Muirenn Ingen Ciric — Interpretation of the Køstrup Band and Experimenting with Soumak Weaving Structure

• Name and Title: Baroness Muirenn Ingen Ciric
• Title of your Project: Interpretation of the Køstrup Band and Experimenting with Soumak Weaving Structure
• Location: Quintavia
• East Kingdom Wiki Link: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/wiki/Muirenn_Ingen_Ciric
• Category: Textiles

This 12 inch band was woven for the occasion of Ástríðr Músi’s Laurel ceremony, Opening of the Inn at Coldwood AS 59, to be worn by her across the top of her smokkr in a similar manner to the original find, excavated at Køstrup, Fyn in Denmark in 1980-1981.   My work was based on the pattern drafted by Agnes Raaness, found in the find writeup by Hilde Thunem.   Ástríðr requested this piece specifically because she loved the way that the colors and designs looked like the weaver had fun experimenting with leftover materials, so other than making the replica band symmetrical and removing symbols that felt too close to ones I wouldn’t wish to wear, I had fun choosing colors and playing with the shapes provided in the pattern.  I wove this piece in silk, unlike the original wool find, and used a standard 4-hole technique to weave the band itself (where the find used 2-hole tablet weaving).  The background color used was dark blue, both because that is the color the wool in the original find was dyed, as well as being the color of silk I have the most of (other than white) – I opted for the thinner blue thread for the background weaving to help the surface design “fill in” and have a more solid appearance, as the surface is woven with a thicker thread than the background.

         I initially thought that this was a brocade pattern – one where the design is woven across the top surface of the band by lifting and lowering the topmost layer of warp threads, allowing a secondary/non-structural weft thread to show the design.  However, I learned very quickly in my testing of this pattern that that was not the correct technique, and it would not work.  In reading through Shelagh Lewins’ notes on her construction of this band (Copyright © 2017) I came across a mention of her technique: “I like the effect of the thick motifs made of shorter brocade floats, which I wrapped underneath so it was really more like soumak.”  which led me to look into what Soumak was.  A very brief diagram in Collingwood’s The Techniques of Tablet Weaving (Copyright 1982, 2015) showed me that Soumak was similar to brocade (in that the design visible comes from a weft thread, instead of the warp patterns), but it wrapped laterally around the warp threads, looping around them to create a design that is visibly raised above the surface of the band itself.  This resulted in a delightfully textured band with very clear and easy-to-see designs.  Because the Soumak does not need to be “anchored” under an adjacent warp thread to keep it stable, you can see that designs can be woven directly up to the edges of the band without the need of border tablets, which is much harder/impossible to accomplish with other techniques.

Optional Additional Links: 

https://urd.priv.no/viking/kostrup.html

https://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/gallery/kostrup_notes.htm