Tablet weaving

Tablet Weaving (often card weaving in the United States) is a weaving technique where tablets or cards are used to create the shed through which the weft is passed. As the materials and tools are relatively cheap and easy to obtain, tablet weaving is popular with hobbyist weavers. Currently most tablet weavers produce narrow work such as belts, straps, or garment trims.

Tablet weaving is often erroneously believed to date back to pharaonic Egypt. This theory was advanced early in the twentieth century based on an elaborate ancient Egyptian belt of uncertain provenance often called the Girdle of Ramses because it bore an inked cartouche of Ramesses III. Arnold van Gennep and G. Jéquier published a book in 1916, Le tissage aux cartons et son utilisation décorative dans l'Égypte ancienne, predicated on the assumption that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with tablet weaving. Scholars argued spiritedly about the production method of the belt for decades. Many popular books on tablet weaving promoted the Egyptian origin theory until, in an appendix to his magisterial work on tablet weaving, Peter Collingwood proved by structural analysis that the linen belt couldn't have been woven on tablets.

Tablet weaving does go back at least to the eighth century BCE in early Iron age Europe where it is found in areas employing the warp-weighted loom. Historically the technique served several purposes: to create starting and/or selvedge bands for larger textiles such as those produced on the warp-weighted loom; to weave decorative bands onto existing textiles; and to create freestanding narrow work.

Early examples have been found at Hochdorf, Germany, and Apremont, Haute-Saône, France, as well as in Italy, Greece, and Austria. Elaborate tablet-woven bands are found in many high status Iron Age and medieval graves of Europe as well as in the Roman period in the Near East. They are presumed to have been standard trim for garments among various European peoples, including the Vikings. Many museum examples exist of such bands used on ecclesiastical textiles or as the foundation for elaborate belts in the European Middle Ages. In the seventeenth century tablet weaving was also used to produce some monumental silk hangings in Ethiopia.

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