I was sitting in a lab wearing a white coat, while getting introduced to the process of making ink. At first, just like anyone would, I found myself being transported back to when I was sixteen, in a random chemistry class at high school. But then, all of a sudden, a different memory got triggered, one I keep dearly safe in the many folds of my mind. While I was about to recreate an ink making process picked up from a sixteenth century book, I got struck by a feeling of familiarity with the ‘newly introduced’ historical method. I had been placed in this position before, albeit not in a lab coat. This sensation intensified a week later when I found myself in the same laboratory listening to instructions on how to print by etching. And then, in an instant, I was transported back to a time when I used to sit next to my grandmother, learning how to weave.
For the life of me, I could not understand, until writing this report, what the connection was. Yet I find myself comfortable enough to write this reflection in an unorthodox capacity. I am writing this as a weaver that later became a historian. I argue this allows me to properly discuss the use of historical reproductions as a tool for writing history, and in my own way, to share how this has been one of the only methods I have to reconstruct the history of my village. By doing this, I hope to make a case for the use of such methodology in any historical analysis, and especially for those that grapple with the history of the marginalised.
By sharing my story as a weaver that doubled as a historian, I want to draw connections not just between the process of learning how to weave and the workshops of this historical recreation class. I also want to explore the benefits, as well as the limitations, of these experiences in a methodological context. In this attempt, I will also draw certain conclusions on how such a methodological approach can benefit the historical study of knowledge, as is defined by Johan Östling and David Larsson Heidenblad, in their book titled The History of Knowledge.1 This report will first introduce and establish weaving as the first time I experienced historical reproduction first hand. I will then draw a methodological connection between weaving and ink making. By describing these two experiences I aim to clarify the benefits and limitations of reproduction. Last, I will relate this to the concept of the circulation of knowledge and how it can be assisted through alternative methods. This report will not discuss knowledge in the context of science but knowledge as a social construction that encompasses general aspects. That being said, the conclusions could be applied to the study of scientific knowledge, or rather knowledge of the world.
My Great Grandmother, Christina, Holding a Fythkiotikon.
To begin, I must first have to immerse you in the beautiful art of Cypriot weaving. I come from a small village with a population of sixty, situated in the western mountains of Cyprus. Fyti as it is called, is famous for many things, but we take particular pride in our textiles. Named Fythkiotika, these textiles are unique to our village and can only be described as intricate lines of colourful strings woven into an array of different patterns (picture 2). These patterns all have their own names and stories. The selection of patterns a weaver includes in their textile is indicative of the individual skill of each weaver. The process of making Fythkiotika dates to the 12th century and they are currently listed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage catalogue. The process of learning how to weave is seemingly simple. There are no books, no manuals. There are no actual classes or meetings where people write down minutes. There are no notes to be taken, no sketches to be made. Learning how to weave is an immersive, hands-on experience. Usually an endeavour left to women, with the occasional exceptions such as me, this art is passed down from grandmother to mother, from mother to daughter.
It is within this physical immersion I was able to learn the history of my land. Every pattern had some story connected to the happenings of the village. Take for example To Papoutsin tou Daskalou, ‘The Teacher’s Shoe’. In the 1930s Cyprus, being under British occupation, had an extensive educational programme set in place that allowed for teachers to be transported from the larger cities to remote villages. The arrival of the government’s first assigned teacher should be well documented within the Cyprus State Archive. How the village received him and what feelings they had about this change are not – not in the archives at least. Yet, these feelings you can instead find in the countless textiles made after his arrival. ‘The Teacher’s Shoe’ was a pattern based on the shoes his wife wore. It was and still is a story of acceptance, a peek at the feelings of rural Cyprus when it came to one of the aspects of colonialism. But the process of learning weaving goes beyond simple historical inferences.
The author dressing a loom.
If you were to sit next to my grandmother and learn how to weave you would start with the basics. Picking up the shuttle, a wooden, hollowed boat-like device, and placing your carefully spun yarn into it, so it can be held safely still while it unravels. Hitting the shuttle from one end of the loom to the other, changing the colours of the strings as you go, pressing its pedals with your bare feet while enjoying the warmth of the summer. And then you would hear the classic line, ‘What you are learning now is simple, wait till you learn how to dress a loom’. A loom does not come prepared and ready for one to weave. It must be diligently prepared. Each string must be measured in length, usually done by pulling it across a wall with spikes on it. The strings also have to be set in an order, with the dresser being able to tell which came first, second, twenty-third, amounting to eighty-sixth, depending on the loom (picture 3). You then find yourself wondering, is there such a thing as a ‘Loom Dresser’? Did every woman know how to dress a loom? The answer was no. There were only a few in every area, and they would accommodate entire villages.
With this information, you now understand you cannot dress a loom. So, you pick up a different colour and continue weaving, happy your loom was prepared. But how are you able to pick up a red string when all strings come white? How did the strings come in array of multiple colours? Were all women able to die their strings? The answer comes again quickly, and it is negative. No, not all women were able to die their strings, just like they were not all able to dress their looms. There were only some who knew how to do it and, which materials to use. Once again you find that alongside the missing Loom Dresser and her labour, stood a forgotten Textile Dyer. And in the summer warmth you might have the same realisation I had in a cold laboratory making ink: the people are missing, but their marks on the processes are still there.
