Loom Design/Loomates/Tripura Loom >> | Seven Sister States
Tripura (ত্রিপুরা) is one of the Seven Sister States of Northeast-India, a hot spot on backstrap weaving. The weaver is running a circular warp on a stake loom-type of backstrap weaving loin looms, what means, that the warp beam gets connected by two ropes to two poles. Science calls this an externally-braced, body-tensioned loom.
Honour the scenery: She is seated on a mat at her "verandah", while the poles are driven into the ground in front of the house. Other days she may turn the scenery, sitting in the yard, watching the house.
We can't really catch a closer look on this detail, but we can discover parts of it: She uses the pillars of her verandah for her foot-brace (the bamboo cane at the pillar). As her legs are not that long as she wants the extended warp to be (guess, the whole warp is about 6 m long), she actually uses a second, shorter bamboo cane in touch with her feet. Inbetween these two parts of foot-brace, there is another bamboo cane keeping both on the needed distance. The leading of the warp is pretty horizontal.
Difficult to determine, as there are no further information, but to me, this looks pretty much like Chakma-style backstrap weaving-skills: The 6 m long and quiet wide, horizontally-led warp. Another indication for Chakma is the use of multiple heddle bars in combination with great skills for pattern work by her pattern sticks. They are great in producing high quality under simple circumstances width just basic tools.
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