As I work on my table runner, my thoughts drift ahead to what I'm going to do next. I want to weave a second runner, this one for my daughter, but I want it to be different. One of the three-color samples in my third twill gamp dishtowel has stuck in my mind and got me thinking about Crackle. It's a weave structure I haven't explored yet, although akin to one of my favorites, Summer and Winter. I thought crackle would make for a good study, and what better way to start than with my second table runner.
When I chose crackle for a learning project, however, I had no idea how complicated wrapping my head around it was going to be. This is, in part, because apparently, there are different types of crackle. I'm running across terms like "conventional crackle," "modern crackle," "classic crackle," and "traditional crackle." What makes it confusing, is that everything out there is usually presented as just "crackle," even though I'm aware that they aren't all the same.
This blog post is going to be my attempt to organize all the tidbits of information I've collected, to see if I can make sense of them.
EDIT: I seem to have an awful lot of notes, so I'm going to break them down into something of a series, starting with what I've gleaned so far about crackle's origins and evolution.
History
The history of crackle as a weave structure can be traced back to Sweden, where it is known as Jämtlandsväv or Jämtlandsdräll (depending on its regional origin). In the early 20th century, Jämtlandsväv was brought to the attention of American weavers by Mary Meigs Atwater. She introduced and explored it as "the Swedish technique" in her Shuttle Craft Bulletins (all of which are available as free PDFs at the On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics.) "Jämtlandsväv" is quite a mouthful for non-speakers of Swedish, so she eventually called it "crackle weave" because the look of it reminded her of the crackled pattern of old pottery or batik.
Harriet Tidball followed Mary Atwater as the owner and director of the Shuttle Craft Guild from 1946 to 1957. In 1949, she introduced a systematic set of rules for writing crackle drafts, and these became the standard that is still used today.
Traditional Crackle versus Classic Crackle
Currently, crackle seems to have evolved into two distinct "flavors," Exactly how and when, I don't know. I do know that it became very popular after Atwater introduced it, and a lot of experimentation went on. In her The Weaver's Book (1961), Harriet Tidball mentions it can be woven like overshot, with pattern and tabby wefts, or as "classic crackle" which uses three shuttles, each with a different color yarn. Understanding this much helped me tremendously, because when I first started looking at drafts, I knew I wasn't always seeing the same thing. Yet, all were called "crackle."
According to Susan Wilson (Weave Classic Crackle & More), Jämtlandsväv was most commonly woven with two shuttles: one for a pattern weft, the other for a tabby weft. Mary Atwater started with these, and most of her patterns are woven in the same way, which was often called "overshot manner." Lucy M. Brusic (A Crackle Weave Companion) refers to this as the "traditional manner," I suppose because it was the traditional way with both Swedish and early American weavers.
So what about the three-shuttle crackle? After a little more reading I discovered that this was called "Italian manner" crackle. It uses three weft colors with no tabby.
Susan Wilson goes on to describe "Classic crackle" as one of the Italian manner treadlings. She describes it as using two different color "ground" (background) wefts and a pattern weft. The pattern weft dominates to create the pattern.
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So, there's my head knowledge about crackle weave at the moment. Stay tuned for part 2, Crackle Weave: Resources.
2 comments:
Leigh, the history of these things and where they came from always fascinates me, even if I do not understand the precise details of everything. It is a great example of how knowledge has diffused over the centuries prior to videos or instant knowledge. The same process - noted somewhere, brought somewhere else and practiced and even adapted - has happened for thousands of years.
TB, history is indeed fascinating, as is trying to trace the origins and evolution of things we are familiar with today. It's interesting that weave structures have tended to stick close to their roots over the years, even with modern interpretations. Maybe it's because so many weavers have a respect for history and preserving traditional skills. Plus, every culture has their own unique fabrics and styles. It's endlessly fascinating!
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