For this week’s Nalbound Object of the Week, I’m delighted to be able to bring you evidence of the current tradition of nalbinding in Northern Ghana. I’d had hints that the technique might be found in West Africa, but nothing Ghanaian specific. Thus, imagine my excitement when I came across an example in the Accra Arts Center. I was initially concerned it might be an import, but seeing several others in Cape Coast and with some additional information obtained during bargaining, we’ve confirmed they are a product of Northern Ghana.
Object: Ghanaian bag with coiled base
Description: A cross-body bag with a solid bottom. All the versions I saw were various stripes of natural color, deep purple, and dark blue. This one had some purple going around the mouth and up the strap.
Dated to: 2024. Collected on 21 October, 2024 in the Accra Art Center
Find location: Accra Arts Center, in a stall selling goods from Northern Ghana. The sellers spoke Degaare, which indicates they are of the Dagaaba/Dagaati people. Additional examples were also spotted in a market stall in Cape Coast.
Material: a plant fiber, possibly jute, in natural, purple,Ā and deep blue. The purple is water soluble and can transfer.
Stitch(es) used: Main body is Z-crossed Simple Looping, F1 O. There’s a bit of Cross-knit Looping at the center base and Coiling: Z-crossed Simple Looping around a bundle of carried sticks. Further examination is needed for the stitch around the mouth. (Stitch determinations by Anne Marie Decker)
Inventory number: N/A
Current location: Anne Marie Decker’s personal collection
Photographs:
View of the stripes and connections. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerCloseup of the base showing the carried stiffener material. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerThe base of the bag is stiffened. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerAdditional details of the bag in Anne Marie Decker’s collection. Another bag seen in Cape Coast. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerMore bags seen in Cape Coast. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerThe handles of the bags in Cape Coast. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerThe cross-knit looping start before the stiffened section. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerMouth and handle attachment. Photo credit: Anne Marie DeckerDetails of the four similar bags seen in a market stall in Cape Coast.
Please note that sharing to other venues will likely be intermittent. If you wish to receive these each week, please remember to follow the blog. Patrons on Patreon receive early access previews, occasional extra details, and priority requests. They also support explorations to find nalbinding around the world.
After a brief hiatus due to surgery, I bring you another Nalbound Object of the Week. This artifact was mentioned as an aside in an article about Pierre de Courpalay’s gloves (which will be a later post) and for the longest time I could find no more information about it other than it was supposedly an early 14th century green silk reliquary pouch from Namur, Belgium worked in space patterned Simple Looping with a carried thread. There was a stitch diagram, but no picture. My friend Ann Moreau took up the quest to track down more information and was able to provide me with a photograph and a couple of very interesting sources: a master’s thesis and the conservation report.
Description: The purse measures approximately 6.5 inches by 6.3 inches (16.5 x 16cm) not inclusive of the tassels or ties.1 The main body is worked in a pattern of diamonds enclosing four smaller diamonds that is regular on the face, but shows an error in the pattern at the top of the reverse turning it into chevrons.2 There’s a strip of plain green on each side and a green eyelet band at the opening.
The pictures show that the main body of the purse was not worked in the round. Had it been worked around the purse, the slits in the space patterned Simple Looping would have been horizontal like those seen making eyelets on the green eyelet band. However, the slits in the main body are vertical, indicating that the fabric orientation has the base row along the right side of the face (left side of the reverse) and the fabric was built up to the left side. There is no noticeable seam showing at the bottom. All of which may indicate that the face and reverse were worked as one rectangle, sewn up the sides, and then the eyelet band worked around the opening.
The relic purse was classified as a Treasure by the Commission consultative du Patrimoine culturel mobilier [Consultative Commission for Movable Cultural Heritage] on October 4, 2021.3
Dated to: radiocarbon dated to ca 1260-1390 CE4 (77.4% certainty between 1260 and 1310)5
Material: Silk. The tassels include gilded silver metallic threads.8 “The beige and pink threads of the lining are colored with safflower and a dye containing traces of flavonoids, the green thread of the fringes with woad or indigo, and the beige thread of the boucle network with red wood.”9
Desrosiers’ “On medieval pontifical gloves and glove medallions and wristbands found in France” has a diagram of the stitches making the pattern of a portion of the diamond in Fig. 2b on page 160. The diagram is flawed as it shows a whip stitch instead of the Z-crossed Simple Looping. It is showing a B1 O which makes a whip stitch instead of the F1 O that makes Z-crossed Simple Looping. The loops have also been regularized to the top which does not match the direction of work.
Please note that sharing to other venues will likely be intermittent. If you wish to receive these each week, please remember to follow the blog. Patrons on Patreon receive early access previews, occasional extra details, and priority requests.
