When did weaving become a male profession?

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the development and technological changes within weaving in the Middle Ages when it developed into a major craft and one of the most important industries of the Middle Ages in Northern Europe. While prehistoric weaving appears as a predominantly female work domain, weaving became a male profession in urban contexts, organised within guilds. Hence, it has almost become a dogma that the expanding medieval textile industry, and corresponding transition from a female to a male work domain, was caused by new technology – the horizontal treadle loom. By utilising various source categories, documentary, iconographic and archaeological evidence, the article substantiates that the conception of the medieval weaver as a male craftsman should be adjusted and the long-established dichotomy between male professional craftsmen and weavers, and women as homework producers of textiles should be modified, also when related to guilds. The change from a domestic household-based production to a more commercially based industry took place at different times and scales in various areas of Europe and did not only involve men.

KEYWORDS:

• Textile production
• technology
• weaving
• gender roles
• crafts
• guilds
• Middle Ages
• Northwestern Europe

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Associate Professor Eva Andersson Strand for reading and giving competent and constructive comments to an earlier draft of the manuscript, and likewise, Professor Else Mundal for valuable and supportive feedback, and Marta Kløve Juuhl, professional weaver and curator at The Museum Centre in Hordaland, for kindly reading through the manuscript as for weaving details. The author also thanks an anonymous reviewer for useful comments, making the author see and clarify ambiguities and further substantiate arguments. The author is also indebted to conservator Jan Dewilde, Kenniscentrum, Musea Ieper, and archivist Rik Opsomer, Stad Ieper, Stadsarchief, for their generous help and valuable information about the history of the medieval Keurboek from 1366 and for providing photos of the original document.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am indebted to Professor Einar Thomassen, specialist on ancient religions, for this contextualisation.

2. The textile researcher G. Crawfoot thought, for example, that the Talmud here refers to the Middle East (Hoffmann 1964, p. 260).

3. For more information and discussion about its origins, see Broudy (1979).

4. Heddle horses have also been denoted as heddle cradles (Walton Rogers 1997) but basically have the same function as balances for strings connecting pulleys, heddle bars and treadles when making a shed. Some have only notches to fasten the string, others holes.

5. The original manuscript was lost in 1914 during the World War I, but photos had been taken earlier and reproduced in paper, being published in 1904 as illustrations in an article. An accurate reproduction the original Keurboek of the same scene was made in 1861 as a diploma showing the original colours (photos and information: Kenniscentrum, Musea Ieper and Stad Ieper, Stadsarchief). In many publications, this weaving scene has been redrawn without the same precision as in the original and seems to present the weavers as males.

6. Edwine Psalter, Trinity College, Cambridge MS R 17.1.

7. Cf. Mårtensson et al. (2009) underlining the importance of loomweights as sources to textile production.

8. Textile tools, including loomweights and weaving beaters, are common finds in prehistoric female burials expressing an almost hegemonic femininity. In Norway, textile tools may also occur in male burials from the Viking period in small numbers (Petersen 1951, pp. 293, 296) but find conditions and contexts are often uncertain due to early and imprecise recorded finds, and not being excavated professionally. A possible connection with production of sails has been suggested (Rabben 2002). This is an issue the present author looks closer into in a wider project related to tools and textile production in West Norse environments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen.