Examining the White Karelian Textile Tradition of the Late Nineteenth Century—Focus on Plant Fibers

Abstract

(MA, education) is currently a doctoral student in the University of Helsinki, in the field of Craft Studies. In her doctoral dissertation she is studying bast fibers (flax, nettle, and hemp), their identification methods and cultural history in the Finnish context. She has broad understanding about textiles from the fiber level to cultural meanings. Her field of interest includes especially ethnographic textiles from archeological finds to the historical era.

Wide-angle X-ray Scattering studies on contemporary and ancient bast fibres used in textiles – ultrastructural studies on stinging nettle

“…The presented examples are nonpublished TML and PML images of the White Karelian bres, and complementary results can be found in (Suomela et al 2020).…”

“…For the study, different types of modern (reference) and culturohistorical (ethnographic and archaeological) bast bre samples were measured using WAXS. The ethnographic samples were classi ed as nettle, ax or hemp based on the previously published TLM and PLM results (Suomela et al 2020). In addition, three archaeological bre samples were measured using WAXS to be used as a comparative result as well as to test the method's practicality to study degraded samples.…”

“…The samples were extracted from linen textiles collected in 1984 from the White Karelian region, Russia, and have been stored in stable museum conditions since. These textiles represent the materials from the 18th and 19th century and are profoundly presented in Suomela et al, 2020. Details of the samples can be found in the supplementary material from table S2.…”

“…The most common plant bres used in the textile making in the Northern Hemisphere are ax (Linum usitattisimum), hemp (Cannabis sativa) and stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) (Geijer 1979). Perhaps one of the most important bres for craftmanship has been stinging nettle: it is the only indigenous bre producing species in Scandinavia, thus it has been used as textile bre before the arrival of the other plant bres (Suomela et al 2020). Even today, with greater than ever increasing need of sustainable and durable textile-making materials, nettle derived bres could potentially prove out to be promising candidates for the purpose.…”

“…For textile making purposes, it has recently been suggested that nettle textiles were used more broadly and commonly in the history than previously assumed (Bergfjord et al 2012;Vajanto 2014;Suomela et al 2018;Suomela et al 2020). In bre research, nettle bres have often been overlooked by ax and hemp, leading to false identi cation of the bres and wrong assumptions of the used plants for craftmanship.…”