Sunday, April 16, 2006

Ancient fabric

This is a photo I took of a small scrap of fabric that we found when we visited the Mere Ruka tomb and the adjacent dig. It could be anywhere from 2500-5000 years old and it is finely woven linen. There were many 'scraps' of fabric littered everywhere as all those buried were mummified and wrapped in linen. In fact I was amazed by how many graves they had found and the amount of fabric that poked out in places.It made me wonder how many spinners and weavers there must have been- were they men or women?

I want to somehow use the photos to create something which this fragment that has carried itself into the lens of my camera through eons and eons . How can i transform it into something that I can use now.

And today I am revisiting lace- it's been sometime- in a sense a new way forward with it in another format- maybe some results to show tomorrow
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3 comments:

Helen said...

just simply WOW! to think it's that old!

Debra said...

Wow.. old and still existing. And interesting.

I see a layered piece with lots of stitching for the texture... and your blog design is quite interesting.

Anonymous said...

Have you read the book Women's Work: the first 20,000 years? It is all about ancient spinning and weaving.

Christine Thresh
on an island in the California Delta