Following up on the cording and cording tool use discussion - here's a few thoughts about modern tool use for reproducing ancient or old things.

In an ideal world, if you're doing a reconstruction, everything would be as it was in the original - same materials, same processes, same tools. However, that is usually not possible - due to a number of reasons.

Sometimes, getting materials that correspond to the original material is not possible. That is especially the case when working with plant or animal materials that have been undergoing selective breeding for a few hundreds, or thousands, of years since the original item was made. You don't get the medieval varieties of food crops these days anymore (maybe with a few very rare exceptions), and if we're looking at animal materials, whether bone from cattle or wool from sheep, there's been a huge lot of change as well. So compromises may be necessary starting with the material, which will, of course, have an influence on the finished piece.

Using the original tools and processes is the next part that can turn out to be more difficult than one thinks at first. First obstacle is that we often don't know how, exactly, something was made. With a lot of textile work it's possible to use different processes and different tools to arrive at the exact same outcome. You will not be able to tell whether a yarn was spun on a spindle or on a more modern spinning wheel if the spinner takes care to match the properties of the original thread, for example. Same thing applies for a woven fabric - if there's no tell-tale things like a starting border, how could a bit of fabric let you know what loom type it was woven on?

For purposes of research and experiential archaeology (and in some cases, if there's a question to answer and the setup is done accordingly, even experimental archaeology), it would of course be preferable to use tools and processes that are known for the period the original item comes from. However... when a reproduction is commissioned, there is often a limit to the amount of time available before the thing has to be finished, and - even more important - there is also a limit to the amount of money that can be spent on a single item. Both these constraints will make speeding the whole thing up a very attractive, or very necessary, thing.

So while I enjoy working with old methods and reconstructed tools, personally, I have no problem whatsoever with using modern gadgets for my reproduction work if there will be no perceivable difference in the end product. Using an e-spinner for making yarns, or a modern cording tool for making cords, or a treadle loom instead of a warp-weighted one for weaving plain fabrics, these are all things that can still result in a reproduction that is as close as possible to the original while cutting down on costs a lot. And I personally do prefer to make these compromises in the process to make repros more affordable, thus getting more of them out into the world, for people to see and touch and experience, than having a "perfect" replica made once in a blue moon.

Though if you should know of someone wanting to have something made using all old reconstructed methods only - do send them my way, I'd be happy to be part of such a project, too!

 

Both Beatrix and Harma have posted comments about the Egtved cording and the efficiency of the method, or how to make it faster. (Thank you, both of you, for your input! It's much appreciated.)

Cording by hand is always a relatively slow procedure. It can be made a bit quicker with several methods; one way is like Beatrix suggested, using both hands to insert twist.

In some cases, it's even possible to use the hands and leg to roll the two elements into one direction on the leg, then hold them together and ply them by rolling in the opposite direction. Whether that is possible or not depends on the material, the dexterity of the maker, and - last but not at all least - on the required or desired amount of twist to be inserted.

I find that the more twist is needed, the slower the whole process will be, and simultaneously it becomes harder to speed it up with these small changes to procedure. With more twist inserted, the elements get more "lively" and will untwist much easier than with less twist. That is the reason why my fingers are so close to the fell in the video, and why I only insert a little bit of twist before each cross. I have tried to work further away from the fell, inserting more twist at a time, but the probability of losing much of that when doing the crossing (or plying) then is quite high, which makes that method less efficient than the one shown in the video. At least for me - it may be different for someone else. These making things are, after all, very individual.

Regarding the use of both hands to insert said twist: I actually do this, though it is very hard to see in the video. There's only a rather small motion of the left hand fingers before the cross, but it is there. What does take time is the crossing over, and I can't see myself going much faster on that than I am doing already. The elements have to be transferred carefully, or they will lose the necessary twist for the density of the cording. There's probably a bit of speed-up possibility left with more practise, but I don't see much improvement lingering close by. The elements are quite thin which means a lot of crossings, and as stated, those are what takes time. It takes me about 6 minutes to make one cord with this method.

That all said, Harma's suggestion was the use of a modern tool to speed up things...  which is what I actually do for production. (My cord twisting tool is different from the Ashford tool mentioned, though, and more suitable for the specific requirements of the skirt cords.) The estimate of about 1/10th of the time is, unfortunately, not true - that would be wonderful, and extremely fast. That might be the case for a very long cord with a relatively soft twist, but for mine, the speed difference is much less - though still considerable, which is exactly why I use the tool.

The Egtved Skirt is surprisingly short, with only about 40 cm overall length. Subtract about 2 cm for the waistband, and another c 2 cm for the felted rings on the bottom, and you end up with approximately 36 cm of cords for the actual skirt part.

That does not sound like a lot, right? Well, it quickly adds up, however - after all, there's about 350 or so cords in the complete skirt. These cords are very hard twisted, and one way to make this type of cord is to use the twist-and-cross method that was also employed for making bast proto-fabrics, like the mat Ötzi had with him.

Twist-and-cross means you twist each of your elements in one direction, then cross it over the other in the opposite direction. This gives you very good control and enables you to make a very hard cord with lots of twist and countertwist. Accordingly, the ply angle can be very high. The downside is that it takes a rather long time...

You can see how I do the twist-and-cross on one cord of my skirt in this video:


I've come a bit further than when I filmed this, but there's still about one metre to go... with the cords. That is a lot of twisting left to do!

There's been some more weaving - I've progressed to about 106 cm from the 155 cm of the section with cords in the corded skirt.

