Bird & Pomegranate Perugia Towel

Left, side of towel facing the weaver during working Right, reverse side of towel (For a closeup of the underlying ground weave as demonstrated on another towel, view the second entry on this page)

            Perugia towels are a specialized style of textile that reflect the high standards of medieval and Renaissance table linens. Many illustrations of dining settings show tablecloths and towels of white fabric with blue patterned bands on either end.  These same blue-patterned towels are also seen slung over the shoulder of servants of the era.  They are commonly known as Perugia towels after their most well known place of origin in Italy, however Perugia-style textiles were woven throughout Italy and the Rhineland (The Cambridge History of Western Textiles 368).  Illustrations featuring Perugia towels are first seen in the 14th century, and the style remained popular throughout the rest of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Indeed, variants of this style were woven through the 19th century and even today in Eastern Europe (Endrei 61-68). 

            The Perugia towel classically consists of linen or fustian (linen warp, cotton weft) ground fabric.  The ground weave is typically a herringbone or lozenge (diapered) twill, as exemplified by an extant towel in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.  The diapered twills are often woven on six shafts.  Diapered fabrics were extremely popular in the context of household textiles, and can be seen in many illustrations with or without additional decoration.  The decorative bands of the Perugia textiles are woven into the fabric by means of pickup brocade.  In pickup brocade, individual warp threads are elevated according to the desired pattern to form a shed for the passage of the heavier brocade thread (see below).  The brocade thread is then fixed in place by passing an additional weft thread of the ground fabric through either a tabby or a basketweave shed (Thorson 3). The brocade thread was typically indigo-dyed cotton.

Selecting individual warp threads with the pickup stick	Turning the pickup stick on edge to create a shed	Passing the blue brocade thread through the shed (tabby throw not shown)

            Several themes are commonly seen in the decorative bands.  Geometric patterns such as as zigzags are often depicted in paintings.  Confronted animals facing urns, trees, or plants are also frequently observed in extant towels; birds are especially common (Endrei 61-68).  Patterns worked in pickup brocade are completely reversible, with the figural elements on one side of the towel in blue on a white background while on the opposite side the elements appear in white on a blue background (see top two panels of top figure).  This explains why photographs of extant towels can show either blue-predominant or white-predominant figural areas.  Different types of decorative elements such as zigzag and floral patterns are freely combined within a single towel, and the patterns are worked facing the weaver throughout.  As a result, figural elements viewed from the other end of a long tablecloth would appear upside down (Thorson, personal communication). 

            The bird and pomegranate towel is 40/2 linen (Webs, Northampton, MA). The warp is set at 30 threads per inch, sleyed 1:2 in a 20 dent reed.  I chose to use the diapered pattern found in a fragment of medieval linen held at the Vatican Museo Sacro (fragment T-27) as my ground weave.  This is a six shaft diapered weave with a repeat complete in 28 threads (Priest-Dorman 1-5).  The brocade weft is 3/2 pearl cotton (Halcyon Yarn, Bath, ME) in a shade of blue consistent with indigo dye.  An Ashford 16-shaft 24” table loom was employed for the weaving, and the completed towel was wet-finished using a commercial washer and dryer.  The ends were finished in a narrow rolled hem as is found in extant towels.  An alternative choice would be twisted fringe as is seen in contemporary paintings.

Pomegranates are a relatively common element in 16^th century iconography.  Since many extant towels are dated to the 1500s, I felt it was appropriate to choose my design elements featuring pomegranates from a variety of sixteenth century pattern books.  There are six bands of brocade on this towel, with three bands containing pomegranate elements and three bands of geometric patterns.  Holding the towel with the confronted swan design upright, the first pattern from the bottom is an acorn and pomegranate border from Matteo Pagano’s L'Honesto Essemplo del vertuoso desiderio che hanno le donne di nobil ingegno, circa lo imparare I punti tagliati a fogliami, a pattern book published in Venice in 1550 (Salazar 66).  I drew on the common theme of confronted animals in existing Perugia towels by selecting a pattern of confronted swans for the second pattern.  The original design, from Johan Sibmacher’s 1597 pattern book, Schon Newes Modelbuch (Newall 20), features confronted swans with urns and flowers.  I modified the pattern to place pomegranates in the design as well as to decrease the number of long floats in the pattern.  Long brocade floats catch easily during use and do not lie well.  The next two patterns are geometric in design, and are featured in Domenico da Sera’s 1546 Venetian pattern book Opera noua composta per Domenico da Sera detto il Francoisino (Salazar 38).  The fifth pattern was originally a star and flower motif, again drawn from the Schon Newes Modelbuch (Newall 7).  I replaced the flowers with pomegranates in keeping with the theme of the competition.  The sixth and final pattern is another geometric design from da Sera’s 1546 publication (Salazar 66).

There were quite a few challenges in weaving this towel.  I had originally attempted to weave this towel on my 8-shaft 36” floor loom, which is much deeper from front to back beam than my table loom.  I found that the tension was too tight to be able to form a shed with the pickup stick, and if I loosened the tension enough to create a shed, the resulting weave was uneven and unacceptable.  Moving to the shorter floor loom improved this such that I was able to create a shed by loosening the tension only incrementally as I began the brocading sections.  Another significant issue was the length of the floats in the design patterns.  Although I modified the first two patterns to decrease float length, there are still some extremely long floats in those sections.  In the future I would make further modifications to eliminate these floats as they detract from the overall appearance of the textile.

    Reference List

 The Cambridge History of Western Textiles. Ed. D Jenkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Endrei, W. "Les Étoffes Dites de Pérouse, Leurs Antécédents et Leur Descendance." Bulletin du CIETA 65 (1987): 61-68.

Newall, K. Needlework Patterns From Renaissance Germany. Boulder CO: Costume & Dressmaker Press, 1999.

Pater, W. Greek Studies:  A Series of Essays. London: Macmillan, 1910.

Priest-Dorman, C. "Some Medieval Linen Weaves." Medieval Textiles 30 Dec. 2001: 1-5.

Salazar, K. New Carolingian Modelbook. Albequerque NM: Outlaw Press, 1995.

Thornton, P. The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400-1600. Italy: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991.

Thorson, S. "Perugia Towels." Compleat Anachronist 114. 2002.