For the Nalbound Object of the Week, we head to Australia where there is a strong nalbinding tradition amongst the aboriginal peoples. Most commonly we see this in their string bags. This bag was collected in 1896 and is now in the Ethnographic collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Description: A rectangular bag with alternating light and darker brown stripes. Not quite 11 1/2 inches tall and 6 1/2 inches wide (29 x 16.5 cm)1 The body of the bag and string around the mouth are both Z twist. The carrying string is S-twist.
Please note that sharing to other venues will likely be intermittent. If you wish to receive these each week, please remember to follow the blog. Patrons on Patreon receive early access previews, occasional extra details, and priority requests.
For this Nalbound Object of the Week, we look to the Pech people of Northeastern Honduras. Now in the Ethnographic collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, we find this lovely open worked nalbound bag in alternating light and darker brown stripes.
Description: The bag starts at the base in the lighter brown and is worked for three rows with some increases visible. Followed by two rows of the darker brown and then three, three, three, and two alternating. The bag is recorded as being 19 5/16 inches high by 14 15/16 inches wide with a thickness of 1 5/16 inches (49 x 38 x 3.4cm). The opening shows no signs of decreasing the row height or otherwise finishing the mouth of the bag. The fabric builds in an clockwise S type spiral implying it was likely worked with the fabric suspended above while being worked.
Dated to: No date provided.1 The bag is part of the Ethnographic collections, so possibly collected sometime within the last one hundred and fifty years.
Find location (Continent, current country, original culture): Plaintain River, Honduras3
Material: The online catalog only describes the material as fiber.4 It may possibly Maguey (Agave sisalana f. armata) or Aechmea as both are noted as being used by the Pech to make bags.5
Stitch(es) used: B2 U/OU as read from the technical front of the work with crosses up. (Stitch determination by Anne Marie Decker based on .TIFF photograph provided by the museum for research purposes.) Given that the clockwise S type spiral direction of work reads right to left in that orientation combined with the B2 connection, this bag was likely worked with the fabric above the hands instead of suspended below. (If worked dependent (unlikely), then this would likely be indicative of being worked left-handed.) So in working, with the fabric suspended and growing down, the direction of work would read left to right, as is most frequent and the stitch would be worked as F2 O/UO crosses down.
Please note that sharing to other venues will likely be intermittent. If you wish to receive these each week, please remember to follow the blog. Patrons on Patreon receive early access previews, occasional extra details, and priority requests.
This presentation focused on the over 110 extant nalbound artifacts, primarily socks, that have been found in Romano-Coptic Egypt and surrounding areas. They are now located in museums throughout the world. I was honored to be authorized to include photographs of a good number of the extant objects, including photos of some that had not otherwise been published.
This presentation was intended to be an introduction to the breadth of information that can be gleaned from examining the corpus as a whole: the diversity of nalbinding variants, the colors and shapes of the objects, their shaping and construction, the find locations up and down the Nile, along the Eastern desert and in the Western Oases, etc.
Abstract: Extant Romano-Coptic nalbinding from the Nile Valley and surrounding regions provides one of the most statistically significant populations of such material, consisting of over 100 specimens. The technical variant used in approximately half the objects is misleadingly called Coptic or Tarim stitch. A preferred established term is cross-knit looping and personal examination of the Tarim basin finds has not revealed its presence there. The misnomer derives from the misinterpretation of a brief note in a broader work, compounded by unawareness of the variantās oldest known occurrence from the Nahal Hemar cave. The term Coptic stitch reflects a greater understanding of naming conventions for nalbinding variants. However, recent research indicates that multiple finds labeled as Coptic actually date to the Roman and Late Roman Eras. The nominal association with the Coptic Era is additionally misleading because half of the designated corpus displays a range of more complex variants. This paper addresses the terminological imprecision, confusion about underlying fabric structures, and effects of provenance irregularities. It also presents an initial collation of available images and mapped locations of the Egyptian finds as part of a comprehensive catalog of nalbound objects prior to 1600 currently being compiled.
AMD: Again the value of clear technical illustrations becomes prominent in a field where archaeologists, craftspeople, historians and conservators work together. #TAES
“An acclaimed independent researcher in her element made a marvelous presentation yesterday.” Photo by Ruth Decker
This post was specifically to collate posts regarding the presentation. However, I plan to write up a bit of my experiences leading up to the deciding to do the presentation and the preparation therefore in a future post. I also want to write up one on the trip surrounding the seminar and presentation as I was lucky enough to arrange several visits with museums to see extant items in their collections (reports on which will be forthcoming in their appropriate venues).
