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Wednesday 28 October 2009

Norwich Pattern Books - More Insights

It is really wonderful that when I pose an uncertainty, there is a wealth of information and expertise that comes back from you to help. So, questioning whether the flowers in the borders of the textiles which we can see in these pattern books were darned or woven, we need to thank our favourite weaver in the US, Marjie Thompson, and the Editor of Needleprint France, Paule Motton, for their helpful contributions.

Marjie writes: I think that the designs are woven in. The women (or children in many cases) sat on the bench with the weaver and hand manipulated the threads for the supplemental patterning. There's an 18teens Scottish book where they talk about 'finger spots' and say that children were employed but that 'this branch is now sadly neglected due to cost.' Even children didn't work for free.

Paule writes: The women were standing close to the weaver, and while he was working the machine, they introduced the shuttles with the threads of different colour, so that the work went quicker for the weaver who was supervising the weft and the warp threads. I saw that when visiting the textile museum in Labastide Rouairoux.

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