Ancient Mediterranean Textile Production

A small hand-woven white cloth with fringes and embroidery. The cloth has a border of orange running stitch and features an embroidered owl in its center with "Athens" written under it, two olive branches, two spiders trailing a geometric web, and two grey snakes.

A close-up of the own embroidery, done in browns and greys.

A close-up of one of the embroidered snakes. It has two yellow eyes, and its body is embroidered in chain stitch.

Project 6: Ajax researched the use of symbolism in the worship of Athena, thinking about the designs on the Panathenaian peplos. He wove himself a cloth and embroidered on symbols of Athena: owl, serpents, olives, and a spider. He is taking his work to Greece this summer to visit her temples!

A t-shirt and wool roving dyed with indigo. The shirt is a pale mottled blue, and the wool is a denim tone.

indigo dyed wool roving alongside wool swatches from Iris's project. The small wool swatches are nearly black, and the large piece of roving is a pale denim blue.

Project 5: Simon focused his dye exploration on indigotin specifically, researching indigo- and woad-derived indigo dyes compared to murex. He dyed a cotton shirt and wool roving in an indigo vat he prepared, using the same dye as Iris. Cf. the range of colors between Iris's black and Simon's blue!

A set of dyed wool swatches taped onto a labelled grid. They are arranged in three columns: Red, Yellow, and Blue. Each column has two columns of swatches side by side, one dyed with an ancient dye and one with a modern dye. They are divided into rows: Washing, Washing w/detergent, Washing w/ rock, and UV lighting. The modern dyes are vibrant and don't show much difference between the different rows. The ancient red is very pale, and shows some fading after being washed. The yellow is vibrant, but also has some fading after being washed. The ancient blue is almost black and shows no fading.

Project 4: Iris was curious about the color-fastness of natural dyes compared to modern acid dyes. She used madder, turmeric, and indigo and compared their wear after various types of washing and UV exposure. Check out how strongly black indigo can be when concentrated!

A grey rectangle of woven fabric with geometric designs in god, dark grey, and yellow. The ends are finished with fringes. Designs include stripes, zig-zags, and meanders.

A closeup on the patterned weaving.

The fabric held in hand. It's about the size of a hand towel.

A Geometric period Greek mug patterned with stripes and zig-zags. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.10590349

Project 3: Creusa studied the interaction between geometric motifs on home objects like vases and weaving patterns. Her piece, woven on a table loom, is an imagined "practice piece" of a young Athenian girl, learning to weave and copying the patterns on the items around her.

Sorry for repost! I forgot I made a thread for the projects

Three pieces of resist dyed colorful linen in yellow, pale purple, and coral. On top of them are various small pieces of dyed wool and linen cut into shapes such as hearts, flowers, and bears.

A closeup on the smaller dyed pieces. A linen bear and star dyed a rich purple, a linen heart dyed purple, a wool flower dyed purple, and a pink geometric piece of wool.

Callisto was interested in testing natural dyes on linen and wool (felted merino patches). Her gorgeous yellow is the expensive and prized saffron, and you can see why! The purple and pink are logwood and madder, and she mordanted with gallnut and alum. The new-world logwood replaces expensive murex

A front view of a miniature 3D printed ship with two sails - one larger and one smaller. Both sails are woven out of white linen thread. The larger sails has strips of webbing sewn on dividing it into four segments.

A side view of the same ship showing the rows of oars and the curve of the sails.

A back view of the ship and larger sail, showing the linen rigging tying the sail to the t-shaped mast.

Project 1: Nausicaa has been sailing all of her life, and brought her expertise into her final project on ancient sails. She wove sails herself out of linen thread and rigged them to a 3D printed trireme. Note the reinforced webbing over the joins - real sails are too big to weave in 1 piece.

Students explored one aspect of ancient textile production in a final project with a creative component supported by a research paper. In this thread, I feature their wonderful work (using pseudonyms for the students) 🧵

A wonderful feature of our course on WashU Classics! classics.wustl.edu/news/revivin...

Students sit at tables with their fiber work spread out in front of them as guests circulate asking questions about their work.

A students shows a guest the vertical two-beam loom she constructed. Her loom is warped with fluffy blue yarn.

A student shows a guest the plethora of work she produced over the course of the semester. In front of her is spun yarn in various colors, woven rectangles, tablet-woven bands, and a teddy-bear modeling draped clothing. She is working on tablet weaving another band.

Yesterday we had a very successful studio show where students showed off their work from the semester and their final project progress to guests. Stay tuned here for features on each of the amazing final projects as they are completed!

A flyer for a course studio show. The show is Tuesday 4/29 1-3pm at Seigle 103.

Stay tuned for a bunch of posts about the magnificent final projects that are being finished up! And if you happen to be at WashU, check out our upcoming studio show!