Ingredients of the ink.
Just as with weaving, the making of ink is a ‘simple’ process. Take a few oak galls, crush them and throw them in a pan for a bit. Cover them in white wine and mix in gum Arabic and vitriol (picture 4). Set in the sun and then you will have ‘perfect ink’.2 But just as with weaving, my loom was already dressed and my strings had colour. All my ingredients were there, readily available. I reached the first limitation of this ‘replication’ methodology. The intricate networks that delivered the vitriol and the gum Arabic to the ink-maker were erased just as the dressing of the loom and the dyeing of the strings. The remaining process was simple, perhaps even too simple, and at first I struggled to see how I could engage with it in an analytical way. The sterile environment of the laboratory nearly tricked me into believing that nothing more could be gained from the reproduction. This is where analyses such as the one by Hjalmar Fors, Lawrence M. Principe & H. Otto Sibum comes in handy. They delve into and attempt to identify some of the contributions of what they call experimental history of science while also providing a framework for its use. Having been stripped of their contextual richness, their true value is not as mere sources, but as springboards for the questions one asks as a result of the experience.3
Combining the library with the laboratory, the questions of how and who, allows for historical reproductions to illustrate certain aspects of one’s history that are not evidently present. Considering the case of ink-making, I could possibly find the process well documented in the archives. The process of printing from the second workshop even more so. And thus I asked my first question: how realistic were descriptions found solemnly in written sources of printing workspaces? In his chapter titled Inky Fingers, Anthony Grafton gives an analysis of the dynamics of being a corrector in the 16th century. These correctors were ‘everywhere in the world of print’, as they ‘prepared manuscripts for print, read proofs and often added original material of their own’.4 Grafton’s analysis is based on what was written in margins, letters and printing house guidelines. He includes Jeremiah Hornschuch’s depiction of a printer shop in action.5 One would argue that without historical reproduction it would be hard to accept this depiction as reality, let alone present it as such. Especially when reading Hjalmar et all’s account on how ‘artisans sometimes did not even recognise their own workshop life as it was depicted in the images’.6 This makes historical recreation instrumental in understanding the different networks and dynamics involved in printing but also scrutinising the authenticity of depictions used in historical analysis.
While I was able to make a bit more sense of the ink-making process through delving into the archives, I would not be able to find anything about the process of Cypriot weaving there, save some mentions of the textiles. I wonder however, if I were to find a detailed account on how our weaving was done, would the same questions come to mind as when I was sitting in a loom trying to weave? Would the intricate network of weavers, dressers and dyers make itself known?
It is because of that warm summer I spent sitting next to my grandmother, that I was able to eventually teach some version of the history of my village to groups of tourists that visited the Akamas Rural Life Museum (picture 1). The reproduction of the weaving process served as an illustration of the complex history of women and their knowledge. It was this immersive experience the women of my village provided that initially taught me how to apply historical inquisition to primary sources. It also eventually allowed me to develop a different understanding of knowledge and its circulation. If one is to move past the pitfalls of inherently simplified reproductions through rigorous questioning of the context within which they find themselves engaging with the practice, be it a laboratory or a ready loom, one can then start searching for the tangibility of knowledge. The tacit and gestural knowledge of Hjalmar et al. which refers to the forms of knowledge that are intrinsically connected to the production, transmission and circulation of knowledge.
These knowledge forms are evident in weaving, ink making and printing. Tacit and gestural knowledge are solemnly found through classic archival and textual research. If they are present, they are diluted to simple explanations of processes, broken down steps that hardly inspire inquiry. Including historical reproduction in the apparatus of the historian increases one’s ability to comprehensively understand how knowledge was circulated. It also broadens the definition of knowledge to include aspects left recorded only in the movements of our hands. These types of knowledge forms then allow for new questions to be raised, networks to be discovered, intricate relationships to be drawn. In the case of the women of my village, this and oral history are the only ways to weave some version of the past.
Dimitris Mitakos is a first year student in the History and Philosophy of Science MSc program at Utrecht University. This piece has been developed from an assignment completed for one of the associated courses.
- Johan Östling, David Larsson Heidenblad, and Lena Olsson, The History of Knowledge, 1 online resource (72 pages) vols, Cambridge Elements (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009047715. ↩︎
- The Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont. Translated by William Ward. London, 1595. Public Domain. ↩︎
- Fors, Hjalmar, Lawrence M. Principe, and H. Otto Sibum. 2016. “From the Library to the Laboratory and Back Again: Experiment as a Tool for Historians of Science.” Ambix 63 (2): 89. doi:10.1080/00026980.2016.1213009. ↩︎
- Grafton, Anthony. Inky Fingers : The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe, Harvard University Press, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, 29. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uunl/detail.action?docID=6184850. ↩︎
- Ibid, 33. ↩︎
- Hjalmar, Principe, Sibum. “From the Library to the Laboratory and Back Again”, 91. ↩︎
Edited By: Maura Burke, Mor Lombroso