Boat shuttle

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[This is a guest post by Elizabeth J. W. Barber]

A linguist friend specializing in Iranian linguistic reconstruction has a word that means weft, but also has something to do with a boat and weaving.  To me, that immediately meant the "boat shuttle"–Gm. Schiffchen, Fr. navette, etc.  Once the horizontal treadle loom was invented, the (flat, horizontal) shed could be opened wide enough that you could flick the weft bobbin all the way across the loom, catch it, change the shed, and shoot (shoot > shuttle) it back.  HUGE time-saver!!!

The treadle loom seems to have been invented in China during the Han dynasties (206 BC-220 AD) — I can find no more than that.  Don't know when some genius added the boat-shaped shuttle that floats the weft bobbin across the loom, riding atop the lower half of the warp.

The treadle loom then somehow spread across Central Asia till it reached Europe.  The earliest European representation (with a rather odd change of perspective here and there) that I can hear tell of is an English manuscript from about 1100:

You see the treadles side-view; the horizontal warp, however, has been tipped so you see its top, not its side edge.  In the weaver's right hand is a VERY clear top-view representation of the boat-shaped shuttle with the weft-bobbin inside, ready to be sent with a finger-flick to the other side of the loom (left hand poised to catch it and send it back).

The key question is: WHEN (and where?) was the boat-shuttle, which can only be used on a horizontal treadle loom, invented— or at least when did it reach Central Asia?  We need to figure out if it reached the Iranians pre- or post- 8th century AD.

 

Selected readings

"The Wool Road of Northern Eurasia" (4/12/21) — with a lengthy bibliography on the importance of archeology (including evidence of weaving) for historical linguistics; this subject will come up again in our forthcoming deliberations on the Jie couplet* and related topics [*I {VHM} disagree with the Turkic and Yeniseian (Paleo-Siberian) interpretations of the couplet.]

"Archaic Greek in a modern world, part 2" (7/19/22) — Greek loom weights

"Memes, typos, and vernacular English in a 12th-century Latin homily" (7/20/25)



9 Comments »

  1. AntC said,

    August 4, 2025 @ 11:20 pm

    Makes perfect sense. And we talk of boats 'weaving' through the waves.

  2. Michael Vnuk said,

    August 4, 2025 @ 11:36 pm

    I have only vaguely understood how a loom works. A quick look on Wikipedia now has helped my understanding. The extraordinary number of variations (depending on space for the loom, whether it is to be portable, what type of cloth is being woven, who is going to operate it, and so on) just remind me of the enormous complexity and specialisation of handicrafts out there.

    I have several questions about the image displayed in the post. Why did the artist draw so many details on the weaver's chair? What is the significance of the wavy patterns at the base of the image. And why is the weaver naked?

  3. DDeden said,

    August 5, 2025 @ 9:21 am

    I'd guess it derived from the netting shuttle:

    https://youtu.be/PqDgAM_0mvA?si=s2vDKU-FJDu97Hur

    The Tarim basin may have played a part in its evolution, with boat burials implying net use, and twilled fabrics?

  4. Yves Rehbein said,

    August 6, 2025 @ 12:13 am

    A brief search in the library shows "The Roots of Asian Weaving" by Boudot and Buckley, Oxbow Books, 2015, ch. 7.3.9 "Weft insertion techniques"

    As discussed, changes in weft insertion method are closely linked to other aspects of the loom, particularly the way in which the weft is beaten-in. The simplest and oldest system, employed on the earliest backstrap looms, is weft insertion using yarn wound around a stick, after which it is beaten-in with a hardwood sword. By the time of the development of ancestral frame looms E, F and G the weft insertion is accomplished using a beater-shuttle, which combines the functions of the shuttle and the wooden sword. The sword is correspondingly eliminated, […] [B&B 2015]