Our last class today 🥹Another round of student presentations, and then we had a bit of time at the end for takeaways from the course. Students shared their appreciation for the labor that went into textiles, their new skills like spinning and sewing, their enjoyment of the studio structure, and more

Not surprising to hear from somebody called "ArchaeoPoo" XD

That's a nice warping time. For the weighted loom, I prepared a warp for them ahead of time with a tablet woven starting band, and in class we just lashed it to the cloth bar, tied on the weights, and knit the heddles, which took most of our time.

totally! feel free to email me at b.kamens@wustl.edu

As far as I know, we don't have any reference to that particular method (though I could be wrong!) But I did show my students a video of Gaelic waulking in class (and one of Korean fulling, drumming with sticks).

A student wearing an ancient Greek peplos fashioned out of a large white piece of fabric. Behoind her on a table is a stuffed rabbit also wearing a white peplos.

A student wearing a long chiton fashioned from a green sheet and a small white himation draped over a shoulder and one arm.

A small pink and white teddy bear wearing a mini white peplos and a sheer pink himation.

A small art mannequin wearing a sheer gathered dark blue skirt and a simple pale blue top with open sleeves.

In this week's studio we learned how to hand sew and made some ancient outfits for models both big and small.

A full length off-white linen tunic. The body is a tube with a slit for the head, and two tubular long sleeves are sewn on. The entire body has narrow horizontal pleats.

A short linen shirt consisting of a rectangle with some cutting and sewing to create the shape. The side edges are woven in blue, and the bottom edge has a fringe.

A boxy fragmentary shirt/tunic in white wool with thick purple stripes (clavi) down the front, and a second set of stripes at the edges of the sleeves where the fragment is cut off.

We also looked at some of the remarkable preserved textiles from Egypt. These are three pieces from the Louvre collections: A long pleated linen tunic from 2035-1875 BCE, a short linen shirt from 800-540BCE, and a wool shirt from Roman Egypt, 320-430 CE.

A painted polychrome vase showing a wedding procession. Four women are visible wearing a variety of draped colorful clothing. Sicilian, 3rd-2nd c. BCE, Met Collections.

A depiction of Paris on a white ground Athenian vase. He has a traveler's hat around his neck and wears a cloak with a dark border pinned over one shoulder. He also wears sandals and carries a club.

A scene on a vase with several figures. In the center is a temple and two white-figure women wearing peploi and jewelry. One also holds a mantle over her head, and has two dark stripes down the front of her dress.

A 1st c. CE bronze statue of a young boy in "Eastern" dress. He wears an ornate pyramidal hat, a draped tunic with a high belt and knot, a long sleeve shirt, pants, and a cloak.

We have finished making our textiles and move on to their uses. This week is clothing! We read a chapter of Women's Work and one from Lee's Body, Dress, and Identity and talked about what messages clothing can send. We looked at tons of art of ancient clothing and tried to understand construction.

A woven rectangle of white warp, pink weft, and with some blue checks. The tabby weave is quite evident, especially where it is balanced instead of weft-faced.

The same rectangle of woven cloth but the texture of the fabric is much fuller and denser looking.

before and after fulling. You can definitely see the difference!

A student applies pressure and friction to a woven wool rectangle with her hands.

A student smiles at the camera while pounding a plastic bag containing wool, soap, and water with his fist. Behind him smiles classics department chair Timothy Moore, observing this week's studio.

Several pieces of colorful felt drying on a paper towel with some colored unfelted wool roving behind them. One piece is white with a red spiral in the center.

Two pieces of colorful felt arranged on a table above two pieces of yarn forming a smiley face.

Today's studio was fulling and felting. We used warm water and a variety of methods of friction creation to full the fabric we wove previously and to felt colored roving. We stuck with water and dishsoap, nobody wanted to try urine ;)

A turkish spindle sits on a pile of fluffy purple-pink roving. There is some spun yarn wound onto the spindle, and also some dyed yarn of the same color in the background.

Magenta cochineal-dyed yarn and roving hanging up to dry.

Two jars of dye extract: yellow extract from osage, and black/purple extract from cochineal.

Heat + water + agitation + wool = felt, so it's tricky to dye roving and keep it usable for spinning. I have been spinning a bit from my cochineal dyed roving, and while it's harder to draft, it's not impossible! It does stain my hands a brilliant pink as I go.
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A small ball of yarn dyed pale orange with madder root.

Two pots containing wool roving in the process of being dyed. One is a bright orange liquid from madder root, and the other a deep purple from logwood. The orange roving looks a bit like an intestine.

Three plastic baggies with small amounts of yellow, orange, and purple dyed wool.

A spoon lifts some wool out of a purple cochineal dye pot.

One you have an extract, you can get dyeing! The cochineal produced a surprising lovely pink, the logwood a great purple, and the madder a paler orange, though all are 'billed' as 'red' dyes. The osage produces the expected yellow.
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Two pots sit on burners, one containing red liquid, and one containing white wool.

A bucket with red dyestuff at the bottom covered by a layer of reddening water.

A pot with yellow osage wood chips floating in yellowing water

A student pour red dye and dyestuff through a fine sieve into a second pot.

