Textiles along the Silk Road at the British Museum

 

I recently visited the new exhibition at the British Museum entitled Silk Roads and was interested to see examples of ancient silk as well as wool and cotton. The exhibition emphasises the role of the Silk Road in the exchange of ideas and goods between east and west and, certainly as far as the textiles go, concentrates on the period between 600 and 900 AD. The main image shows an embroidery of the Buddha emerging from a mountain, worked in silk thread on a silk ground. It was found in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China which was a major Buddhist complex.

The dyed silk fragments in this image were patterned with a resist technique which uses wooden clamps to cover parts of the material before it is put into the dye bath. The pattern of geese and flowers in roundels was used in Central and West Asia before it spread to China. The British Museum and Chinese experts have managed to reconstruct this dying technique as well as a weaving technique used to produce a silk textile known a samite. The example in the exhibition is a sutra or cover for scrolls with a pattern of two lions facing each other; another pattern that originated in Central Asia. Both the dyed silk and the sutra were also found in the Mogao Caves.

The exhibition also recounts the legend of the princess who travelled from the East to marry the king of Khotan, bringing with her the secret of silk production, by hiding silk worm cocoons and mulberry seeds in her headdress. The panel shows her in the centre with a woman weaving silk and using a comb beater like the one in the cabinet on the right.

As well as luxury silks the exhibition also features another more utilitarian textile of the Silk Road; wool. This shoe is made of felted wool with leather patches. It was found in the guard station of a hill fort and would have had a drawstring tied round the ankle to keep it in place.

Cotton also features in the exhibition in the form of this funerary banner of a high ranking Uyghur man. The history of the nomadic Uyghurs provides an example of the movements of populations along the Silk Road. Originating from the Mongolian Plateau they established an empire which lasted for 100 years. Following its collapse, some of the population moved south west and by 866 AD they had gained control of Gaochang in China, where they established the Kocho kingdom. The inscription on this banner is in the Turkic language of Kocho.

The exhibition also has examples of what may be Sogdian silk and fragments of woven silk found in Egypt and traded in the Byzantine empire. I enjoyed the exhibition but would have liked to have seen more textiles, however, I expect this is a reflection of the small numbers of textiles that survive from that time. There are some other beautiful artefacts, particularly jewellery, metal work and books and the exhibition runs until 23 February 2025 if you are interested in seeing it for yourself.

Subversive doily tape lace

 

This is a close up of the outer edge of the latest doily in my subversive doily series. I like working this Eastern-European style lace as it only requires a few pairs of bobbins at any one time. Most of it is a simple half stitch braid that forms a trail around the mat. The downside is that every time the trail connects with a previous section of the lace you have to join the worker pair to the previous work by making a sewing. I was taught how to make sewings when I learnt Honiton lace, which also requires them, but was never very good at them. However, I am improving with all the practice I’m getting! Also, this thread is quite coarse so the pin holes are fairly large and I can use a fine crochet hook rather than a pin to pull the loops through, which makes it all easier. Another interesting aspect to this lace is the placing of the pin holes. I designed the pattern myself, including where I thought the pin holes should be placed for the half stitch trail to flow nicely, but I find that as I actually work the pattern I’m having to change some of them. In some cases I need an extra pin hole to keep the half stitch level otherwise the angle becomes too steep and the trail looks as if it’s been pulled out of shape. In others I need more (or fewer pin holes) to negotiate a loop in the pattern more successfully. It has made me appreciate the skill of those lace designers who can produce a lace pattern that works efficiently every time. I’m making mine work by adapting as I go along, so I just have to console myself by thinking that mine will be unique, even though it is not ideal.

Early twentieth century lace scarves

 

These lace scarves were all advertised in the 1904 catalogue produced by Samuel Peach, a well-known lace manufacturing company based in Nottingham. They are interesting because despite being machine made they all copy different styles of handmade lace. The black lace scarf in the top image is an imitation of a fine Chantilly-style lace, popular at the time, especially for evening and mourning wear. The scarf is 82 inches long (slightly over 2 metres) and 11 inches wide (28 cm) and cost 8 shillings and 6 pence.

The second scarf ends in a very bold pattern, similar to crochet lace, although it is actually chemical lace. This is made by machine embroidering onto a sacrificial background, which is removed by chemical or heat treatment, leaving the embroidered lace behind. This scarf is narrower and shorter than the black one (63 x 6 inches; 160 x 15 cm) and costs 3 shillings and 6 pence.

This scarf imitates fine point lace, such as Buckinghamshire lace, and incorporates several motifs that are common in the handmade version of this lace. This one is much cheaper than the previous two scarves and only costs 9 pence. This seems quite a bargain as it is 52 x 4 inches (132 x 10 cm) in size.