Weaving this skirt, like all kinds of weaving or, indeed, about all kinds of craft work, has its own specific rhythm. I'm vastly enjoying it to settle down into that rhythm when working. Because there's three loops drawn through each shed, and I'm doing two sheds as one section at a time, it's a longer and somehow different sequence than "normal" weaving of a band, or even normal weaving of a starting border (which is what doing the corded section resembles quite a lot).

I'm only doing two sheds at a time to have as little difference as possible in loop length, as I find it makes the following steps easier. The weaving itself is a specific two-hand operation, with my right hand holding the shed open, holding the foundation cord for the loops a bit away from the band with the middle finger, and the first finger hooking the weft and handing it through the shed to the left hand, which pulls the loop and places it over a post on my measuring stick thingie. Repeat this two more times, then change shed, do another three loops, change shed and press in the weft before plying up the individual loops. This starts with the last of the loops from the previous sequence, which was stored and held under slight tension on my left pinkie toe - because otherwise, the tension from pulling the next weft loop will eat this one, and that is not good.

So - first loop to go is the stored one, freeing the pinkie toe to take the first loop from my post. Then the five others get plied up, everything gets placed behind the measuring gadget so this sits right next to the stored loop, and the next sequence starts.

These things are like a kind of a dance, using hands and fingers and in some cases also the feet, or other parts of the body. They take a while to develop, and the motions of different people working may be similar, but everyone will have their own specific movements and quirks and solutions. That, too, is lovely to watch when looking at someone crafting.

One of the things when doing a reproduction or reconstruction that always happens? More testing and trying out methods and materials than you'd have anticipated.

There's often that nagging feeling that there might be a better method. Or a better material. So you're looking at different ways of doing stuff, sometimes completely different, sometimes just a slight variation of what you tried before. At some point, though, there's a working method that does, yes, work - and then it's best to stop messing around and stop looking for something even better, even neater, even closer to the original... even though it may be tempting.

The optimal outcome is when you get to do enough testing beforehand that you end up with a really nice method when starting the actual piece... and that, usually, means more preliminary tests than planned for. Especially when it's a small but important thing that, on its own, is made rather quickly, testing it once more, practising it again, and trying out another fibre can be sort of addictive.

Case in point? The wool-wrapped rings on the bottom edge of the Egtved skirt. Yes, I did get some practice in with making such rings on the belt tassel... but they were still rather awkward to make, took a long time, and I was not overly happy with how the fibre behaved while working the rings.

Especially "took a long time" is a key thing here. With more than 300 rings, each minute that one of the rings takes will make a difference of more than 5 hours total work time. One minute adds up. The rings on the original also look very nice and neat... which can be achieved by picking the right wool.



There's a lot of different possibilities to make these rings, starting from what happens with the ends of each cord to how they are inserted into the fibre wrap or how the fibre is wrapped around them. My current favourite process involves a skewer stick, two needles, and longer ends to work the rings, and its end result looks like this:



Here's a picture of some of the original rings for comparison:

[caption id="attachment_6529" align="alignnone" width="300"] Detail from this image from the Danish National Museum.


So... what do you think? Is it a match?

There I am, making slow but steady progress! The belt has been finished, and now I'm back on the corded section of the Egtved skirt:



Yes, I'm working on the floor - I put the warp there on a hunch, and I'm very glad now that I took that decision. While it may not seem as comfy for working as seated at a table, it gives me the possibility to use my foot (or, to be precise, my left big toe) to assist with things. The wooden piece you see in the middle of the photo is used to measure off the cord lengths, and I hold both this measuring thing and, on top of it, the last loop pulled through the previous shed, in place with my toe. That way I don't have to do too many loops at once, which results in loops crossing each other, and me having to sort them out again, and/or in distortion of the weave or changes in loop length. This way, I do each shed's loops as a separate batch, pulling them out, then letting them ply up. Then they are put out of the way. After a while of weaving, I've taken a break from that and started twisting the cords; to have something else to do for a change, and to prevent huge tangles from having too many cords to deal with at once (though I suspect that would not happen, really).

The cords are much longer than the ones on the belt end, and quite a bit thinner, so they do feel and behave rather differently. I'm also not yet happy about the rings, there will have to be some more tests to find the right amount of fibre to wrap around to arrive at the proper size and thickness for the rings. Unfortunately there's no picture showing them clearly from all sides, so part of this will remain guesswork.

To the right of my measuring and weaving tool, you can see the to-scale-printout of the original skirt, which serves as my guideline and to check if I'm about right. This is immensely helpful to have, it's so difficult to work just from descriptions and written measurements!

I've been trying to practice using my digital microscope - by doing some fibre thickness measurements. Like so many things, this takes a bit of getting used to, and is not quite as easy or straightforward as one might expect... starting from getting things focused properly, to taking a good measurement of the rather fine fibres. It would help to have a greater magnification to have less margin for error (one pixel in or out does already make a difference), but then it's even harder to get a proper focus, and there's fewer fibres per image...

Anyway, here's a picture for you so you can see how that looks:



 
This is the fibre I'm using for the corded skirt, the cord part. I suspect that the measurements I took are a little bit high, because I have another kind of fibre where I know the micron count, and my measurements were consistently higher than the count that was listed... so, well, probably needs some more practice, and some calibrating of my own eye, and possibly I need to move that one pixel inside instead of outside.

Also... taking these measurements is quite time-consuming! Especially regarding the fact that you need to take measurements from about 100 fibres, randomly selected, to get something like a proper histogram of the fleece (or fleece part) that you are looking at. I only took a random sample of some few fibres, and I probably won't go for the 100 for now. There's other things to do that are more important right now (and I know already that the fibre profile of the stuff I can get does not match the Bronze Age sheep...)