Words on Wednesdays: Home

"Home is where one starts from"

T.S. Elliot

My name is Qin Li and I am on a work placement with the Learning and Participation team as part of my MA study. During my placement, the most appealing and the most difficult work for me was my ‘Words on Wednesday’ handing table. For my table, I chose the topic of  'at home with a Roman Family', which is mainly about the day to day activities of the Romans at home. There were three themes on my table, women’s work at home - textile working, leisure activities - gaming (board games) and dinner.

My handling table

During my display, I used the timeline of the day to join these different themes. When Roman women were at home during the daytime, one of their main tasks was textile working. They were spinning and weaving yarn and making clothes for their families. Due to demand for clothing, the family workshop gradually developed into an industry and played an important role in the Roman economic system. In the Roman Baths collection, I found spindle whorls of various shapes and colours, they are my main objects in this section. Some loom weights and needles were also displayed on the table.

Spindle whorls made of pottery and shale

The second part of my display was about Roman leisure activities after work. When they were at home or in the bath house, they enjoyed some leisure time. Gaming is one of the things they did. They used counters, dice and other things to play the board games. In this section, I showed counters of different materials. The Romans used counters of different materials such as ceramic, shale, glass and bone. Visitors seemed to be attracted by the beautiful glass counters.

Gaming counters made of black and white glass and worked bone

After the end of work and leisure time, they had dinner time. I chose to show the pots and dishes which were used to serve on the table in this section. Ceramic pots of different colours and textures were chosen. One of my favourite objects is a piece of Samian ware pottery. The mould-made decoration on the Samian is very beautiful, which also attracted visitors’ attention. This piece of Samian is in a good condition and visitors were able to touch it.

Samian bowl rim

At my table there were some activities to engage with visitors. In the working section, a replica of the spindle was provided. I tried to learn the Roman spinning technique when I was researching my table. Visitors were very happy to see me show it! In the gaming part, a Roman board game was there for visitors to play. Merels, the Roman three-in-a-row game, attracted many people. Most of them chose to take a board game home with them when they left the table. I hope this little game will give all the visitors good memories of this handling table.

Visitors enjoying a game of Merels

Qin Li
Placement Student

Textiles to Dye For!

Textile production was a major part of the ancient economy and clothing was used to give a visual message about the wearer’s rank, wealth and sometimes their profession. Despite the fact that textiles very rarely survive in archaeology, there are some artefacts which can at least tell us about how they were made

Hannah's handy diagram showing the basic stages of textile production: collection of raw materials, spinning and weaving.

Using this sophisticated diagram of my creation and a selection of spindle whorls and loom weights from the museum’s collection, my Tuesday Times Table explained how an item of Roman clothing would have been made. As an added treat (and my favourite object), I also brought out a replica warp-weighted loom to show how the weaving process worked. Weaving a piece of cloth on a loom like this was a very long and slow process, especially when making a Roman toga. They were made of a single piece of cloth which measured up to 6ft in width and 12ft in length. That’s a lot of weaving!

Hannah with her table

As well as spinning and weaving artefacts, I also showed some examples of natural dyes used in Roman Britain. The most commonly used dyes were madder (red), yellow (weld) and woad (blue) and these were relatively cheap. The most expensive dye of all was purple, knows as Tyrian or Phoenician purple. It was so expensive because it was made from the mucous of tiny Murex sea snails. 1000s of these snails were required to make enough dye just to trim one garment! Because of this, purple was associated with the emperors and is still associated with royalty today. 

Dyes used in Roman Britain: madder (red), weld (yellow), woad (blue) and alkanet (lilac). Green could be made using a mixture of weld and woad.

The most surprising thing about my handling table for many visitors was the bright and varied colours of the dyes. We often think of the Romans wearing only white togas, perhaps because colour from the ancient world has generally not survived well. It is easy to forget that almost all of the pure white marble statues and friezes we see in museums today would have once been painted in bright colours, which would have more accurately shown what Roman clothing looked like. In short, the Romans and their clothes were much more colourful than we imagine!

Hannah

MA Placement student 

Designer at the Baths

 I’m Christopher, a recent Textile Design Graduate of Bath School of Art and Design, and Ancient Textile Researcher who is a regular volunteer. During the past two years here at the Roman Baths, the building and its collection has provided a wonderful wealth of inspiration for my work.

 I am a keen student of both history and design, constantly looking for ways to combine the two subjects coherently; with the help of the Roman Baths I have successfully discovered my niche as an Ancient Textile Researcher. During the final year of my degree, the ‘Developing Textile design’ module gave me the opportunity to produce a collection of woven textile samples inspired by Roman mosaics.

 

Woven sample based on Mosaics

 Using a variety of different mosaics, to explore the geometric patterns of Roman mosaics, to develop a series of ‘colour and weave’ patterns to weave cloth samples. The mosaics include two from the Roman Baths collection, the geometric mosaic floor from Weymouth House, Bath and the mosaic from the Keynsham Roman Villa.

