The Insane Llangors Textile

Sorry for the hiatus, readers! It's been a whirlwind time at Chez LittleWelshViking. I've started a PhD, travelled across the sea to Canada, put on a play wot I wrote, and all the while been working on re-enactment clothes.

Let's talk about the latest project for now, and I'll do some more catch-up posts later in the month.

I'm doing a crazy mad embroidery.

Like, properly insane.

It's called the Llangorse textile, and it's a well-preserved piece of very fine linen (c63tpi) from the 10th century. It was burned and buried on a crannog (island castle) site in Llangors, near Brecon. The linen is embroidered with fine, unspun 2-ply silk thread, in imitation of the fine brocaded silks of the Middle East in the period.

All the pictures below are courtesy of Amgueddfa Cymru (the Welsh National Museum) unless otherwise stated.

Now this thing is fascinating for three main reasons:

1. We have very little early medieval textile evidence from my homeland. This is, basically, it.

2. It's unique in its execution. This is not an embroidery style you see elsewhere in Europe, as far as I'm aware, in the period. This is effectively Opus Cambrianum.

3. Nobody seems to know what it is.

UNTIL NOW (Because I've taken a guess)

According to the initial interpretation, the fragments of fabric that make up the textile are part of a sleeve. Two problems there; one: the embroidery on the 'gusset' is really intense, and that'd be barely visible on a sleeve gusset. Two: It's way too effing big. Sleeves in the period in western Europe were fitted, especially towards the wrist. It ain't a sleeve, lads.

There's an insert on the fragment as you can see, and I believe that it represents the lower gore of an early medieval tunic. Heather Rose Jones's wonderful website has a page dedicated to this piece of cloth, and she has similar views to mine. She believes this is outerwear due to the second layer inside (see below), that it's an opulent piece of high status clothing made to appear like the fine brocades of the east.

Anyway, sewing.

So this thing is ridiculous in its intricacy. Each of the little leopards in the enhanced images are about 1cm/ half an inch long. That's mad. The majority of the areas around the animal motifs are filled in with tiny little stitches. This equates to about 25 stitches per cm, on a linen ground of the same grade, all done without the aid of modern magnification. Each stitch goes 2 or 3 threads across and one up, forming a kind of twill pattern. It's all been worked by hand, and there are geometric and stylised vines surrounding the animals as well. 

The seams and edges of the embroidered areas are also covered with an applied fingerloop braid, and the bottom of the 'gore' has two tiny thread worked 'eyelets'. 

What are they for? Not a bloody clue. Probably decorative. Potentially for setting in jewels, gold spangles, or similar mineral decoration. Oh, and it was lined in linen as well.

It's lunacy.

Obviously I can't embroider that well yet, and I don't have the patience to make an exact replica without turning to therapeutic violence, so I'm going to simplify it a bit.

"But that's cheating!"

Yes. I don't care what you think.

I'm going to be trying to make a lined, linen tunic of generic early medieval style. Slit neck, tight sleeves, etc (see Hurstwic's site for a handy general look at 'Viking age' kit). I'll then attempt to embroider an illustrative section of the motif from the original textile, as closely as I can to the original, to give viewers an idea. It'll take me years, I'll be blind by the end of it, and I'll want to kill whoever gave me this interest in historical clothing.

Let's go!

This is my first piece of practice work. 

It's a tiny leopard. This is not as well made as Heather Rose Jones's replica swatch, nor the original, but it's a close approximation. Using my "even back then there was variety in individual crafters' pieces", I'm happy with the quality so far. The linen is blue, not undyed like the original, but again, this is a swatch. It's almost exactly the same TPI as the original though, and after an hour's needlework, you do start to see the threads appearing more clearly. It's amazing how the human eye can adapt to a job! 

Pop back for updates. This one is a long-term project!