  5. Wolfgang Behr said,

    August 7, 2025 @ 4:43 am

    As far as I can see, in "Classical" Chinese there are two terms for this navette, (a) suo 梭 (MC swa) and (b) zhu/shu 杼 (MC drjoX, zyoX).
    (a) 梭 would hypothetically reconstruct to OC *sˤoj (Zheng-Zhang's OC *sloːl), but the first attestations with the meaning 'shuttle used in weaving' I can see are all from the Medieval period (e.g. 世說新語, 異苑, 鮑照, 齊民要術, 晉書 etc.). The next question to ask would thus be if there any earlier attestations, e.g. in manuscripts, since the character itself, glossed as '[a kind of] wood/tree' (木也), occurs already in the Shuowen.
    (b) 杼 is clearly the older term and simply glossed as "what holds the weft in a loom" (機之持緯者) in the Shuowen. It occurs in a Shijing poem (203.2) "In the greater and lesser [states of the] East / the weft-shuttles and warp-cylinders are (empty=) idle" (小東大東,杼柚其空). This would seem to imply knowledge of the object during the Eastern Zhou period, i.e. long before the Han archaeological attestations mentioned by Elizabeth. Han texts like Huainanzi would credit the cultural hero Boyu 伯余 with invention of weaving with his fingers, while "later generations invented looms and shuttles, improving the repetitive process, making it more convenient to use" (後世為之機杼勝複,以便其用).
    Medieval dictionaries usually give the reading MC drjoX for the meaning 'shuttle', i.e. OC *ɢlaʔ or *m-laʔ, which would then form a kind of phontetically expressive pair with 柚 (yuw/drjuwk < *lru-s/-ks or *Gluk ?). This pairing prefigures the metaphoric use which the compound 杼柚 acquired as "nexus, plot of a literary work" in parallel to 經緯 “warp and weft", if referring to textual patterns. There is an added complication since the Fangyan glosses both characters as Qi dialect words for _identical_ objects made of different materials, clay and wood (杼、柚,作也。東齊土作謂之杼,木作謂之柚。).
    How any of these terms may be related to Iranian words for the navette, i.e. NPers. māku 'shuttle', cf. Pahlavi /makōg/ 'boat' (thanks to Milad Abedi!) — if these were the referenced words? — is any one's guess. In any case, it would be great to hear more from archaeologists about the early history of weaving in China.

  6. Victor Mair said,

    August 7, 2025 @ 7:58 am

    Many thanks to the commenters for all the helpful information.

    There is a colored reproduction of the drawing provided by Elizabeth above in this interesting article (see below for the caption):

    Ingvild Øye, "When did weaving become a male profession?"
    DANISH JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, 2016
    VOL. 5, NOS. 1–2, 34–51
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21662282.2016.1245970

    KEYWORDS
    Textile production;
    technology; weaving;
    gender roles; crafts; guilds;
    Middle Ages; Northwestern
    Europe

    https://core.ac.uk/download/386108235.pdf

    =====

    ABSTRACT

    The article discusses the development and technological changes within weaving in the Middle Ages when it developed into a major craft and one of the most important industries of the Middle Ages in Northern Europe. While prehistoric weaving appears as a predominantly female work domain, weaving became a male profession in urban contexts, organised within guilds. Hence, it has almost become a dogma that the expanding medieval textile industry, and corresponding transition from a female to a male work domain, was caused by new technology – the horizontal treadle loom. By utilising various source categories, documentary, iconographic and archaeological evidence, the article substantiates that the conception of the medieval weaver as a male craftsman should be adjusted and the long-established dichotomy between male professional craftsmen and weavers, and women as homework producers of textiles should be modified, also when related to guilds. The change from a domestic household-based production to a more commercially based industry took place at different times and scales in various areas of Europe and did not only involve men.

    =====

    The colored reproduction of Elizabeth's drawing is Fig. 2 on p. 36 of Ingvild Øye's article. It has the following caption:

    =====

    Figure 2. Weaver at the loom c. 1250: one of the earliest
    depictions of the horizontal loom, appearing to be a two-
    treadle type. A shuttle is used to insert the weft. Here, pulleys
    are threaded on the upper loom bar without being connected
    to heddle horses (MS 09.32v with permission from the Master
    and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge).

    =====

  7. Victor Mair said,

    August 7, 2025 @ 8:11 am

    As for Michael Vnuk's good question about why the artist drew "so many details on the weaver's chair", see the thoughtful remarks by Glenn Adamson in the opening paragraph of this article:

    Material intelligence
    The chasm between producers and consumers leaves many of us estranged from beauty and a vital part of an ethical life

    Aeon

    https://aeon.co/essays/do-you-know-your-stuff-the-ethics-of-the-material-world

  8. Victor Mair said,

    August 7, 2025 @ 8:27 am

    Courtesy of Seb Falk, the correct shelfmark of the Trinity College manuscript alluded to in my long comment above is Cambridge MS O.9.34 – a 13th-century manuscript from St Albans Abbey: https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/O.9.34. The illustration appears on f. 32v – you can see the whole thing here: https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/O.9.34/UV#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=71&r=0&xywh=-5221%2C0%2C15721%2C8111.

  9. Su-Chong Lim said,

    August 7, 2025 @ 10:10 am

    I have dabbled in many forms of Taiji (Chinese slow exercise routine, allegedly based upon ancient Martial Arts, adapted to non-Martial purpose), and have puzzled upon the many fanciful names for some of the poses. Some make a sort of obvious sense ("Golden Rooster stands Alone" for instance), but "Fair Lady Works the Shuttle" 玉女穿梭, has always been a mystery to me, as I didn't know how a loom worked. This imagery is still impossibly fanciful, but now at least I know it relates to flicking the bobbin through the cavity formed by the two layers of warp, and perhaps the non-throwing hand being held ready to catch it on the other side of the thread leaders.

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