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Weaving Tablet

Spinning and Weaving Tools

A weaving tablet, or card, is a small flat implement used in tablet weaving, also called card weaving, a technique for producing narrow patterned bands. Tablets are typically shaped as regular polygons with holes pierced near each corner and sometimes at the center, with the corners rounded to prevent catching as they rotate. Historically made from bark, wood, bone, horn, stone, leather or metal, and today often cardboard, they are threaded with warp yarn and turned by hand, together or individually, to lift chosen sets of warp threads and create the shed through which the weft passes.

Facts
Introduced When (Circa)
Tablets used for this weaving technique date back to at least the 8th century BCE in early Iron Age Europe, with early examples found at Hochdorf in Germany and Apremont in France. 1
Origin
Long and wrongly credited to pharaonic Egypt on the strength of an inked cartouche of Rameses III on the so-called Girdle of Rameses; structural analysis by weaving scholar Peter Collingwood later showed the belt could not actually have been tablet-woven. 1
Introduced era (class)
Iron Age 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Tablet Weaving (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • History section
    Tablet weaving dates back at least to the 8th century BCE in early Iron Age Europe
  • History section, Egyptian-origin theory paragraph
    Peter Collingwood proved by structural analysis that the linen belt could not have been woven on tablets
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