Textiles and basketry

TEXTILES

On winter nights, when darkness comes so early, women spun thread beside the fire. It was slow work: “Little is earned by spinning,” they used to say, “but even less by watching.” They talked and watched while turning the spindle. The ball of thread grew around the smooth shaft as it spun again and again. One ball, then another, and another: many were needed for a blanket, a sheet or a shirt.

They spun hemp and wool. By the time these loose fibres reached the distaff and began to twist under the turns of the spindle, a great deal of work had already been done. From shearing the sheep or sowing hemp in the garden, one task followed another: soaking in pools or in the river, carding, breaking the hemp fibres…

The balls of thread —bleached and sorted according to thickness— were taken to the weaver. Weavers were numerous in Upper Aragon and worked on old looms installed in their own homes. The last traditional weavers in the region continued working in Sobrarbe until relatively recent times: the renowned weavers of Javierre de Ara produced brightly patterned blankets and bedspreads until the 1960s, while the weaver of Guaso continued his trade until the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century.

BASKETRY

Baskets for everything: carrying vegetables and straw, potatoes, grass, fruit or grapes. Small baskets and large ones, delicate and rough… Fine white baskets for soft clothes and sewing; great hampers of thick willow with strong handles for carrying fodder to livestock; multi-pouched panniers in which water jars travelled on a donkey’s back; baskets kept especially clean for laundry; cane and willow baskets coated with manure to form warm, comfortable homes for bees; large carrying baskets and many other forms.

The world of basketry is humble, strong and fragile at the same time, as well as versatile and varied. There is a basket for every need.

Basket-making techniques have accompanied humanity since the most remote prehistoric times. People made baskets before they made pottery vessels.

In Upper Aragon, basket makers used willow and cane to produce an enormous variety of baskets, and these same materials are still used today. Other materials, however, have fallen out of use: rye straw and bramble, used to make the magnificent palluzas in which salt was stored, are now largely forgotten.