Baltic-style Pick-up Weaving in South America

Bands woven using this supplementary-warp style of pick-up patterning are found throughout the northern European countries around the Baltic Sea, as well as in Scandinavia and among the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia and Russia. It is a form of patterning in which thicker pattern threads are picked up over a ground weave structured as half-basket weave.

I learned the technique in 2013 from an early book of Susan Foulkes, and was drawn to it by its intricate patterning and its association with my Finnish heritage. I wove the belt shown below a few years ago, which replicates the patterns from a 19th century Latvian belt shown in a book by Anete Karlsone.

Here’s a close-up of one of the belt’s ten motifs:

Of its provenance, I never gave much thought. All of the books I read, all of the websites visited, suggested origins in Northern Europe and the Baltics. The names many authors gave it certainly suggested this: Anne Dixon’s “Baltic-style”, Heather Torgenrud’s “Norwegian pick-up”, Mary Atwater’s “Finnish”, and Susan Foulkes’ “Sámi Bandweaving”. In my teaching at the Weavers Guild of Minnesota and other venues in the upper midwest, I described the technique and resulting structure, or implied it, as having its provenance in northern Europe. But then…

On ravelry.com’s forum for backstrap weaving, a contributor asked whether the technique existed in South America. According to the forum’s moderator, Laverne Waddington, “It’s quite a common structure throughout the highlands and even in some lowland areas where the Mapuche weavers use it as well. I encountered it as far south as Rio Gallegos in Argentina when I used to live in southern Chile. Although it is quite a widespread structure, the methods and tools used to produce it can be very different.”

My Eurocentric attitude promptly shattered. I was wallowing in ignorance. It didn’t take much of an effort for Google to find a myriad of articles, books and photos displaying Baltic-style structures woven in the highlands of Peru and Bolivia. For example, in the book  Science of Weaving in the Andes by Denise Y. Arnold and Elvira Espejo, one finds this photo of a woolen shawl from Tapacarí, Cochabamba Department, Bolivia:

Here’s a stunning pillow woven by a member of Threads of Peru, a non-profit organization providing markets to local weavers:

Did this technique originate here spontaneously and independent of origins in Europe? Or was the method and patterns brought here by European explorers and settlers and adopted by local artisans? The remarkable similarity of the Latvian pattern and that in the Topacarí shawl, as well as the 7-thread “S” pattern familiar to Scandinavian band weavers, might support that conjecture.

However, there is archaeological evidence that the structure (and thus the weaving method) existed long before colonizers arrived. A database of Andean Weaving artifacts describes a textile scrap currently housed at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas y Museo Arqueológico, Universidad Mayor de San Simón (Institute of Anthropological Research and Archaeological Museum), in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This cloth is woven in a Baltic-style supplementary-warp structure, with dark gray pattern threads on a tan background woven in half-basket weave. It is dated from the middle horizon era (400-1000 AD), thus establishing that South American artists have been weaving these patterns for over a millennium!

In my musings now, I turn Eurocentrism on its head, imagining ancient explorers from South America sailing to Europe and into regions around the Baltic Sea, spreading their advanced weaving skills and methods to the indigenous peoples living there.

References

Denise Y. Arnold and Elvira Espejo, Science of Weaving in the Andes. Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara Casilla 2681, La Paz, Bolivia. Second edition, 2019. This book documents the historical and archaeological textiles of the Andes. The document can be viewed online at DigitalCommons at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Mary Meigs Atwater, Byways in Handweaving: An Illustrated Guide to Rare Weaving Techniques. MacMillan, New York, 1954

Anne Dixon, The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directoryˆ. Interweave, 2012

Folk Bands of the Museum of Finnish Handicraft, Jyväskylä, Finland

Susan J. Foulkes, Sámi Band Weaving, 2013. This was my introduction to the technique. Susan has published many books with Baltic-style patterns and weaving instructions, all on blurb.com. She publishes regularly on her blog.

Anete Karlsone, Rakstainās Jostas: Kopīgais Kultūrslānis (Patterned Sashes: The Common Cultural Layer)by Anete Karlsone. Latvian National Cultural Center, 2014.

Ravelry.com: Discussion of South American origins of supplementary warp patterning, on ravelry.com’s forum on backstrap weaving.

Threads of Peru, a not-for-profit social enterprise that connects the world to handmade treasures of the Andes, helping to strengthen ancient craft techniques and empower artisans.

Heather Torgenrud, Norwegian Pick-up BandWeaving, Schiffer Publishing Ltd. Aglen PA, 2014

Weaving Communities of Practice. A database of Andean textiles. It is the result of a project on textiles, culture and identity in the Andes funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom.