The fine quality of Egyptian linen has lead to much speculation of how it might have been made. It has been shown that splicing is the answer and not traditional draught spinning. I was keen to find out more details and I believe that even the experiments of a complete novice like me give some insight.
Cat Lewis of Llieinwe kindly allowed me to use some of her flax for splicing experiments. Some was thicker, taller material, the rest fine and shorter; both were green.
Following Sally Pointer’s demonstration with nettles, I stripped the external green outer pieces from the woody internal piece. This gave me ribbons of flax. I found I didn’t have much success with the fine, short flax. I was only getting ribbons of about an inch or so, so I concentrated on the longer, fatter stuff.
The top is a flax stalk. The bottom shows ribbons of cortex. In the middle is a small quantity of spliced material.
I then took the ribbons and twisted them together, one ribbon overlapping with another, a process known as ‘splicing’. Sally pointer here demonstrates splicing. Here is the academic report outlining the evidence for splicing.
Ribbons of flax cortex spliced and wrapped around my fingers (I found it best to wrap them around something to ensure the spliced overlaps stayed twisted together).
I made two ‘twists’ of flax ribbon with the intent of spinning them together using a drop spindle and a mock-up of a spinning bowl.
The two twists, I was able to get the second one, below, slightly finer than the first.
The mock spinning bowl didn’t work, but then I just used it dry and not in water. The ‘twists’ tangled together. I untangled them best I could and instead spun slowly using a drop spindle and holding the two twists separate. I could have done with more hands. Perhaps I will try water in the bowl another time to see if that makes things easier. As it was, I had to keep stopping to finger twist any broken lengths of spliced ribbon. As in traditional draught spinning of linen, a certain amount of saliva helped!
A real spinning bowl. These were made in Palestine as well as Egypt.
Mock-up of a spinning bowl made from oen hardening ‘clay’.
Below was the result against a traditional draught-spun piece. I have had a lot more practice draught spinning flax using a wheel. But, I think you can see that even so, the last bit of spliced flax is finer than the draught-spun. The spliced also felt smoother. Of course not all the spliced was quite so neat. Some was a mess!
The browner stuff is traditionally made, the greener, finer is spliced
Practice makes perfect.
I am thinking about boiling the results of the spliced with some wood ash to see how this effects the finished yarn. I also need a LOT more practice and need to try again with the spinning bowl in water.
2 Responses
As I understand the use of a spindle bowl with the two small loops was to aid plying. One ply went thrugh each loop, these were wet by being pulled through the water before being plied. As a spinning teacher I always wet ply, just by wetting my fingers as I don’t have a small double loop bowl.
That is correct. I hope to try that too. I made a double loop from fymo. I’ve yet to see if ot works.