First you apply a mordant to the fiber to help the dye bond with the fiber and stay fast even through washing. For wool, alum is a common ancient and modern mordant. Meanwhile, you create dye extracts by cooking the dyestuffs in water and straining off the liquid repeatedly
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Six spoons holding dye substances: powdered madder root (a red powder), alum (a white salt), osage (yellow wood chips), logwood (red wood chips), cochineal (dark red dried insects), and gallnut (pale beige powder). Photo from The Love of Colour online shop.

While the instructor was off frolicking at CAMWS, students did a take-home #dyeing studio using natural dyes from Love of Colour online shop. Students used alum as a mordant on wool roving and yarn.
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Extraction of indigoid from murex molluscs. Top: the hypobranchial glands of Hexaplex trunculus. In the middle, left: a dyeing-vat containing the hypobranchial glands; right: direct painting of a wool fabric by coating murex gland. Below; left: the exposing to the air of the dyeing vat and the threads of wool in it and the turning of their colour from the yellow-greenish shades to the bluish one. Below, right: purple painted squares with different exposure to the air and sun; the yellow square shows the early stage of the change colour of every kind of marine purple, the red one the final stage of the purple from Bolinus Brandaris and the violet and blue squares show that of the dye from Hexaplex trunculus (photos: E. Soriga). "Mari(ne) purple: western textile technology in Middle Bronze Age Syria", 81.

Color samples from the experimental series, Fabienne Meiers, "Historical outline and chromatic properties of purpura rubra Tarentina." Top: 4 examples of dyes from Bolinus brandaris. 1) 3 single molluscs: a pale rose color; 2) 1st dyebath: a similar but slightly darker color; 3) 2nd dyebath: a similar color to the first example; 4) 2nd dyebath silk: a slightly darker lilac on a silk swatch. Middle: 2:1.11 mixture of Bolinus brandaris and Hexaplex trunculus; UV-radiation during reduction process: a darker and warmer pink color. Bottom: Dyes in Hexaplex trunculus. One row of four results had UV light during reduction process and show a blue color. The second row had less UV light during the reduction process and show a variation in color: 1) 1 single mollusc: a very pale pink; 2) 2nd dyebath: a dark and rich purple; 3) 1st dyebath: a very dark cool purple; 4) 50% UV-radiation: a blue color similar to the row above; 5) 50% UV-radiation 2nd dyebath: a very pale blueish grey color.

Four images of calcified textiles fragments from tombs at Stroccacapponi-Perugia showing the remains of purple coloring. Photos by M. Gleba, "Purple for the masses?"

This week is all about COLOR! We read Barber on dyes and Spantidaki on colors and talked especially about two of the most prized and symbolically-loaded dyes in the ancient world: sea-purple and saffron.

A student smiles at the camera as she works on her cardboard loom. She has been weaving a narrow rectangle with stripes of white, brown, and grey yarn. The white weft yarn she spun herself.

A student twists blue tassels out of the warp of their woven piece.

A student lifts a heddle bar and inserts a bobbin of yarn into her piece on a cardboard loom. The piece is woven in various shades of purple and a white/grey 2-ply hand-spun yarn. Beside her work is a stack of cardboard tablets and two completed woven pieces.

Thursday we wrapped up weaving - students took turns on the warp-weighted loom, learned to finish off their woven pieces, and some tried out tablet weaving. Lots of great stuff coming off the cardboard looms, including pieces woven with their hand-spun yarn!

Exit ticket: How do we know that the ancient Greeks wove patterned textiles?

A closeup picture of a piece of shiny purple fabric decorated by butterflies. The butterfly patterns are created by clusters of threads in gold and pink floating on top of the purple ground.

A closeup photo of a mustard yellow textured cloth. The swatch is mostly woven in a balanced tabby, but at regular intervals there are both horizontal and vertical floats creating a series of raised textural dots.

A closeup photo of a yellow fabric with a twill weave. The selvedge is visible and is woven and has a different weave from the main fabric to create a reinforced edge.

A closeup photo of an off-white fabric with small pink flowers printed on it. The fabric is plain weave/tabby, and the designs are printed, not woven in.

Today we read "Textile Weaves: The Beginnings" + "And Penelope?" from Prehistoric Textiles. In class we looked at various swatches of modern fabrics to see if we could identify their weaves and we walked through how Barber argues for Penelope weaving a pictorial cloth for Laertes.

A close-up shot of the top of the warp-weighted loom showing the woven fabric. The warp threads are an undyed pale wool, and a thicker grey yarn has been woven in as weft.

A student weaves a white weft on a small cardboard loom with a shed bar. The fabric she has already woven has stripes are different shades of blue.

A student turns his cardboard shed bar on its side to open up a shed on his cardboard loom. He weaves red and blue wefts into a green warp.

It took us almost our whole 80 minutes to assemble the loom, tie on the weights, and knit the heddles. At the end we got a bit of time to weave, and next week we will weave a lot more! Meanwhile, students worked on their own projects on cardboard looms, which are looking great! 6/6