Tablet Weaving

While conducting research on numeracy, I began to look more closely at tablet weaving. It is, as its name implies, a loomless technique in which small tablets of bone, wood or similar material, pierced and threaded, are turned to twist strands of silk or wool into ‘narrow wares’ such as belts, girdles, pouches and colourful bands for edging garments. In premodern Europe, it was work done entirely (we think) by women. I see it as a form of tacit mathematical expression and am beginning to explore the effects of its practice on the devotional and practical economies of female communities, both lay and monastic. Raw materials were frequently obtained in exchange for prayers that accompanied the weaving process. Key clerical vestments including the liturgical girdle, stole, pallium and maniple were often tablet woven as were some of the most eye-catching elements of royal costumes. Women were sometimes granted exclusive rights for the supply and repair of these objects, which, to judge from extant pieces that carry the names and pictures of their makers, served as sites for personal promotion and even as surrogates, entering spaces and participating in rites off-limits to their human counterparts.

Related Publications
‘Patterns of Experience: Communicating Textile Knowledge at Sankt Klara, Nuremberg’. [expected publication, 2023]

Related Presentations
’Writing Weaving in Nuremberg, c. 1500’
BAA lecture, 2 March 2022 

‘Twisted Piety: Tablet Weaving at the Convent of Sankt Klara, Nuremberg, c. 1500’
UEA World Art Research Seminar, 9 February 2022 

‘Meditation, Quantification and Tablet Weaving in Premodern Europe’
The Contemplative Clinic, The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 16 September 2019

Image of St Ulrich’s Maniple, Basilika St Ulrich und St Afra (Augsburg, DE) from Coatsworth, Elizabeth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds. Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Page 332.