Studies in primitive looms / by H. Ling Roth.

  • Henry Ling Roth
Date:
[1934]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies in primitive looms / by H. Ling Roth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    blanket.1 Batchelor tells us the garments produced “ are very rough indeed, reminding one of sackcloth, and are of a dirty brown colour. It is therefore no wonder that those Ainu who can afford it prefer to wear the softer Japanese clothing/’ Simple as it looks, the Ainu loom is characteristic in all its parts except one, and this one, the semi-girdle or back-strap, appears to connect it with the looms of, generally speaking, the Pacific Region. The users of the back-strap are, or were, the Bhutiyas of N.W. India (specimen in Bankfield Museum), the Tibetans,2 the Chinese,3 Burmese and Assamese,4 the Iban or Sea-Dyaks (Bankfield Museum), the Japanese,5 Philippine Islanders,6 the Koreans,7 the Santa Cruz Islanders (Bankfield Museum), the Caroline Islanders, the Aztecs,8 and Modern Mexican tribes (British Museum), and so on—a fairly wide circle of users. On the British Museum Ainu loom the back strap is of bark, on the specimens in the Horniman Museum and the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, it is of wood. The Ainu, as observed, use non-spun bast filament in single strips both for warp and for weft. A similar non-spun filament, but in much broader strips, and on a much cruder loom, is used by the Kwakiutl Indians for mat-making.9 The Santa Cruz Islanders use a non-spun filament for their warp, and a twisted filament or thread for the weft; what the latter is made of I have not been able to ascertain, but the warp is said to be obtained from the stem of a black banana !10 According to Lieut. Emmons, in the manufacture of the Chilkat blanket the inner bark of the yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) and of the red cedar (Thuya plicata) is laid up in a two-stranded cord, so it is bast thread and not non-spun bast filament.11 Otherwise the great field for non-spun filament used for weaving and drawn from the Raphia palm is the vast region of that palm’s habitat in Africa. But beyond using a non-spun filament, there is nothing in common between the looms of Africa and the looms of the Ainu. In a Shan head-dress in Bankfield Museum some weft is of non-spun filament-like palm leaf splittings, and native cotton warp. There does not appear to be any warp beam in the Ainu loom, a warp peg (Fig. 27) being used instead, and is driven into the ground, as is evident from the specimens in the British Museum, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and Horniman Museum. Hitchcock does not mention any warp attachment, and Bird mentions the use of a hook. 1 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 4th ed., Lond., 1881, ii, 92. 2 W. H. S. Landor, Tibet and Nepal. 3 Falcot, Traitf 1852, PI. 224. 4 Joyce and Thomas, Women of All Nations. 6 v. Bavier, Japan’s Seidenzucht, PI. IV, Fig. 3. 6 Worcester, Philippine Journ. Sci., I. 7 Cavendish, Corea and the Sacred White Mountain. Kingsborough’s Mendoza Codex. 9 M. L. Kissel, Aboriginal American Weaving. 10 Florence Coombe, Islands of Enchantment, London, 1911, p. 175. 11 “ The Chilkat Blanket,” Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., iii, p. iv. Dec., 1907.
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