Brief History about Medieval Weaving

What did Weavers do?

In the medieval times, weavers were quite important. Weavers produced all of the cloth. Clothes, tapestries, flags, rugs, and even bedding were made by medieval weavers. Because of their wide variety of products, weavers had an equally eclectic clientele. The very rich had exclusive access to all of their various wares. With their vast fortunes they could afford to buy beautiful, elaborate tapestries that took years to make. These tapestries usually depicted things as specific as a famous battle or historical figure and were often made upon request. Tapestries could have also been about something as trivial as the favorite animal of a nobleman' s daughter. Either way, weavers took great pride in their work. They put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in to those tapestries and they wanted to make them perfect. Here are some examples:

In addition, because tapestries usually hung out in the open in a nobleman's home, weavers were definitely incentivized to do a better job. Imagine one party at that house. There would probably be at least a hundred guests. If just 3 of those hundred liked the tapestry, the weaver could be paid for quite a long time. However, while being a crucial part of a weaver's job, tapestries weren't the only thing that the rich and famous could buy. They could also purchase gigantic dresses, to help proclaim their wealth, and fancy suits; whereas, the middle and lower classes had to stick to buying simple clothes, bedding, and burlap sacks.

How did they do it?

Weavers would have several sidekicks and a loom. The sidekicks, usually women, would turn wool or other materials into the yarn or string that the weaver could use. After they had workable yarn or string, the skillful weavers would stand at what was called a "vertical loom" (shown here:)

(This isn't a medieval vertical loom, but medieval looms were essentially the same concept. This is just a better picture.) However, as you could probably imagine, This proved problematic for weavers. Being so tall, the weaver would have to stand to weave the first third to half. This can be very demanding physically, standing for 12-15 hours a day. Because of this, the horizontal loom became popular, depicted here:

The horizontal loom allowed the weaver to sit while doing the entire tapestry, rug, cloth, etc. In addition to being able to sit while working, the horizontal loom was also slightly automated through the use of foot pedals. This made it much easier, and as a result, weavers became more efficient. This efficiency made the prices of their products go down, therefore, some of the middle class could purchase a small tapestry here or there, to commemorate a very special occasion. Also, after the use of the horizontal loom became popular, the weaver could do his work with much fewer assistants. A man and his wife could run a shop by themselves.This caused either one of two effects, which was different from city to city. One, the people who used to work in the weaver's shop got jobs elsewhere doing something else. Two, those that once worked with weavers made their own weaving shop that competed with the others and helped lower prices through capitalistic means. Then, if there are several weavers in the same town, usually, they specialized. Some would make flags, others clothes, others rugs, and others tapestries. This led to even faster, cheaper production of their products and would eventually lead to the way the world is today. There aren't weavers anymore. There are clothes stores, shipping stores, rug stores, etc.