Tis the season of snuggling up with cosy crafts! Did you know the Romans here in Malton were partial to a good craft. In our museum we have some intriguing triangular tablets. You might think they look like interesting cheese crackers but they were certainly not for eating. They were made of bone and used to make beautiful braids for belts or trim for dresses.
The Process in Brief
Weaving basically involves a weft, which is woven horizontally, back and forth, through the warp threads to interlace with them. The weft is drawn through the warp with a tool called a shuttle. This is crucial to know for tablet weaving!
To understand how this visually happens check out this neat short on YouTube.
There’re many ways to weave and today I’ll be telling you about the most accessible way that involves little in the way of equipment – the Backstrap.
Equipment and their purpose:
- Thin tablets with holes drilled into them to pass thread through
- Thread
- A belt and a stationery object to attach both ends of the bundle of threads to.
To visually explain how the threads are woven into braids with the tablets I will give you a visual example kindly supplied by Lady Elewys of Finchingefeld.
Each bone tablet is represented by a numbered column with a set number of coloured threads in each respective hole of the tablets (here represented by letters A-D). Each tablet needs to be rotated either clockwise or counter clockwise (here represented by Z and S) by turning forward/back a group of tablets longitudinally to the warp – this creates a passage for the weft. In this passage, the weft thread (crosswise) is carried back and forth with a shuttle, through the warp thread (lengthwise).
The more holes, the more creative geometrical patterns that you could create!
Tutorial
If you’d like to know how to braid check out Elewys’ Tablet Weaving for the Absolute Beginner video, which gives a brilliant in full tutorial for how to make your own historical braid.
Sources
Di Fraia, T. (2017). Tablet weaving in prehistory and proto-history: the contribution of the Italian record. In: Gorgues, A., Rebay-Salisbury, K., Salisbury, R. B. (eds). Material Chains in Late Prehistoric Europe and the Mediterranean: Time, Space and Technologies of Production. Bordeaux, Ausonius Mémoires 48. [Online]. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/34749836/Tablet_weaving_in_prehistory_and_proto_history_the_contribution_of_the_Italian_record [Accessed 21 October 2025].
Support Us
Come to our museum to see these tools! If you are feeling daring enough, have a go at making a braid from replica triangle tablets at our craft station set up by one of our wonderful volunteers. Please feel free to donate to help fund our new museum to help us create more opportunities for creative learning.
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