On Oct 15, 2005, at 20:42, Lynn Carpenter wrote:
http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/coll/peris2.shtml
I love the obvious care and attention that went into its making. The
caption says this is older than 1800's, though, so maybe not: "Dates:
ca.
AD 1300-1450".
In any case, a lacey enough textile to bring to the attention of the
list.
Thanks! _Very pretty_ And very modern in some ways. Also intriguing as
to the design and its origin as well as the date...
The culture from which this particular piece "sprang" is listed as
"Salado", which - followed through Google - seems to have been an old
Indian tribe (500-1450) - descendants of "wayfaring Anasazi" - and
known for both its pottery and its cotton weaving.
Since I've always thought of Sprang as being of Scandinavian origin
(the term certainly is) and quite a bit earlier than 1450, I dipped
into Google some more, this time on Sprang, which brought up:
http://www.regia.org/life/sprang.htm
and confirmed my confusion... :)
So, OK, bits of Sprang (under whatever name) have been dug in Peru,
dated as early as 500 BC, and the craft seems to have been known all
over the world for hundreds of years. No reason why it shouldn't have
resurfaced in Arizona or thereabouts, (spontaneously or through long
tribal memory <g>) some 1800 yrs later.
But, according to the website on Sprang, the textile's foremost feature
- afer its openness - is it's twisty nature and stretchiness; that's
why it was used for things like stockings, hairnets, caps... and
shopping bags in more modern times. Yet the tunic doesn't seem to show
any of that - there's an awful lot of what looks like solid weaving (or
cloth-stitch in BL). I'd dearly love to inspect that tunic closely and
even lay my hands on it (to see how stretchy it is)... :)
And then there's the design... According to the statemuseum.arizona
site, those are
The design motifs--running triangles and interlocking rectilinear
scrolls
Which is what really got me googling to begin with; given how bad my
memory is these days, I thought I was losing my mind entirely. But no,
not yet <g> The so-called "scrolls" still are what I've always known as
"Greek Key" (which is supposed to represent the path to Minotaur's lair
on Crete. At least _I think_ it was Crete....<g>). The "running
triangles" could also be Greek, without much of a stretch of
imagination; they look sooo much like sails of a flotilla... Which, of
course, would be in keeping with Greeks (and Scandinavians), but not
with land-locked Salados. Unless we put it down to the "wayfaring
Anasazis" and long tribal memory again...
A lot of fascinating (and futile <g>) questions generated by one
photo...
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
-
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line:
unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
