By Janice Zindel
If you have ever been intrigued by the beauty of damask weaving, by the sight of drawlooms, or on the other end of the spectrum, intimidated by these looms, Weaving Damask will help provide clear, helpful, easy-to-understand explanations of what damask is and how a drawloom works.
The book begins with a brief history of damask weaving along with the tradition in Norway, followed by chapters on how the looms work, how to wind and beam/thread/sley it, an explanation of shaft draw, single unit, and a couple pages on weaving uphamta on a drawloom.
Creating your own designs is discussed and several pages of patterns are provided which can be woven as shown, or used as a starting point for your own creativity.
The principles provided in this book apply no matter who made the loom or the drawloom attachments. There are a few pages on how to make the “Petra” for people who want to make their own attachments. Looms are different, some go out of production, some looms were handmade to begin, and issues may arise in buying attachments and expecting them to fit and work. The information in this book will help with any challenges that may arise.
The photos in the book are clear, in color, and clearly relate to the text. Diagrams and charts are black and white.
Near the back are pages of “Quick Guides” with bullet points, so readers don’t need to re-read the book looking for pieces of information. There are also guideline charts for planning a point threading for 10 through 50 pattern shafts. Also, calculations for warp yarns, two pages on finding and correcting mistakes, and a bibliography of non-English books.
On a personal note, this book came along at just the right time. I have a 35+ year old Glimakra single unit draw. After weaving on a Myrehed combination drawloom at Vavstuga several years ago, having a loom with that setup had been on my wish list. Well, this book gave me a good push, the time was right, and the attachments were just ordered. Because of the width of the loom, not made in many years, it is a special order but I am hoping the packages will arrive by late November. Meanwhile, I will re-read this book to be ready to assemble the new attachments and begin a new area of weaving.
Janice Zindel’s draw loom in Wisconsin
Author Anne E. Nygard lives and teaches at Damaskvev in Lysoysund, Norway. She is on Facebook. Damaskvev was published, in Norwegian, by MuseumsForlaget in 2018. Weaving Damask was published, in English, in 2020.
Janice Zindel took her first basic weaving class in 1981, with an opportunity to weave on a single unit drawloom. She knew then that one day she would have that loom, and three years later she did. Life with her husband, child, three moves in five years, a few years later two adoptions, loss of husband, and raising children kept that interest still a dream. She continued taking weaving classes over ten years, including Basic Weaving and Basic Drawloom at Vavstuga. Though lately she has been exploring indigo-dyed woven shibori, she is returning to her Interest in Norwegian/Scandinavian weaving and textiles. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Norway.