Threads Through Time: Estonian ethnic weaving patterns

This book presents nearly 50 weaving techniques traditionally used in Estonia, illustrated through a wide range of woven textiles, including rugs, blankets, national costume fabrics, shawls, and household textiles.

The book is bilingual, with texts in Estonian and English, and includes a glossary of weaving terminology.

Specifications

• 104 pages
• Hardcover
• Size: 25 × 25 cm

Author: Eva-Liisa Kriis
Designer: Endla Toots
Photography: Meeli Küttim

Price: €30

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Driving along a quiet country road on a grey, misty day, a flash of warm yellow suddenly catches my eye. For a brief moment, it feels as though summer has returned—a golden field of grain. I turn the car around.

The weather is cold and damp, which is probably why the window of an old cowshed has been covered with a worn textile. It is a simple egg-yolk yellow twill fabric decorated with colourful supplementary-weft ornaments. Fortunately, the owner agrees to exchange it for something better suited to keeping the hens warm, and I take the textile home. It becomes my very first "textile rescue."

Years later, while installing an exhibition of plaids at the Sillaotsa Farm Museum, a visitor pauses, looks at the collection, and remarks, "I'd better check what I gave my dog to sleep on." I cannot help wondering how many remarkable textiles have disappeared simply because no one recognized their value. Who has the time—or the knowledge—to rescue and preserve what many dismiss as old rubbish?

Yet, just as stones occasionally emerge from a ploughed field, fragments of the past continue to reveal themselves.

While writing this book, I often thought about the village woman and her hens, the museum visitor, the fashion designer searching for inspiration in folk art, the museum professionals, the cultural traveller, and the weaver looking for weaving instructions that are rarely preserved in published collections of traditional costumes and ethnographic textiles.

If you have the chance, do not throw old textiles away. They may become a source of inspiration, preserve a piece of history, or simply bring joy to someone else.

Eva-Liisa Kriis