Categories & Grouping of Loin Looms

Loom Design/Looms/Grouping

About terms of loin looms

Loin looms are identified by science as "body-tensioned handlooms". Since a revival of loin looms in the 1970s, that focused mainly on the Maya looms of America, they got popular in public by the name "backstrap loom". Some very few like to call them "hip loom"! 

• Loin loom
• = Backstrap loom
• = Hip loom
• = (a main kind of) Body-tensioned handloom

Here we prefer to call them loin looms! The used terms (like foot loom, stake loom, stilt loom, station loom) try to describe further details, but at the end all here mentioned looms are loin loom-types.

Categories of looms in science

[A] Foot-braced, body-tensioned handlooms with circular warps

[B] Externally-braced, body-tensioned handlooms with circular warps

[C] Externally-braced, body-tensioned handlooms with flat warps

[D] Frame Looms

These categories used by science are a short view. For further informations read "Categories of Looms". As you may discover by your own so far, it doesn't seem very helpful to get loin looms-types in right order.

For this reason we added the following flexible grouping system just out of the perspective of loin loom cultures. Even these groups include last and least a frame group, but these models are extracted of loin looms, that include a framing method or loin loom cultures, that have got influenced by frame loom cultures; at the end they overtook the framing method for productional purpose, with some relics of loin loom techniques mixed in.

Watch the playlists of these general loom categories on Mac & Magic Loom:Design at youTube!

Grouping of Loin Looms

Suggested grouping of loin looms with a focus on mainly Austronesian & Austro-asiatic and related other asiatic types. Other types, American, African and even European types of loin looms may fit into, but are out of sight in this study, as far there is still no evidence, how far there is a historical connection between these.

1. Foot Looms - The early birds amongst Austro-asiatic & Austronesian loin looms.
2. Stake Looms - First types of externally-braced loin looms
3. Stilt Looms - Stand-up types of loin looms
4. Station Looms - Furniture types of loin looms
5. Seat Looms - Half-framed types of loin looms
6. Frame Looms - Framed types of loin looms

These groups are not that static as it seems, many models of loin looms may fit in the one AND the other group, or maybe somewhere in between! Generally we have to change the view onto "loin looms"; at the end they are all "foot looms" or better said the groups 2-5 are "advanced foot looms". The complicating and someway limiting properties of the original foot loom lead to a change of the construction, what seems to ease the hassle with spreading legs and so on, 

This may be the main reason in the evolution of foot looms to stake looms, what means in scientifically terms from "foot-braced" to "externally-braced" methods. That's no big change in the model at all. For this step we just have to bind the warp beam, that we tensioned before by feet to a tree, pillar or wall. On top we need now a foot brace to ease the build-up of tension. And here we are: For the most of the more advanced loin loom types, no matter it's a stake or a station loom type this foot brace keeps a essential, functional part of nearly all loin loom types all the millennia through! This foot brace is where we focus on, mentioning all loin looms as advanced types of foot looms.

Watch the playlists of these loin loom groupings on Mac & Magic Loom:Design at youTube!

SEAT LOOMS

Half-frame types of loin looms

>> seat looms