lack of information are a constant problem. However, the forum is helping me to focus and to get a few ideas down in a coherent manner, so thanks once again to Pamela for providing us all with this opportunity to get our personal messages across and to share knowledge, ideas and experiences.

Andrew

Difficult to say exactly how long it would take to weave the cloth. I am not (yet) a weaver so I can't say, 'well, it would take me .... to weave such a length'. However, with weaving, it is the setting up of the loom which takes the major part of the time. Weaving plain cloth would not take a great deal of time if a woman sat down and concentrated on weaving. Of course if the weft thread is very fine it takes a bit longer. I would say that a weaver could weave a metre a day, perhaps more, if she concentrated at it. The diamond twill weave should not take too much longer because she would have sheds set up to lift different sets of warps to create the pattern. Again it is the setting up of the loom which takes the time. If you think with home-spun thread this has to be created first, then the thread wound onto spindles and then the thread warped up before threading it though the sheds before any weaving happens.

I am posting a photo of a Qing Miao woman weaving on an upright loom which has been set up with a small number of different sheds to lift different warp threads. However, I do not think it is set up for a very complex pattern. I have seen a look set up for a complex diamond weave and there were many more sheds.

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Andrew and Pamela:

Since weaving production time is something I know about, I’ll inject a few comments. What most people see as “preliminaries” are definitely the most time-consuming. It is generally conceded that to clean and card or comb wool, or to prepare cotton for spinning, FIVE people are required to keep ONE spinner supplied with fibers ready to go. Then it takes FIVE spinners to keep ONE weaver supplied with spun (and sometimes plied) yarns! (This is with average size yarns. The formula would vary if the yarns were extremely fine, or extremely coarse.) Then if the yarns are to be dyed that can be a long process…both for gathering and preparing dye materials, and for the dye processes themselves. You can imagine the time involved if one person is doing all of these tasks. You can also see why ready-made yarns in the marketplace are so appealing to weavers, and why commercial fabrics are so appealing to people doing appliqué or batik! And why production boomed in most places when yarns and fabrics became commercially available. Of course not mentioned above is growing the cotton or other fibers (or raising the sheep) in the first place.

Preparing a warp, setting up a loom and weaving, in comparison to the processes above, is comparatively FAST! Whether a loom has two harnesses (shafts) or the four harnesses needed for producing a diamond twill makes little difference in the time requirements…a slight difference in treadling time maybe. But diamond twills are most often woven with a coarse yarn or else you wouldn’t see the pattern. For a plain weave, in a fairly fine cloth, if the weaver had bobbins wound and at hand, she should be able to produce a meter’s length in an hour or an hour and a half….for a coarse cloth, much more. It’s all those specialized hand-picked brocades and warp-patterned weaves, tapestry, etc. that require LONG HOURS—which can require a day’s work to produce just a few inches.

Marla Mallett

One more note: In the loom photo above, the weaver has four harness frames, but she has bound them together and hung them together so that they work as just two shafts. This was either a short cut to avoid having to move heddles from one harness to the other, or a simple way of crowding in more warps. She is doing a plain tabby weave. She of course may be adding brocade ornamentation, picking those special pattern sheds by hand…we can’t see that, because the beater is in the way.

Marla

Still one more! Preparing a warp and setting up a loom with a cloth width that is typical in these areas (and like that in the pic above) and with yarns no finer than those shown in the pic, should be an easy half day's work.

Marla