Printed cloth. Patterned weaving

Among the ways of textile decorating a printed cloth is one of the most elementary. A wooden board with an engraved pattern or with cut in metallic plates was used for cloth printing. Square boards 20 x 20 sm in size were made of hardwood. A special composition was spread on such a board and printed on a smooth canvas; then the cloth was put into a big bowl where it was dyed in a deep blue color. The pattern remained uncolored and was notable on the blue background as a delicate graphic drawing. Sometimes the masters printed orange pea-shaped circles over the basic ornament using special stencils that enriched the decorative qualities of the textile. Printed cloth wasn’t regarded as a home handicraft. Dyers who owned small workshops and served the population of the neighborhood villages were occupied with this business. In each workshop there was “uzornik” – many meters long canvas with imprints from all available boards. Such “uzornik” was brought to the local market or fair and one could order a printed cloth with the corresponding ornament. A customer applied a roll of smooth homespun canvas to the number of the pattern and after some time received it in the form of a ready-made cubic printed cloth.

On the territory of Vologda Oblast production of printed cloth was especially developed in the former Nikolsk and Gryazovets districts. Cubic printed cloth was used in production of curtains, tablecloths, aprons, men’s trousers and shirts, women’s summer dresses. In the ornament of the cubic printed cloth vegetable forms prevailed. But these were not concrete plants but relative branches with flowers and leaves, geometrized bushes bearing the sounds of the alive nature in its pictures and gradual bends.

In comparison with a printed cloth a patterned weaving is the most complicated type of textile decorating from the point of view of technology. Its essence is in making an ornament and a patterned structure during the process of weaving. A special device was used for this purpose – a weaver’s loom with strained longwise threads of the warp that were interwoven across by the threads of the weft. An elementary method of textile interweaving was amplified with different improvements. A weaver who couldn’t even spell her name made complicated calculations of threads and their interweaving in different technique of the weaving.

Today a patterned weaving is preserved in the number of municipalities of Vologda Oblast by the old craftswomen. The modern forms of ancient geometric ornament are found in the patterns of the doormats and patchwork.