Exploring Geometric patterns: the Weymouth House mosaic, now in store

Through a series of observational drawing I broke down the mosaics into re-occurring patterns, developing them into repeatable weave blocks to weave the samples.

Observational drawing of the mosaic

 Preparing for my Graduate Show, I returned to the Roman Baths again, this time taking a series of photographs of the exterior of the building, while there was scaffolding all over the building to do maintenance of the Pump Room roof. I used the juxtaposition of the scaffolding over the windows and columns of the building, to create a series of tartans and checks. This was done by breaking them down into blocks of colour and lines created by the overlaying features of the building.

 

Breaking down images into colour and lines

Alongside the module I experimented with natural dyes, to discover the effect of dyeing natural coloured wool on the depth of colour produced during the dye process. Trying to keep to similar colours to what would have been available to the Romans; therefore I used Madder (Rubia Tinctorum), Weld (Reseda Luteola) and Indigo (Indigofera Tintoria).

NB. Even the chalk used in the dye process, is from the Baths (used in conservation, as sacrificial mortaring in the pavement around the Great bath.)

 

Natural Dye Experiments

The module concluded with the presentation of my work in the Textile Design Degree Show at Bath School of Art and Design in June 2014, where I created a gallery space, that combined aspects of research and design.

Final Degree Show

Samples from Final Degree Show

To see more of my textile design work and/or my ancient textile research, you can find me on my blog: Christopherleedesigns.wordpress.com

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Tuesday Time Table - Roman Textiles

The variety of cloth in the Roman period was not as diverse as today. The Romans only had cloth made from both animal and vegetable fibre, i.e. wool, silk, flax and cotton. Their availability determined their value, for example, as silk cocoons were difficult to find silky cloth was very expensive.

Now for a little bit on how the people of the past created thread and how they made cloth. The Romans used mainly five or six different sources of material to make thread. The most common was wool, which is made from a sheep’s fleece, carded using combs and then spun using a drop spindle.

Mulberry Moth

Silk is also an animal fibre, is spun by an insect called the mulberry moth. When it is a caterpillar it eats the leaves of the mulberry tree and weaves a cocoon of silk thread around itself. Man releases this thread by boiling the cocoons.

Combing Flax

Obtaining thread from flax and hemp is a more labour intensive process. Fibres are taken from the stems of these two plants by submerging them in water and then by beating the dried stems. These two phases soften the hard outer stem which can then be removed more easily. They are then combed and spun into a thread. While hemp was a fibre of low value more suitable for ropes and linen, the cloth made from flax fibre was a luxurious fabric often worn by priests.

Cotton Flower

Cotton comes from the cotton plant. As it ripens woollen seed balls form and they are then picked by hand. This fibre, like wool, is then carded and spun to obtain a thread. Cotton was a rare and luxurious fabric in the Roman period and it was imported from India and southern Egypt.

Roman Loom

Using a loom, a number of threads are then woven together to make cloth. The loom is the frame that supports the threads as they are being woven together. Looms come in different shapes and sizes and they can look different as they eveolved through the centuries to suit the nature and size of the cloth being produced.

Woven Cloth

[For more on spinning see http://www.bathsbloggers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/spinning-yarn.html ]

Spinning a Yarn.....

As promised, here is more about the Roman Spindle whorl, but first a little history…

A frieze on the Forum Palladium in Rome features a series of bas-reliefs of women spinning thread using the spindle whorl. This goes to show that spinning was a common activity for Roman women, girls and female slaves. Although the spindle whorl was used in creating thread for clothes and textiles, it was also used as a sacrifice to the gods and would sometimes be carried in bridal processions. The act of spinning was also associated to women coming of age and, in the myth of the 3 Fates, each thread spun by the women hold the life of every man’s past, present and future. Interestingly, in rural districts of Italy, the women were forbidden to spin when travelling on foot because it was considered an evil omen.

So, how do you use this object? Here is a fun step by step guide;

The spindle whorl normally consists of a stick of 10 or 12 inches long (spindle) and a circular weight (whorl). Spindle whorls are made from various materials - wood, stone, ceramics or metal.

Spindle Whorl

Imagine if you have the spindle whorl…

1) With your two hands, take a piece of wool and rub it together to form a long strand. Tie one end near the whorl and the other on the top of the staff (there should be a slit or catch). The weight of the whorl should help spinning.

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2) Hold the wool in your left hand and, with your right hand, spin the spindle whorl. Let the spindle whorl weight draw the spindle down, drawing out the thread.

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3) Once reaching the ground, take it out of the slit and wind onto the spindle. Replace the thread in the slit and twist out another length. Repeat.

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Congratulations, you are spinning!