The final scarf is also machine embroidered but this time the embroidery is worked directly on the net background. This technique imitates handmade tambour lace, which is made with a fine hook that the lacemaker uses to work a type of chain stitch through the holes in the net. This scarf is also quite narrow (66 x 6 inches; 168 x 15 cm) and only costs 7 pence, probably reflecting the small amount of lace it includes. Unfortunately there are no illustrations showing how the scarves were worn, but the catalogue does give us a snapshot of what was available at the time. 

Dumps and thumpers

 

Dumps and thumpers are wooden bobbins from the south Buckinghamshire area of England that, unusually for that area, do not have a spangle of beads to weight them, and resemble the bobbins used in some areas of continental Europe. Dumps are smaller and thinner than thumpers so I think that the top three bobbins are dumps and the lower five are thumpers, but they were probably used interchangeably. Confusingly, some of them do have bead spangles, but these were added long after the bobbins were made and originally used and you can see that the beads are modern additions rather than the traditional square-cut beads generally used for spangles. Dumps, also known as bob-tailed bobbins, and thumpers were used to make fine Bucks point lace. The thread for which was so fine that the addition of a spangle to the bobbin would have broken the thread. The reason that many of them have been drilled to add spangles is that lace fashions changed and fine thread was no longer available.

Many of them are quite plain but some are decorated, for example with indented lines and the addition of rings of either pewter or wood, known as jingles. The bobbin with the inlaid spots of different coloured wood is a ‘plum pudding’ while the bobbin next to it with very small indentations resembles the type of decoration sometimes used on Honiton bobbins. The two bobbins at the top are intriguing because they are made from two different coloured woods. Some of these types of bobbins can be pulled apart to reveal a tiny bobbin hidden inside. Sadly I have opened both of them and they are not ‘jack in the box’ bobbins.

Lace in Turkey

 

I’ve just returned from an amazing textile tour of Turkey where they have their own distinctive style of lace, which is mainly used as an edging for scarves and clothing. There are two main techniques, one using a fine crochet hook and the other a knotting technique using needle and thread.

We were lucky to be shown both styles of making on our tour and the skilful women who demonstrated for us were all able to use both techniques. The edging of the blue scarf in the main image is fine crochet work. The photo shows both sides of the work so you can see how the scarf is hemmed as an integral part of the lace, a clever way of saving time so the scarf does not have to be hemmed before the lace work begins.

The knotting and looping technique is shown round the edge of this beautiful dark blue scarf. The needle is inserted under the main thread then the remaining thread is twisted round the needle to form the loop. The skill lies in controlling the size of the loops to make a pleasing gradation to represent flowers and leaves.

As well as lace attached to fabric, strings of flowers and leaves are also made using a crochet technique which can be used as necklaces. Beads and ribbons can also be incorporated into the lace to add highlights to the work. We were lucky to be shown how the lace is made at several places and were pleased to see contemporary and vintage lace being sold in various outlets throughout our tour.

The lace curtain as silent witness

The lace curtain lies in the liminal space of the window, where it may act as a sieve, trapping the whispers, memories and secrets of the home. This curtain entitled Whispering has a conventional bobbin lace trim, but part way across the curtain it begins to unravel as the threads degenerate and record a series of phrases that the curtain has heard within the home. 

Read as a group these whispers form an unsettling narrative. Confidences such as ‘Keep out it’s not your business’, ‘Have you heard what she did?’and ‘He says she’s not herself today’ suggest a troubled household. While ‘He frightens the life out of me’ implies that something more sinister may be taking place. The disintegration of the lace, revealing the hidden whispers and cries for help, may be reflecting the disintegration of the household.

Rainbow lace curtains

 

I love the idea of these rainbow lace curtains, which I found in a facsimile of a Harrod’s store catalogue from 1895. Rainbow is perhaps a rather over optimistic description as they are basically only three colours: gold, terra, and eau de nil, rather than the seven we usually associate with the rainbow, but definitely a change from the more usual white or ecru curtains. Unfortunately there is no colour illustration so we have to imagine what they actually looked like. I think gold would have been a rich, dark yellow rather than a shiny gold fabric. The Italian term terracotta means baked earth and terra usually describes an earthy brown colour, although it can range from dark brown, to a pinky brown, taking in orange and burnt umber on the way. Eau de nil (water of the Nile) is a light greenish blue with an interesting history. The description was coined at the end of the nineteenth century just as European, and especially French, interest in Egypt was at its height. It is supposed to reflect the shifting colours of the River Nile. This type of subdued yellowy greeny blue became associated with Modernist interiors so would have seemed very new to readers of this catalogue. The curtains are quite large with a width of 60 inches and a length of 126 inches so would have provided a dramatic and unusual window covering for an upper class home with wide, tall windows.