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Description
Warping up a loom, or preparing it to weave a new fabric, iinvolved pulling several hundred threads through each individual dent in the heddles and reed. Instead of dismantling the entire warp after finishing a project, weavers saved time by detaching the reed, heddles, and a portion of warp fabric from the loom. They kept this assemblage, called “gears,” until they wove that cloth again. This way, when the weaver wanted to revisit a pattern, they simply had to put the gears back on the loom, tie each new thread to the end of one of one of the old ones, and pull it though to the proper place. This particular set of gears is warped with singles cotton in a simple tabby weave, which would create a plain, coarse cotton fabric. The reed is made in the German tradition, with seven hundred dents marked with black reeds. The heddles are not varnished, which is common for finer fabrics, and the heddle sticks are marked in 1 1/8" divisions with inscribed dots.