Penelope’s loom

One of the warp-weighted looms in the PENELOPE laboratory carries a fabric resembling the fabric depiction on the famous Skyphos of the Penelope painter unearthed at Chiusi in Italy. Weaving the design was a long and complex process that you can follow here by watching videos showing the steps of the weaving process:

Penelope Weaving

Part I: Planning the design, setting up the first small starting border, then setting up the loom and tablet-weaving the figured border (10 min, no audio, English subtitles)

Slide

Part II: Loom setup and weaving the double weave of the main fabric (9 min, no audio, English subtitles)

Slide

Penelope Unweaving

In the Odyssey, Penelope unweaves the fabric by night to gain more time for Odysseis comeback. In the PENELOPE project, we had some discussions with visitors and scholars of ancient Greece about how this undoing of a weave might look like. Most depictions show Penelope tearing the fabric apart, which is quite unlikely. So we made a video showing how someone who wants to go on with weaving the next day would probably undo the wefts.

Penelope Unweaving: Undoing two wefts of the fabric (11 min, with audio and English subtitles)