Name/Title
4-Shaft Counterbalance LoomDescription
Also known as a sinking shed loom. As opposed to the 6-shaft loom, this loom only has four shafts however it is still possible to create complex weaves and patterns. Currently warped is a would-be striped fabric however the loom is in a fragile state and cannot be worked on heavily enough to produce much fabric at this time. The counterbalance loom creates fabric in pairs--that is, two shafts sink while the other two rise, and can create balanced weaving patterns (one warp for every weft) like a 2/2 twill but not so much unbalanced weaving patterns (one warp for an unequal amount of weft or vice-versa), something like a 1/3 twill.Use
This loom belonged to Lorna Margaret Allen.Context
This loom is narrower than the 6-shaft loom and as such the fabric is not as wide. While perhaps not ideal by modern standards where you want as much fabric as physically possible, this meant that the weaver could weave easily with their arms to guide the shuttle through. The weft threads would be held within the shuttle (an advantage to more archaic shuttles where the weft was merely coiled about a stagnant shuttle) and guided through the warp threads to create fabric line by line. Because of the narrower width and the amount of work it took to produce any usable amount of fabric, things like clothing historically were very efficient when it came to fabric usage and more voluminous pattern pieces had to be pieced together to accommodate the extra width. While today we would see those random seams in clothing as unsightly, they were an accepted fact of life for most of human history post-cloth invention at least 5,000 years ago. They can be seen on extant garments owned by royalty and nobility, as well as preserved peasant garments or folk garments of the same periods. floor looms were in use during the "folk periods" of Europe and its colonies, meaning roughly the mid 18th century up until the late 19th century, though in some cases their use would extend into the 20th century. They are used today by individual crafters, not on an industrial level.
