Building a new loom along historic lines in 2023. . . I spent much of 2023 building a new loom specifically for linen. The finished loom is shown in the photographs above. The images further down this post show the various stages of the design and build process. The loom is modelled on examples of … Continue reading Hand Loom for Linen.
The second of two posts presenting photographs of the linen looms at Ballydugan Weaver’s House in the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Northern Ireland.This post deals with the ‘damask loom’, the previous post with the ‘plain loom’. . Ballydugan Weaver’s House is a reconstruction of an 1850s weaver’s cottage from Ballydugan, County Down. It currently … Continue reading The Ballydugan Looms, part 2.
The first of two posts presenting photographs of the linen looms at Ballydugan Weaver’s House in the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Northern Ireland.This post deals with the ‘plain loom’, the second post with the ‘damask loom’. . Ballydugan Weaver’s House is a reconstruction of an 1850s weaver’s cottage from Ballydugan, County Down. It currently … Continue reading The Ballydugan Looms, part 1.
A post about the two linen looms at Ballydugan Weaver’s House in the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum at Cultra, Northern Ireland. I visited in April 2023 to look at details of loom construction to inform my own loom build later in the year. I am grateful to the weavers Roisin & Joanne for making … Continue reading The Ballydugan Looms
. In 2023 I made a small batch of huckaback handtowels from the finest unbleached linen yarn I could obtain. One of these I monogrammed in memory of Albert Tyler, the last of the Lopham handloom weavers. Tyler was almost certainly involved in weaving the ‘Lopham linen’ which is now in the collection of Norfolk … Continue reading A handtowel for Albert Tyler
Like most old words it has been spelled in various ways, including huccaback, hukkaback, hukaback, hugaback, hag-a-bag, hagabag, huggaback and huck-a-back, before becoming standardised as huckaback, sometimes shortened to just huck. Usually singular, occasionally plural, as in the weavers’ draft for ‘hukabacks’ in the Thomas Jackson manuscript from the mid 1700’s.1 * The Oxford English … Continue reading Huckaback / Piggyback
‘Truly an old craft standing by itself, alone in this England of ours.‘ This post is a transcript of a newspaper article about the linen industry in North & South Lopham, Norfolk, first published in the East Anglian Daily Times on 23rd January 1894. A reprinted version of the article is preserved in the Rita … Continue reading Hand Loom Weaving (1894)
In this post I share some illustrations and extracts from a rare eighteenth century book about flax and hemp cultivation, processing and weaving. The book’s full title is: A Treatise concerning the Manner of Fallowing of Ground, Raising of Grass-Seeds, and Training of Lint and Hemp, for the increase and improvement of Linnen-Manufactories in Scotland, … Continue reading “Farming in Scotland”
(December 2022) This is a post about my trip in July to view the collection of Lopham linen in Norfolk Museums, with photographs and descriptions of rare examples of handwoven huckaback cloth made around 1900. I am grateful to Ruth Battersby Tooke, senior curator of Costume and Textiles at Norfolk Museums Service, and Rachel Kidd, … Continue reading Lopham Linen
(November 2022) Concering the locations of Ralph Watson and Thomas Jackson, and the distribution of linen manufacture in North Yorkshire. The first image above is a map of North Yorkshire pinned to my studio wall. The black pin at the top right, near the mouth of the River Tees, locates the tiny village of Wilton, … Continue reading The linen manufacture of North Yorkshire, once upon a time.