Coptic Textiles from the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester

[Cheyenne]

Hello All,

Myself and another Comitatus member visited the archive of the Petrie Collection at the Whitworth a while back - photos up online at:

http://s841.photobucket.com/albums/zz33 ... 20Gallery/

They range in date from 4th-10th century - Northern Egypt

I promised the museum they wouldn't be published for commercial use, so please, these are only for educational purposes.

[Agraes]

Great stuff, many thanks!

[Crispvs]

Fascinating! Thank you.

Crispvs

[Eleatic Guest]

Did they say something about Coptic textile printing?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Very nice, !!

I'll have one of the red with green pattering, the blue with the gold patterns and .....lol

[Cheyenne]

I'm not sure about textile 'printing' - I do know there is a museum that does printing of textiles directly from jacquards of actual coptic tunics... but it's not the Whitworth.. and I think they were charging about 2 grand for a reproduction - think the museum doing this is in the states

Claire

[Eleatic Guest]

Thanks for the info, but I am rather interested in when Coptic textile printing started, that is from what date the earliest specimen are. You know, textile printing is a branch of printing very much overlooked in favour of book printing.

[Cheyenne]

A quick interweb search does suggest that there was limited textile printing in Egypt in the 4th century and that the Chinese may have been undertaking this as early as the 2nd century - before printing on paper in the East.

I haven't seen examples of printed fabrics from Coptic Egypt however - the examples I have seen from the early 4th century are the usual woven in polyhrome patterns..

If you have any references/pics of the printed textiles, then I would be most interested to see how they achieved it, as the textile dyes were prone to movement in these early fabrics without a proper mordanting process

[Crispvs]

A few years ago Celer told me he had seen a fragment of a tunic with painted clavi when he was working at Christie's. He may be able to comment further.

Crispvs

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I'm not sure about textile 'printing' - I do know there is a museum that does printing of textiles directly from jacquards of actual coptic tunics... but it's not the Whitworth.. and I think they were charging about 2 grand for a reproduction - think the museum doing this is in the states

Claire

Whereas you do it for far less? :wink: :mrgreen:

[Cheyenne]

Indeed I do Byron..

I'm currently also developing a lightweight herringbone material with a family run weaving firm in Halifax who are using dobbs shuttle looms (not power looms) rather than fully mechanised ones.. the material should be ready towards the end of next month. They are doing a loomstate fabric for me which means I can dye and finish it myself.. I am looking at obtaining some of the shellfish to do a tyrian purple for the clavii of a tunic for one commission..

The material is costing £20 a metre which is a bit of a bargain for the hand made stuff and this one will be available for tunics, high status cloaks, fascia Ventralis etc..

I like getting new materials to work with!

C

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well keep me and ourconversation in mind please!

[Cheyenne]

Of course I will, I'll post pics of the material when I obtain it ... they are really knowledgable weavers and only use non-power looms. They have spent 70 years in the Yorkshire weaving industry between them and have done work for the Tower of London and Hampton court for their state rooms in reproducing historical textiles...

When I move house, my ambition is to get a proper weighted and frame loom setup so I can do some small scale weaving myself..

Thanks for your support Byron

[A_Volpe]

WOW!! Wowowowowwow!! That is just amazing! Thanks for 'sharing'. Wow.

[Cheyenne]

No worries,

Glad to share refs for fellow re-enactors... I know I said to Marton Moser on here ages ago that I'd put some up of the Bolton Museum collection too.. and still have about another 100 shots from that one.. they are on my mac in my recording studio, so I'll post them on photobucket too when I transfer them to cd as the mac isn't online

Claire