Textile weaving from plants is a very ancient, complex human activity. Many steps are required in the process: growing and or gathering herbs such as hemp or flax, cleaning and drying the plants properly, preparing plant material for spinning into threads, dyeing, and weaving or knitting. The images below show how this craft knowledge was preserved and practiced from field and forest to fabric in the shtetl well into the twentieth century.
from: The Old Country: A Jewish farm woman in Czechoslovakia separating flax fiber from the straw - one of the first steps in the tedious process of making linen
from: The Old Country: 85 year old woman and daughter spinning thread p. 94
From: A Vanished World p. 149: An older Jewish woman spinning outside because her spinning wheel didn't fit in her house.
from Photographing the Jewish Nation: image 37 girl spinning outside
from Photographing the Jewish Nation image 14: old man weaving talis
from Photographing the Jewish Nation image 42: weaving mill
from Photographing the Jewish Nation image 33: Tailor from Polonnoe (Poland)
photograph by Konrad Brandel of a Jewish woman fruit seller. This photo later became the inspiration for a well-known 19th century Polish painting. Take a closer look: she's also knitting!
spinning tools at the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow
weaving loom from the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow
a mysterious image: can you identify this mysterious image that shows a figure holding what looks like a spindle and distaff?
דער װעבער = der veber = the weaver
די װעבשטול = di vebshtul = the loom
שטריקן = shtrikn = to knit
דער האַנעף = der hanef = the hemp
קאַנאָפּליעס = kanoplies = hemp
דער פֿלאַקס = der flaks = the flax
דער לײַן = der layn = the flax (linen)
דער פֿאָדעם = der fodem = the thread
Image sources:
Shulman, Abraham, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Old Country. New York: Scribner,1974.
Vishniac, Roman. A Vanished World. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1983
Avrutin, et. al. Photographing the Jewish Nation; pictures from S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions. Brandeis University Press, Waltham, Massachusetts, 2009
Collections of Muzeum Etnogafriczne im. Seweryna Udzieli w Krakowie in Kazimierz, Kraków, Poland
