Wool rainbow

Sprang is not widely known in contrast to other skills like knitting. So this intricate textile technique needs to say some words about.

The word "sprang" occurs from ancient Swedish and means "elastic", "extensible". The first thing created in this technique has been found in burial of a Bronze Age (about 1400 B.C.). It was the female hairnet. Sprang items have been found also in Coptic excavation (400-700 B.C.) . However then these findings have been described in museum collections as "created by unknown way ".

In 1890 Louise Shinnerer, the Viennese teacher of an embroidery, has published results of her researches in the small book " Antik handarbajten ". The book contained the description of sprang technique, schemes of twining, a pictures of the equipment. Museum collections of textiles in the Europe have been reconsidered since that time. Many textile items have got a new description.

Sprang as the alive craft has been found out in more than 15 countries all over the world thanks to investigations of many scientists. Headdresses, gloves, scarfs, bags, purses and other sprang items came to us from European Middle Ages.

Slavs have known sprang too. The Russian name of this technique is "plaiting on a wall". A belts were done using sprang as a rule. Long and wide red belt plaited on a wall were popular at Ukraine. Except for belts, somewhere in Belarus female hairnets were made using sprang. Such nets have very complex lace ornament. There is on a left photo replication of such net, on the right and middle photo are replication lace ornaments in progress. The nice girl wearing the net is Tatyana Isaeva's daughter Nadezhda.

The basic techniques of sprang are presented on the next page . Presently, of course, the technique has no utilitarian meaning - knitting is more than enough to make some hat or jacket. But sprang allows to touch a history - in fact, people used the technique long before the knitting has been appeared. There is something like magics in a manual interlacing of threads and in a borning structure of the cloth. The combination of different threads and different techniques of weaving creates unique things, making sprang exclusively attractive to creative people.