Roman Two-Beam Vertical Loom

Every year my local SCA group, the Barony of An Crosaire, puts on a large educational demo for the city of Gainesville, Florida's Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. For those of us who demonstrate historical arts, crafts, and sciences, it's 5 days of doing your art and explaining it to the public.

My Roman clothing and textile research triggered a desire to experiment with the Roman Two-Beam Vertical Loom, which was the loom they used to weave large textiles in tubes. It wasn't the only type of loom the Romans used, but it's one that not many people seem to have done much with yet. My husband, being the good sport he is, took the photographs, archeologists & textile researchers' drawings, and some plans available on the internet for Warp-weighted Looms and cobbled together what we dubbed "Roman Loom, Attempt the First". Keeping in mind the minimalist appearance of the looms depicted in period art and archeological drawings, we tried to keep the design very simple and basic. We opted to tie pieces, such as the heddle rod and shed bar, onto the frame of the loom with string (as depicted) rather than have them permanently attached.

The first weekend he assembled it in the pavilion for me and left me to figure out the next steps. I had some vague instructions and a general idea of how it was supposed to work, but quickly discovered that that some things don't work as well full-size as they do in half-size or less. I eventually got it warped and set up, but discovered that, while I could produce a nice first shed, I could not produce a second shed. After a couple of experiments that also didn't work, or didn't work well enough, I called in reinforcements. After all, what's the use of sharing a pavilion with a group of textile workers, many of whom are experienced weavers, if you can't draw on the wisdom of the collective? After many more experiments and lots of thought, we found the answer - just in time to pack it up and go home for the week.

The second weekend was a three-day weekend for us (Friday, Saturday, & Sunday), so Friday morning I re-warped the loom and was actually able to weave on it! I quickly noticed, however, that the tied on heddle rod and weft board would slowly creep downward as you worked on the loom. In addition, they fell faster on one side than the other - I was pulling the heddle rod with my left hand, so it was ending up canting downward on the left...while the shed rod was being turned with my right hand and canting downward to the right. This was distorting the weaving area and was generally annoying to have to stop and fix constantly. The other thing was noticed was that, with two fixed beams and a continuous warp string, there is no way to adjust the tension as you weave. Hmm... The other thing I had issues with was the thread I was trying to use - I had brought very fine, white wool thread to warp the loom with. In the WHITE canvas tent, and against the glare of the sun from the open areas in the walls, it was very hard to see what I was doing. I made a run to Joann's that night for some alternative materials and got some dark blue double-ply wool yarn for the warp, and some soft and fluffy sea green single-ply wool yarn for the weft.

Saturday morning my husband made some minor modifications to the loom by drilling a series of holes down the side supports, which allowed the heddle rod and shed rod to be tied into place and stopped the dreaded "creep". For the tension issue, I added four additional rods that were tied onto the frame near the upper warp beam. I then re-warped the loom (for the third time!) and ran the warp over the additional rods plus the upper warp beam. The additional rods can then be removed, one at a time, in sequence to loosen the tension as you weave. The other possible solution that was suggested by an experienced weaver was to make the bottom warp beam a floating beam instead of a fixed beam. That would certainly also work, but would take major modifications to the loom and I would need to do some serious studying of the extant art to see if that appears to be a possible period solution. We already know that they tied things on to the looms, so that's the way we went at this time.

After re-warping the loom again (it takes about four hours to get the loom ready to start weaving, and would take longer to set up for a full width piece of fabric), I was able to start weaving again about mid-afternoon and made some decent progress. I noticed, however, that with the loom set up to weave in a tube you have nothing to beat down against, so it's difficult to get a nice, clean, flat edge to your woven fabric. I should have used some spacer bars inserted into the warp when I started, but I was so excited to actually be weaving at least that I didn't think of it until it was too late. I only had a couple hours until the faire closed anyway.

Sunday morning I pulled the warp around the lower beam, inserted a spacer bar, and started again. I was much better with the spacer in place. Most weavers struggle a bit with tension on the sides (too much tension causes your fabric to pull in at the sides), and I'm no different than any other fledgling weaver! I did notice that the continuous warp thread magnifies this issue. The thread warp chains don't help keep the threads in the middle from pulling closer and closer to each other as the chain simply collapses on itself. Granted, I might do better someplace other than the Faire, where I was constantly having to stop and explain what I was doing, how the loom works, why Romans wanted to weave things in tubes, etc. But adding something to help with this issue would be useful for the future - maybe notches on the sides of the shed rod, and/or tension strings from the sides of the loom into the warp? I didn't have a chance to try anything else before the faire ended.

The photos below are from the last day of the faire and show the loom, views of the two sheds, and the fabric that I wove on Saturday and then on Sunday. I'm looking forward to having more time (and concentration!) to continue working out the construction and use of this type of loom.