Out of Taiwan: We invite you to our experiment to follow the Austronesians by their ethnic looms on their way starting from the Chinese mainland about more than 3.000 years ago into the Pacific world, the Philippines, downwards to Papua-Neuguinea and after all westwards towards Indonesia further on, reaching Madagascar, Hawaii and the Eastern Islands about 800 CE. The last step of this movement reached Nea Zealand about 1200 CE.
Our Austronesian move is accompanied by some Austroasiatic models of „mainland loin looms“, as we find many of them in the melting pot of Northeast India & surrounding.
Every Sunday we will present another loin loom-type of Austronesian or Austroasiatic cultures. You’re welcomed to join us:
1) Chakma Loom Experiment: Experimental stake loom of the Chakma people, NE India mixed with an Indonesian flat warp, similar to the Maya loin looms, well known in the 70s.
2) Borderless Weaving: Simple stake loom with an Indonesian-style flat warp.
3) Cham Pa-Rade: Stake loom of the Cham-Rade people, Vietnam with a basic circular warp.
4) Java Calling: Advanced Foot loom, Early Java-type with flat warp (Denim).
5) Taiwan Tuk Tuk: Foot loom box of the Atayal people on Taiwan with a circular warp.
6) Walking Sprit: Early Paiwan foot loom (bamboo cane beam), circular warp.
7) Good Morning, Champa: Station loom of the Cham people, Vietnam with a circular warp.
8) Out of Baduy: Rebuild of an early stilt loom of the Baduy people (Kanekes), Java by a circular warp.
9) Bhutan Stilts: Ancient stilt loom of the Bhutanese Pang Tha with circular warp.
10) Mish Mush Loom: Experimental Mish MushLoom of two further stilt loom types (Arunachal Pang Tha & Sulawesi Gorontalo) with one and the same circular warp, basing on the stiltwork of the two last examples, the Baduy & the Bhutan stilts. With this last move we follow the Majapahit slogan: Unity in diversity! A huge cultural „Mish Mush“ that forms nowadays Indonesia, next to the Philippines the great cultural center of the Austronesian world - already an unity of diversity in itself.
With this crossover inbetween the ethnic models the 4 basic groups of mobile loin loom types are presented: A) Foot Loom, B) Stake loom, C) Stilt loom & D) Station loom. The further two groups of E) Seat loom & F) Frame loom keep missing in our presentation. For this first round and basic understanding of loin looms they are not that important. On top they are less mobile, so out of program for our public showLOOM at Sunday AfterLOOM. All these here shown models may show out, why we understand all these types are still just „foot looms“ (foot-braced loin-tensioned hand looms), just some more basic, some other more advanced, but for all these the foot work keeps essential. Just a few types start to work without footwork (Bali, Hmong/Miao) as the following groups of Seat loom & Frame loom develop on.
The whole excursion is celebrated by just 4 or 5 different warps, what means, the authentic warp isn't presented with each loom type. Even it would have had its sense to show you the authentic ethnic garments belonging to each ethnic loom, the focus of Sunday AfterLOOM is set onto the experiment to travel between these ethnic models back into time to reach a practical test of their thought connections. On top it demonstrates their usefulness in daily work.
Check the online calendar for coming Sunday afterLOOM’s program:
